Election Reform -- We can do it

[gordontron]

Why wait for the legislature to go through their long and inefective review process. The "Election Reform Task Force" http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/ertf.aspx really seemed to do very little. Even if they do decide how to prevent a repeat of the last governers race we still need more and stronger reform for the federal level.

This idea was sprung from this thread by the way:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2347538

I thought we should just kick around the idea here on this forum and see if its wise to do at all.


The basic ideas are federal not state. That is one issue that I am still unsure about. Should this resolution just be federal? Or should proportional representation carry over into the local voting systems?:

The following is a comprehensive election reform platform likely to ensure conclusive election results and create a basis for confidence in U.S. federal elections:

1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
3) a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission, and
4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and credentialed members of the media, and
6) equal time provisions to be restored by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a non-partisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
8) preferential voting and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections;

Don't those suggestions sound like good ideas to you as well? If not we don't have to carbon copy that version (it was passed in Arcata, California), which I am also open to.


Here is the DU members blog and information about this effort:
Voter Confidence Resolution http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html

Guide To The Voter Confidence Resolution (brief overview of talking points and strategy)
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/06/guide-to-voter-confidence-resolution.html

Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution (the big picture)
http://tinyurl.com/au2pj

So should we as Seattle's DUers get a ball rolling on this? It seems like we would have enough support from liberals and we could probably get the green party and the very active libertarians involved as well. :thumbsup:


-Gordon

[GuvWurld]

1. Hey Washington

I'm here to help.

[gordontron]

2. thanks for offering help guvwurld

I'm not sure how much you can do down in California. I am kind of disappointed by the lack of replys. It seems like election reform is ranted and raved about all over the DU, but when push comes to shove no body cares. Please prove me wrong, and if not I will have to start mentioning names :evilgrin:

seriously even if you don't care about this issue just post saying that it is not your priority, because at the moment drinking in greenlake seems to be a bigger issue.

yarrrrrrrr

-Gordon

[eridani]

3. Heads up on bad legislation

Please call your legislator and tell them that House Bill 2479 and
Senate Bill 6242 are bad legislation. These bills are the same bill.
SB-6242 will be heard by Senate Gov. Ops and Elections Committee on
1-12 at 0800. The House bill is scheduled to be heard on 1-13 at 0800.
Note that these dates are not cast in stone so they could change.

Why are these bad bills? If this bill was the law now King,
Klickitat, Chelan, and San Juan Counties would all have Diebold TSx
DREs in use in elections. The only thing that stopped the Diebold
machine from being certified last July is that it hadn't been used in
another state. Since then the machine was denied certification in
California because of 30% failures in testing in a batch test. It has
now been denied certification because of possibly banned software on
their memory cards.

The SoS wants to remove the requirement that a voting system must be
tested, certified and used in another state. They claim it is a
hurdle to state certification that they should not have to go over. I
think it is a hurdle to stop them from making mistakes.

These bills are titled: Ensuring equipment accessibility for voters
with visual impairments.

The title of these bills and Sec. 4 of the bills violate federal law
because they single out blind and visually impaired voters from the
rest of the disabled community and from the rest of the voters. HAVA
specifies that ALL disabled voters who are able to vote must be
allowed to vote the same as all other voters.

This bill also is requesting a 20 day period of early voting for
blind and visually impaired voters; only. Early voting by it's nature
is contrary to the state constitution because there is no secret
ballot. All ballots in early voting can be tied directly back to the
person who cast that ballot.

Please call your legislators and tell them to kill this legislation
before it gets out of committee.

John Gideon
Executive Director www.votersunite.org and
Information Manager www.votetrustusa.org

[gordontron]

5. thanks

I will definately drop my reps a line.

[gordontron]

7. I actually sent an email

saying:

"House Bill 2479 and Senate Bill 6242 are bad legislation. They will put our election system at the mercy of corporations rather than the people. The reason states like California have been denying diebold a foothold in their election system is because the technology is flawed. In Florida the machines FAILED a hacking test. Using a backdoor process the outcome of a mock election was able to be reversed with relative ease. Furthermore the software is not in the public domain and given that the leadership of the company contributes heavily to republicans and the Bush administration this is very worrying. Please consider more common sense solutions like

1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
3) a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission, and
4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and credentialed members of the media, and
6) equal time provisions to be restored by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a non-partisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
8) preferential voting and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections;

thank you"

[eridani]

4. Join this Yahoo group to get started

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wa-fairelections/

[gordontron]

6. ok done

I applied for a spot in the group, I hope a lot of other DUers join this group too...

[Western WA]

8. Interesting ideas

8) preferential voting and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections;

^^Would this mean getting rid of the electoral college?

And how about another one: Making sure all voters have photo ID? This would greatly help to minimize fraud and illegal voting.

How would your first suggestion work?

WW

[gordontron]

9. hope this helps:

There are two different ways of voting for the president that I support:


1)this option would do away with the electoral college: Preferential voting would allow it so that you could vote for a minor candidate without fear of a "spoiler" vote. It basically asks you to rank your first and second choice. The election officials then, depending on the specific process, count the votes in a new way. For instance here is Australia's way:

# the counting of first preference votes, also known as the "primary vote", takes place first. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of primary votes, then the candidate with the least number of votes is "eliminated" from the count.

# the ballot papers of the eliminated candidate are examined and re-allocated among the remaining candidates according to the number "2", or "second preference" votes.

#if no candidate has yet secured an absolute majority of the vote, then the next candidate with the least number of primary votes is eliminated. This preference allocation continues until there is a candidate with an absolute majority. Where a second preference is expressed for a candidate who has already been eliminated, the voter's third or subsequent preferences are used.

http://www.australianpolitics.com/voting/systems/preferential.shtml


2)The other option for the presidency and for fixing, rather than destroying, the electoral college is for proportional electoral college voting. That is different from normal proportional representation, which is a party receives 52% of the votes for the senate so they get 52 seats. This on the other hand would look at each states "electors" that go the the electoral college, and divvy them up by proportional representation.

These two ideas are mutually exclusive as far as I can see, so if we are going to keep the electoral college we should use the second option, and if we are going to scrap it we should use the first option.

========================================================================
Your second question about "voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain." Behind the screen that basically means "screw Diebold" we are going to run our own elections. If there is one thing that our country shouldn't allow in private hands it is the election system. This means keeping the software used for electronic voting machines to be open source so that vote stealing is minimized. It also means counting the votes in a way that doesn't give the private sector very much power.

hope that answered your question and please join the yahoo group

:hi: cheers,

-G