I Want a Voice, Part 1

I voted today. In Texas as in probably some other states, there is a two-week period before every election when registered voters may go to one of a number of places and cast their vote exactly as they would on election day. Today I am reminded that I have intended, for a long time to author a manifesto of how the election process could be fixed to give everyone a voice.

Realistically I do not have a voice in Texas. Unless I move to Austin, where people seem to do their own thinking I will continue to have ballots thrust in front of me with a plethora of unopposed Republican candidates, or challengers to Republicans who are running for the heck of it. For example I lost count of the number of unopposed candidates today and my choice for the House of Representatives was the less-than-effective, follow-the-party Republican incumbent or a teacher who is running because he promised his students that he would.

There is a whole lot that needs fixed so I will start today to lay out, in no particular order, solutions that would give everyone a voice. And, when I say everyone, I mean everyone who is interested in making an informed choice and not just going to the polls and looking for a party affiliation, or candidates whose names end in vowels, etc. This is a good segue into today’s topic:

The Ballot

1. Eliminate the option to check one box, flip one lever, or punch one hole that will vote for all nominees of a single party. This is really like not voting at all in that most persons casting ballots in this fashion have no idea who they are voting for or what these folks stand for. Consider all of those ill-advised folks in Pennsylvania who click, pull, or punch the straight Democratic option intending to vote for pro-abortion candidates. (I label these folks as ill-advised because single-issue voters are the worst of all voters for which there is no real fix.) They will have voted for Bob Casey, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate who is anti-abortion. People should know who they are voting for and while removing the straight party option will not ensure that they do, they likelihood increases that they may.

2. Eliminate the party affiliation designation next to each candidate’s name. The rationale for this is similar to that of item #1 above. This will remove the crutch that uninformed voters use to guide their vote. If a voter wants to vote for a Republican they will need to know their name. Maybe this will jog their memories when they cast their ballots. For example, when seeing Dennis Hastert’s name on a future ballot maybe they will think “Hey, isn’t this the guy who ignored the warnings about Mark Foley? I can’t vote for this guy, even if he is a Republican.” Again there are no guarantees, but there would be a better chance that an informed vote would be cast.

3. Randomize the presentation order of the candidate names for each office. I think that on the ballot today all incumbents were positioned in the first position under each office. This seems to give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to incumbents, depending on the current political climate. The order in which the names are presented should not be fixed, or the same from voter to voter. This is an easy fix on the electronic machines, and a little harder, but doable, on the punch cards and lever machines. This would again make sure that the voter looks at each name, with greater possibility that they will make an informed choice.

OK, that’s it for today. Look for more later.