If you watched the news or participated in a political primary or
caucus, you would know that it is filled with long lines and depending on your
State can be annoying or difficult to vote in. So what are some reforms
that can take place to make this process less painful?
The reform I can think of primarily
revolves around the amount of time it takes to pick a candidate. Now, I
am not going to say have all the States vote all in one day. The reason
being is that the process being so lengthy is beneficial so as to prevent rash
decision making. You see, if it were not for the amount of time it takes
to choose a candidate in this election year, we would have a battle against
Hillary and Trump as opposed to a possible battle with Sanders and Cruz for the
nomination. So we need it to take a while to finalize who will be the
candidates in both political parties. Also, part of this little issue of
time is that in some States candidates are still on the ballots even after they
have pulled out of the race, in part, due to the fact that they paid for their
names to be there. As such the internet can provide us with a wonderful
solution.
With the internet we can set up an online
voting system for nominating people for political races. What it would
entail is a system that allows people to vote from January 1st of an election
year to July 31st. In this time people can vote or even change their votes for
candidates as they see fit all the way up until the July 31st deadline thus
combining an element of caucuses into the system. This insures that a
person's vote is not locked into a candidate who may turn out later to be a big
jerk (Trump and Hillary), or if their candidate dropped out of the race (Rubio
and Carson), they can then throw support behind their second choice or even
third choice. Additionally, this ends the need for early and absentee
voting with respect to primaries and caucuses especially as absentee and early
voting can be used as part of manipulating the vote in favor of one candidate
or another. Basically, it reduces the amount of possible corruption involved.
To top it off, it even allows new candidates to enter the race during the
election season, but a cut off would have to be implemented where no new
candidates may enter past say May 1st as we will need time to get to know the
candidates so as to prevent nominating people on emotion rather than logic and
reason. But how would this system work and where would the delegates who
have the final say on who runs in each party come in?
So we will not eliminate the State by
State system at all (so you are still voting as a member of your party, but
also as a citizen of the State in which you live). In fact we will keep
it where you win a number of delegates per State, but they are awarded at the
July 31st voting cut off all at once. The role of delegates would change
though as they would act as a tiebreaker if no one candidate achieves a 50%
plus one majority by the end of voting In other words, there will be one
or more delegate per State and U.S. territory. Whoever wins more than
half of those is declared the winner and thus has the nomination and the
parties support. However, as stated, some or all the candidates may not
achieve that majority, thus delegates vote in a convention held at the very end
of the nomination cycle to confirm the best out of the top two or three
candidates who achieved the most wins (three if the next best two are tied or
are so close in the number of wins per State that they can be considered tied,
otherwise all other candidates are dropped from being considered). Now
how do we prevent people from screwing around with this system?
For one, each person will receive a
national membership code from the political parties, and should even be able to
change party affiliation at any time, but if they have voted as a Republican
and switched to being a Democrat for example, then their vote for that
Republican candidate will be nullified unless they switch back, but at that
point their voting for the other candidate on the Democratic side will be
nullified. This switching back and forth will stop being allowed during
the May 1st through July 31st dates so as to provide stability to the voting
process as no new candidates are allowed at this point. It provides stability
by preventing ideologues from manipulating the vote in favor of their candidate
by switching parties to vote for the weaker candidates of the opposing party.
Anyhow, back to that membership code. The code itself will indicate
first and foremost which State you are currently living in, your age, sex,
gender, and race. The reason for this is partly to allow the parties to
analyze your demographic, but also makes it harder for a person to pretend to
be you as a series of challenge questions may ask these things and more to
confirm if you are in fact you. This helps to prevent voter fraud at
least with respect to someone pretending to be you if they for whatever reason
get your code (the code can also be your social security number or driver's
license number depending on what is easier). The political parties will
have to work together to pull this off and other political parties like the Tea
Party, Green party and others must be allowed to host their primaries here too,
but follow along with the same rules. The site will also have to be
protected from hackers, which means a combination of government agencies and
private firms hired by the parties will be needed to prevent any form of
manipulation electronically as well.
This site in addition to voting in a
primary (based on the changes here), and being able to change your party
affiliation (or even be able to be part of multiple political parties if the
parties allow it) will enable people to see all the candidates who are running
and will have links to all of their campaign websites. This ensures
voters can make an informed decision (candidates can opt to not have their
websites linked to this one if they choose and any new candidate who announces
must have their name and website up on the site within 24 hours of their announcing
so as to ensure their voters do not miss their chance to vote for their
preferred candidate). It would also be useful to allow people to be able
to donate to their candidates through this site directly, via the political
parties, or to the political parties themselves. Additionally, you can
change your address here as well if you move which will allow you to keep the
government and the parties up to date on where you are legally allowed to
vote. The idea here is to insure that
the site is useful outside of Presidential elections and even Senatorial, and
Congressional elections as well with respect to the national nomination
process. Eventually it can even be used
to handle State and local election nominations as well and could even put out a
newsletter via text, email or other to keep people up to date on whether there
is an election they can vote in or not.
Conclusion: This site will be partly supported
by the parties, but money will come proportionally based on the number of
members of each party has. The rest of
the money will come from the States and or Federal government via the federal
election commission and State equivalents as they have a vested interest in
free and fair elections even during the nomination processes. This
insures fairness with respect to keeping this site up to date. Of course
this site would require States to harmonize their election laws to fit the new
structure and for the political parties to agree to participate as well.
Needless to say it will take some effort to implement this system.
The older voting system will not completely go away however as areas with
shoddy or no internet access will still need the traditional paper ballot (or
similar), which will have to be tallied before delegates are distributed.
Overall, this is an outline of a potentially cheaper (as taxpayers are helping
to pay for a website as opposed to voting booths), more effective voting system
that helps to reduce voter fraud and gives people more access to vote for
candidates of their choosing.
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