Where do you stand on the idea of having a basic national voting standard?

Something along the lines of limiting lines, establishing an early voting period that includes weekends (right now people's access changes a lot depending on their state and county), and other modernization reforms to the voter registration system (possibly portable voter registration so that it doesn't become invalid every time you move).

Both sides do it, with redistricting and other restrictions on voting, trying to make it so that politicians are picking their voters rather than the other way around. Would investing in a basic set of national voting standards to make the right to vote more free, fair, and accessible be helpful to try to make the system harder to manipulate by politicians?

What say you tdubbers? Yea or nay?

2/5/2013 3:47:56 PM

The push back that you are likely to encounter will be from those screaming "States Rights! States Rights!!"

A fair compromise would be to institute an 8-year (two election cycle) plan to get everyone a standard ID, while at the same time having a 15 day early voting period that can't merely be fiddled with by some hyperpartisan secretary of state...

Gerrymandering needs to be addressed, but it's so common now that I doubt it will ever be fixed.

2/5/2013 4:04:55 PM

I'd appreciate if we stopped using electronic voting machines that we know are inaccurate and open to being manipulated.

2/5/2013 6:35:24 PM

Quote :

"Where do you stand on the idea of having a basic national voting standard? "

Get rid of electorial votes and go with the majority (popular) vote.

2/5/2013 7:48:20 PM

^^I think that's the least of our problems.

I'm more concerned about grossly uninformed and generally unintelligent people casting the deciding share of the votes, with their positions based on dumbed-down (or flat-out wrong) talking points, propaganda and lies from special interest organizations and pundits, and silly shit like attractiveness or which candidate you think you'd rather hang out and drink beer with.

[Edited on February 5, 2013 at 7:54 PM. Reason : ^ not sure if that's really a good answer]

2/5/2013 7:54:17 PM

^

And I'd be all for this, but HockeyRoman is right - The republicans would never go for it

2/5/2013 8:11:00 PM

^^ I could get into a huge argument about our voting standard, however, I currently don't have the time to divulge a thesis on t-dub as many of you will make the points I support for me. I'll chime in here and there if I can assist in the discussion.

But one of my biggest pet peeves with the voting standards is the B.S. Electorial Votes and I wanted to go ahead and pop that balloon on Page 1.

[Edited on February 5, 2013 at 8:15 PM. Reason : .]

2/5/2013 8:15:00 PM

Quote :

"Get rid of electorial votes and go with the majority (popular) vote."

This might simplify things for the Presidential election, but it doesn't address anything having to do with the highly subjective state and local voting systems. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with state and local governments deciding how to organize themselves in a political context, but at the same time, we live in a system where power has been consolidated in the federal system, and I'm forced to deal with the consequences of dipshit politicians in other states that, for some reason, are allowed to vote money away from me and to their own constituents. Of course, I'm even more likely to deal with dipshit politicians in my own state, but at least I have some tiny, so close to zero it might as well be zero chance of influencing them.

There isn't a fair way to regulate national elections in a nation where there are two fairly distinct sides that hate each other. No matter how the chips fall, someone is going to get dumped on. Both sides will argue that their policies benefit everyone, but no agrees. There's a certain degree of futility in trying to unite a region that could easily function as several separate nations.

2/5/2013 8:40:25 PM

i'd like to subscribe to your newsletter

2/5/2013 8:49:53 PM

I doubt people will agree on something like national popular vote any time soon, but there still have to be some steps that could be taken and have broad consensus for simplifying and modernizing voting.

I'm personally a fan of changing election day away from a Tuesday or making it a national holiday.

2/5/2013 8:52:10 PM

^ I would love to see election day changed to a holiday. I'm less convinced that a national popular vote will actually do anything to solve the deeper issues in the electoral process. Let's face it, popular vote isn't going to solve the few states that make all the difference problem, it will just be more centered on major urban areas, leaving the rural and less populated areas even further out of the political discussion than they already are. In addition, while there's plenty of whining about the popular vote not matching the EC vote, but the fact is, it's a relatively rare occurrence and I think a distraction from the real problems.

