Thank god election day is here. I'm so tired of politics and the election right now. Specifically the massive stupidity with which we conduct most of it. Leaving, for now, the inherent stupidity of a 3-year election cycle, which leaves our politicians somewhat less time to focus on actually governing than I think most people are willing to admit, for the best, greatest, most compelling, handsome and intelligent democracy that has ever, or will ever exist, we are curiously poor at the thing central to all of it: counting the damn votes. David Frum, of George W. Bush speech-writng fame agrees, we do not proceed with our elections in a robust or trust-worthy manner. And as nostalgic as it can be to wistfully deify our messy, chaotic, glorious democracy we may want to consider whether it's actually necessary that the act of voting and counting votes be the subject of too much messiness and chaos. In fact, there's no reason at all, that it can't be extremely easy, transparent, fair and tamper-proof for every county in this country.
I don't know why we wouldn't want every county, both rich and poor, to have access to safe, expedient, reliable voting. I know we're allergic to taking ideas from other countries (we're the best! we have nothing to learn from anyone!), but other modern countries have managed to bring reliable, trusted voting systems to their citizens and we, at the very least, could start there. But the way we're currently doing things, is actively fueling our partisan woes, and it flat out doesn't need to. We have officials in some counties trying to extend voting hours in republican districts, and limit them in "urban" ones. We have absentee ballot shenanigans. And widespread distrust on both sides that voting is being handled fairly and accurately. There's no reason to leave vote counting to highly partisan elected officials, and every reason to think that's a terrible idea (in that highly partisan officials are increasingly showing themselves unable to put partisanship aside in the performance of what should be non-partisan duties).
Look, voting is something that should be simple, and that fact that it isn't implies that we are dangerously close to being so disfunctionally partisan that we can't agree that one plus one equals 2 anymore. That's a problem. Here's the simple, for the love of god, solution to all of this. If we can agree that all citizens should have the right to vote, and that we should minimize any roadblock that keeps voting from being free and easy, and that partisan elected officials should not be able to use their power to corrupt the vote counting in their party's favor, then we HAVE to do the following to make sure that's true:
1. No poll taxes. Voter ID of some sort is a fine anti-fraud device, but ONLY if a legal voter ID is absolutely free and relatively quick to obtain. Yes, people should be able to verify they are who they say they are, NO this should not be an expensive or multi-week process. Not if we're making it the basis of tamper-proof voting.
2. Standardized election counting machines/systems. There's no reason people in poor counties should risk not being able to vote because the county is too poor to afford voting machines that work, or the voting machines are so broken that votes are hard to even read. There's also no reason to leave the specific methods of vote counting to the whims of local officials, who may or may not be capable of putting their partisanship aside and count the votes accurately. Either give the counties guidelines, and the funding to meet them (and the oversight to make sure it's followed), or just federalize the whole damn thing.
3. Provide a transparent system of checks and balances (this would be extremely necessary if we federalized the system). All parties should be able to inspect the voting machinery, and the process of voting from start to finish should be entirely transparent. If people insist on using electronic voting machines, THEY must have a paper trail, and publicly available computer code to meet this standard. Any code-literate citizen should be able to read voting machine code to make sure it's fair, and parties should be able to check that the code on each machine matches the code example for each machine that has been released by the manufacturer. There's no national security reason any part of the voting process, except for the identity behind each individual vote of course, should be secret, and anyone wanting to keep any part of the process secret, should be viewed with immediate and deep suspicion. Your vote should be secret, the counting of it should not be.
4. Make voting day a holiday. No one should be unable to vote because of a work shift. Or a double-work shift. Or even to leave a voting line because they have to get to work. Everyone gets to vote. And election day, the day most fundamental to our democracy, has ample reason to be a holiday anyway. Celebrate the vote by making it easy for everyone to vote.
These things aren't hard to do. The fact that we haven't done them yet indicates that the people in charge either don't think there's a problem or don't think confidence in the voting system is a high priority. We should disabuse them of that notion. And if we're really at the point where we can't agree that 1 + 1 = 2 when counting votes, then the greatest, best most heavenly-scented democracy that God has ever put on this earth is kind of in trouble, don't you think? We seem to have a great deal of trouble agreeing on objective reality at all any more in this country. I humbly submit that voting reform that generates confidence in objective reality and our ability to count would be a great start to turning that around.
No comments:
Post a Comment