Election Reforms to Consider?

Perhaps there will be some good to come of this Presidential election since the wrong man is bound to be elected.

Perhaps our newly convened Congress will consider legislation to end voter fraud by creating uniform voter registration laws for the entire nation. For example, in Texas you don’t have to prove you are a citizen to vote, you just have to have a valid Texas driver’s license and one other form of identification. In some states like Pennsylvania, registration is even easier.

We need to have a national registry on a supercomputer that compiles every citizen who is or will be eligible to vote in an upcoming election. A list of ineligible voters (felons, people who have died, etc.) can be fed into the supercomputer on a daily basis so they can be purged from the active rolls.

The one-time validation process would be a one-time process and shouldn’t take long. To be validated by the supercomputer, one would have to submit his or her birth certificate, photo identification, signature and handwriting sample, thumbprint and a few questions about the family tree. The input could be done at local banks or at law enforcement branch offices.

Registration should be mandatory for every person who will be 21 years or older at the time of the next election. Not registering would carry a $100 per day fine for every day past due on his or her eligibility date. Pretend it’s the new draft without any marching orders.

When the person appears at the polls to vote, the supercomputer could call up the photo identification, take a picture, and run photo and signature scans to match the potential voter with file data. If no match occurred, the potential voter would be flagged for query on potential voting fraud.

Voter fraud should carry stiff fines (perhaps $10,000 per infraction) and lifetime loss of voting privileges, exclusion from any and all political parties, and exclusion from working in any candidate’s behalf. Political parties would be outlawed from trying to register voters since, by law, that would be a citizen’s responsibility.

On election days, voters would have to vote for a candidate or in the “none of the above” category for each race. The penalty for not voting would be an additional property assessment of 1% on their property tax or income tax (whichever is greater) that would be assigned to the national treasury.

As a corollary, after winnowing out primaries, campaigns by the two largest parties (those two parties with the most votes) could not start their campaigns until 90 days prior to the election. Candidates would be restricted to telling voters what they have done and what they would do if elected. They would not be allowed to talk about what their opposition has done or has not done. Finite advertising time and dollars would be paid by the government on an equal basis, although the campaigns could pick the media placement and times for each medium.

Any news and/or advertising medium using public airwaves (radio, television and internet) would be required to accept the government-set fees for advertising, Loss of commercial licensing would be the penalty for blatant fairness improprieties by their news organizations. The Supreme Court of the United States would rule on accusations. (CBS might think twice about its non-factual stories.)

On the other hand, no candidate who currently holds a public office could run without first resigning that office. That includes presidents, vice presidents, senators, representatives, governors, cabinet members, etc. Since the nation could not ask a sitting president to abandon his or her office to run again, extending the Presidency to one six-year term would be necessary. However, he or she would receive unlimited line-item veto power in his or her final two years to prevent “lame duckness.”

Obviously, there are holes in these premises but, in order to prevent an army of attorneys from deciding elections, these suggestions might be a start toward REAL election reform and the abolition of the electoral college.

 

Sadly, your observations probably are correct. However, as I said in my final graph, there are many holes in my suggested approach, but solutions must be found. All I offer are some starting points to consider.