2/5/2013 9:02:34 PM

Quote :

"I'm more concerned about grossly uninformed and generally unintelligent people casting the deciding share of the votes, with their positions based on dumbed-down (or flat-out wrong) talking points, propaganda and lies from special interest organizations and pundits, and silly shit like attractiveness or which candidate you think you'd rather hang out and drink beer with."

This is just bigotry. What is one's citizenship when they can't vote? If you don't like the intelligence of the people in this country you should consider another one. If no country suits your intellectual profile, maybe it's not the country that's the problem.

That, and the entire argument boils down to the statement that our media sucks. The media sucks in many parts of the world. They're not there to educate you. Humanity as a whole hasn't figured out this problem.

2/6/2013 7:52:10 AM

I like the idea of election day becoming a holiday.

I also like the idea of a national registration database. That would fix 90% of our registration problems right there.

2/6/2013 8:48:43 AM

+1 to making Election day a national holiday.

Regarding "voting standards", I do not think it is an issue that needs to be addressed now. I don't perceive voting as being difficult for anyone. Inconvenient for some, yes. It deserves attention eventually but gerrymandering is a vastly larger problem that needs critical attention. Both need to be addressed by an isolated, non-partisan technocratic body.

2/6/2013 9:23:56 AM

I would prefer only people who want to try and take time off work and stand in line for a few minutes vote. If someone doesn't want to make this effort, I don't want them voting.

There's no inherent benefit to just more people voting, pure democracies are a bad idea, Plato knew it, and so did the founding fathers.

2/6/2013 9:34:55 AM

Quote :

"pure democracies are a bad idea"

In the same way that capitalism is a bad system. It's a bad system, but it's the best we've got.

Please do tell, what's the alternative to democracy? Starting from the idea of a complete democracy, how do we detune it so that it's less democratic and accomplishes what you want better? An open secret: there is no such thing. If you make a system less democratic then you're handing over power to the monied interests. Bigotry of the few is no better that bigotry of the masses.

2/6/2013 9:39:56 AM

No, capitalism is a fanfuckingtastic system, the weird capitalism/socialism amalgam we have is pretty shitty in a lot of very important ways.

Pure democracies are an unabashedly awful idea. Aside from the logistic impossibility of getting things passed, as it would presumably require that everything be put to a vote, and a legitimate vote would have to have some kind of required minimum percent of participation in order to count there are other even bigger concerns. The reason that voting is a limited right and the reason it frankly should be even more limited is that most people are not only not smart or well informed they're downright ignorant and fucking stupid to boot. This is why every government that has been even reasonably successful has a buffer between the people and the generation of law. What we have now, a republic is about the best you're likely to do.

2/6/2013 11:16:30 AM

You've not even touched on how a republic is better than a true Democracy.

The argument is nothing but a continuous stream of unsubstantiated assumptions. You argue for the "buffer" between the people and the laws, which is 100% circular logic. Giving people direct votes on laws is bad, because it will give people direct votes on laws.

If the criteria people use to select politicians are just as bad as the criteria they would use for direct rule-making, then then what problem did you solve? You have politicians selected by the masses that are equally as bad as the laws the population would select. What does that solve? Why would bad politicians magically make good laws?

The complexity argument is also ridiculous because the republic solution doesn't solve it either. Our representatives delegate responsibility. I see no coherent argument for the firewall of generalist politicians between the bureaucracy and the voters.

2/6/2013 12:18:25 PM

A republic is preferable to a direct democracy because it provides someone who will not necessarily just do the will of the people because they have a tenured term and are allowed to use their own judgment in addition to considering the majority opinion. A republic by definition has protections for the minority and safeguards against the tyranny of the majority.

Bad politicians still do make bad laws, but having a republic, which has in place checks against the legislature that prevent some of the more egregious shit that they might seek to do (like the stupid as hell, but wildly popular flag burning bill).

Do I really need to go into why it's better to have people who are experts crafting legislation than it would be to have Joe Sixpack throwing things out there?

I mean honestly, you'd be hard pressed to find many people who actually think a direct democracy is in any way a good idea.

[Edited on February 6, 2013 at 12:43 PM. Reason : asdfsd]

[Edited on February 6, 2013 at 12:45 PM. Reason : asdfsafdf]

2/6/2013 12:40:21 PM

Quote :

"A republic by definition has protections for the minority and safeguards against the tyranny of the majority."

Maybe you're thinking about the legal system, because they are constantly pushing back against legislation from the representatives that work to subjugate a minority. The representatives themselves don't do shit toward the ends that you suggest.

Quote :

"having a republic, which has in place checks against the legislature "

Checks and balances have nothing to do with your argument. You're arguing for a firewall of representatives between the people and the passage of laws. A direct democracy could have checks on power just as a representative democracy could. It could be better at it. You have no justification for your assumption.

2/6/2013 12:46:35 PM

Quote :

"A direct democracy could have checks on power just as a representative democracy could."

Not really, then it wouldn't be a direct democracy.

There is a difference between a republic and a representative democracy that goes beyond just the concept of majority rules.

[Edited on February 6, 2013 at 12:50 PM. Reason : asdfs]

2/6/2013 12:48:55 PM

If a direct democracy was defined to have no good institutions then I wouldn't care much for it either.

2/6/2013 3:20:21 PM

Tyranny of the majority is why direct democracy is a bad idea.

It would be too easy to convince people of dumb things. Look no further than the vast amounts of people that don't accept the scientific evidence for evolution in the country. These aren't the people I want making decisions.

Basically anyone in the 3 lower quartiles of intelligence should have no voice for a society of 300 million people and growing. Not saying that we shouldn't be conerned with or have compassion for this bunch, but they shouldn't be making important decisions.

2/6/2013 5:24:59 PM

The bias against evolution is amplified by our representative system because the GOP has gerrymandered districts.

ITT everyone thinks it's just fine to have absolutely no empirical basis for claims. Everything you can possibly say about Joe Sixpack is irrelevant to the direct Democracy discussion unless it results in better outcomes by said idiot electing an idiot representative.

If you think that in either system dumb people should be prevented from voting, then that's a separate issue. But I should note that's one of the few instances where comparison to Hitler is actually entirely valid.

2/6/2013 5:45:11 PM

Quote :

" absolutely no empirical basis"

lol

2/6/2013 6:07:49 PM

Honestly, whether it's direct democracy or representative, either system is bad if your government is powerful, far reaching and without checks and balances.

As to specifically why direct democracy is bad, for one, it's fast. Governments should very rarely be fast. They should be slow, ponderous beasts that take a long time to consider their options and possibilities before taking action. The whims of people are fickle things and wax and wane, and are easily stirred by emotions rather than consideration of all the facts at hand. Just as we want our justice system to not be a series of flash mobs taking the law into their own hands, so too do we want our legislative system to be comprised of a slower more thoughtful process. Look at it this way, imagine any large media event in the last decade (9/11, Katrina, Sandy Hook, etc) and ask yourself if you think the political response to those events would have been better with direct democracy deciding. I would argue that they would not have, which is not to say the existing response was good.

Secondly, direct democracy is as has been said, two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Direct democracy is (part of) why California is sunk under unfunded propositions and mandates, and why Prop 8 passed. With direct democracy (at least as it's usually proposed, where simple majority / plurality wins), it's quite easy for a majority to be wrong and still get their way. That isn't to say that our current system has prevented it (I'm looking at you Amendment 1), but there is at least a chance.

Third, direct democracy is time consuming and difficult to remain involved in. This is something of the opposite of problem 2, but to get your way in direct democracy, you only need to get a majority of the voters, not a majority of the people. If each possible issue to be voted on were put to popular vote, you need constituents to be voting all the time, or else you get the opinions of just the people who were able to turn out that day.

Still, despite these things, I think you could get a direct democracy like system to work, but you would need to specifically crafted and immutable (or at least as immutable as any law can be) checks against it. For example as a counteraction to the 2 wolves and a sheep problem, and the 3rd problem I mentioned, I would propose that in a direct democracy system, any new law would require some large number of voters, say 3/4, to pass. But each law passed would go up for review in 6 months, 1 year and 5 years, and would require a much smaller number (say 30-40%, but some number larger than the minority in the original vote) to be repealed. It could of course be struck down at any time with a regular vote, but these special repeal votes would be specifically designed to allow minority opinions to have real weight in the process and even for that matter for the people to easily reverse what have turned out to be bad ideas.

2/6/2013 7:06:13 PM

This thread has led to some interesting and fairly broad discussions of what the ideal democracy should look like, and I think that's a discussion worth having.

But I do also want to hear more peoples thoughts on things mentioned in the first post, what kind of steps on that scale do you think are at least somewhat realistic/feasible/practical to get done over the next 10 years?

2/6/2013 7:13:50 PM

^^^^^ Hell, you don't even have to be very smart to be top quartile. An IQ of 111 puts you in the 75th percentile.

I would say we probably want people in at least the top 10%, if not the top 5% or 1%, being the ones making the important decisions.

[Edited on February 6, 2013 at 9:38 PM. Reason : anda lot of smart people can't get elected, because the masses view them as wonks.]

2/6/2013 9:06:23 PM

^^ Things that everyone will agree on:
- the gerrymandering is bullshit, and something should be done about it

Things we probably should have consensus on, but apparently don't:
- we shouldn't have election day on a goddam Tuesday
- people in low population states should have the same representation in congress as high population states

The reality is that we can't change shit. The electoral college (in that they don't always have to vote in accordance with the election result) doesn't make any sense, and if you asked any rational person they would agree. But no one has the stomach to rewrite any of the rules even if they don't make any fucking sense.

If anything is going to happen in the next 10 years, it's a restructuring of how our federal government borrows money. No, not because it's the right thing to do, lol. Our finances are going to hit a wall. Look, I know we can manage our debt by making reasonable cutbacks and growing out way out, but we won't. Give it one or two more major irresponsible decisions.

2/6/2013 9:33:35 PM

Quote :

"But I do also want to hear more peoples thoughts on things mentioned in the first post, what kind of steps on that scale do you think are at least somewhat realistic/feasible/practical to get done over the next 10 years?"

I don't think any "national" standards are feasible in the next 10 years. Exactly as Hockey said, "states rights", although it's not entirely cut and dry. The states are supposed to be allowed to direct their own elections, and IIRC, it's only congressional elections that congress can have any input on, the presidential election (other than day) is out of the federal governments hands. In theory, a state could choose their electors by random lot or by throwing darts out of a plane. Especially as far as direct democracy goes, there's a good argument to be made that such a change would require a constitutional amendment as Article IV S4 guarantees a republican form of government. Certainly I think it would be a very big mistake for the people to allow congress the precedent of directly interfering with state representative elections. Sure you might like how it turns out at first, but remember the pendulum swings both ways. Better to change the process at a state level.

On a state level though, I do think it might be feasible to get computerized districting, but there would need to be some resolution to "who gets to program the computer and how do we know they won't simply program it to gerrymander" and also whether or not computerized districting wouldn't simply disenfranchise voters as much as the current systems do. As I mentioned in another thread, NY has massive areas which are not urban areas, and their needs and interests are considerably different from those of NYC. As it stands those interests are already likely under represented (certainly the winner take all approach to electors means they get no representation for presidential elections), computerized redistricting might lump portions of that rural interest in with NYC reducing their voting power even further.

2/6/2013 9:56:03 PM

Convert the House into a proportionately elected body, boom, see ya later two party system.

Quote :

"- people in low population states should have the same representation in congress as high population states"

This is what the Senate's for, unless you want the House the same way, in such case I don't know what the point is of having two houses of congress.

Quote :

"But I do also want to hear more peoples thoughts on things mentioned in the first post, what kind of steps on that scale do you think are at least somewhat realistic/feasible/practical to get done over the next 10 years?"

Not sure how you'd go about doing line limits, but a nationally-mandated extended voting period is a must, but will only be realistic/feasible/practical if Democrats gain a supermajority in both houses. The GOP is expressly interested in low voter turnout.



[Edited on February 7, 2013 at 11:44 AM. Reason : .]

2/7/2013 11:40:01 AM

An argument for the electoral college that I had never heard/considered came up during the 2012 election because of all the hurricane sandy coverage. If a significant natural disaster disrupts an election locally, the affected population will still be represented proportionally.

2/7/2013 11:48:59 AM

I heard that one too and it kinda blew my mind because it was the first time I'd ever heard a justification for the EC that made perfect sense.

Still, it'd be nice if we'd go by popular vote in the absence of an emergency, but then I imagine every Republican governor would declare a State of Emergency each election day...

2/7/2013 11:50:34 AM

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/12/obama-may-address-voting-rights-and-delays/

Quote :

"Obama may address voting rights and delays (CNN) – 102-year-old Desiline Victor is among first lady Michelle Obama's guests at the State of the Union Tuesday - and her example is meant to drive home President Barack Obama's commitment to protecting voting rights made during his inaugural address. In that speech he said, "Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote." Victor, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Haiti, waited in line for three hours"

Quote :

"The president's power to alter voting practices is limited. Only Congress has the power to create national standards."

Quote :

"The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Voting Rights Act this month, which could allow states to make voting more restrictive."

Hopefully the issue will be at least raised in tonight's SOTU, even if it's the legislative and judicial branches that have more power on this front.

2/12/2013 2:36:29 PM

Hiro didn't even learn that we weren't a democracy until January 10 of this year, but he's ready to throw out the electoral college?

Quote :

"Hiro All American 2473 Posts user info edit post Quote : "We don't live in a democracy" Woah woah woah. Are you fucking kidding me? 1/10/2013 7:54:54 PM "

2/12/2013 2:44:35 PM

At least this idea is starting to get more traction.

"Modernize Registration and Require Early Voting Periods"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/voting-should-be-easy-modernize-registration.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

Quote :

"Congress should also require a minimum early voting period for all states of at least 10 days and two weekends, and it should set basic standards for the number of polling places and voting machines or scanners that are needed for every thousand residents."

2/12/2013 6:30:40 PM

Is the federal government going to pay for that?

[Edited on February 12, 2013 at 6:52 PM. Reason : does the bill say how it will be funded?]

2/12/2013 6:31:53 PM

I think making sure voting is done and done right is one of the few things people can agree on as something the government should be involved with and fund adequately.

2/12/2013 6:36:50 PM

Quote :

"To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;"

That's about the only thing I can think of that grants the authority to do so.

That has nothing to do with anything, of course, because we don't abide by the Constitution, but some would probably oppose it on those grounds.

2/12/2013 9:27:42 PM

Well the issue was raised at the SOTU mentioning a 102 year old who had to wait for hours on the anecdotal level, and saying the ideas for reform will be bipartisan including Romney's people at the policy level. Hopefully being staged that way raises the profile of this issue, without creating the the Obama is for it, we have to be reflexively against it response.

Quote :

"We should follow the example of a North Miami woman named Desiline Victor. When she arrived at her polling place, she was told the wait to vote might be six hours. And as time ticked by, her concern was not with her tired body or aching feet, but whether folks like her would get to have their say. Hour after hour, a throng of people stayed in line in support of her. Because Desiline is 102 years old. And they erupted in cheers when she finally put on a sticker that read “I Voted.”"

Quote :

"That includes our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote. When any Americans – no matter where they live or what their party – are denied that right simply because they can’t wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals. That’s why, tonight, I’m announcing a non-partisan commission to improve the voting experience in America. And I’m asking two long-time experts in the field, who’ve recently served as the top attorneys for my campaign and for Governor Romney’s campaign, to lead it. We can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it. And so does our democracy."

2/12/2013 10:57:17 PM