The United States is a democratic republic, but our elections are an absolute mess. In an ideal democracy (either direct or republic), as close to 100% of adult citizens should be voting in every election, and the results should be as representative as possible. Here are some ways to work towards that:
1. Automatic voter registration. All adult citizens should automatically be on the voter lists. This means no one is denied the right and responsibility to vote because they were unable to register on time.
2. Mail In Ballots should be automatic and available for all. (Mail In ballots allow for people with busy schedules who would struggle to get to voting places to vote, but also allows voters the time to fully research all of the candidates and issues at their own pace.)
3. Voting rights should not be denied to anyone based on criminal record. (Felons and inmates should be allowed to vote, as they are still citizens. Especially given issues of racial inequality within the criminal justice system AND how things like drug laws are inconsistent across the states, it is not reasonable to deny this right and responsibility from people with criminal backgrounds.)
4. Voting should be obligatory. (While filing out a ballot with “abstain” on it will remain legal and allowable, a ballot MUST be submitted or else is punishable by a fine proportional to the person’s income. This encourages participation and awareness in elections, and also legally obligates the government to take further action to make voting universally available.)
5. Switch to either Ranked Voting systems (For elections with only 1 open seat) or Party Proportional Voting (For elections with multiple open seats) to promote more representative results and empower voting for 3rd party candidates.
6. Revoke Citizens United and limit campaign spending.
7. For Presidential Elections, eliminate the Electoral College and move to a Ranked Voting System. (The Electoral College means that only the large cities in a few swing states states have real voting power in Presidential Elections, disincentives candidates from visiting the “safe” states, gives some citizens votes more power than others, erases the votes of political minorities within states, and puts us at risk of having a winner that is not representative of the majority of voters, which has happened 5 times.)
8. Extend the voting period of elections over several days, including at least 1 federal holiday. (This is less important if universal mail in ballots are enacted, but is a good alternative, allowing more people to be able to get to a polling place.)
9. Phase out all electronic ballot machines and move back to paper based voting. (Electronic ballot machines have been shown to be less reliable and more prone to manipulation.)
10. Fixing heavily gerrymandered districts. (Depending on how an implementation of Party Proportional Voting was implemented, the need for specific districts could be phased out, but should they remain, all voting districts would need non-partisan review at least once a decade to ensure gerrymandering wasn’t at work.)
I’m for all of this except making the fine proportional to income. The paperwork involved in demonstrating your income is complex, some people are in situations where their income fluctuates so wildly that you can’t go on the basis of the last tax report they filed, and it’s unnecessary anyway because it’s generally only poor people that find themselves unable to vote or uninvolved with voting. Rich people know damn well that they need to vote in order to preserve the system that makes them rich.
I had imagined that information coming from the previous year’s tax filing. But I could see the argument in just making it a small flat fine.
Fines only work if they’re proportional to income, otherwise they just make it “Something legal if you’re rich, and illegal if you’re poor”
To be fair, Im less concerned with encouraging rich people to vote more than I am with increasing voter turn out for the poor.
I know fines are a controversial solution to that. But it can be an effective one. (I think the fine in Australia is like…around $20.)
This is what I was thinking. When the behavior in question that you want to discourage is already something that the rich almost never do, and where the country might end up being a better place if they didn’t do it, I don’t see much point to implementing proportional fines. And there are a lot of people in today’s economy who were doing well last year and this year they’re unemployed or flipping burgers, and have a very, very different income than they did on their last tax filing. So unless the fine is paid with the tax filing it’s more or less very difficult to make sure the proportional fine is actually fair and using current income.
I’m in favor of all of this but we must implement it in a careful order. Specifically, mandatory voting (enforced via fines or not) must be the last thing on this list that is enacted. If it were the first thing, the potential for abuse (e.g., telling people they aren’t registered, then magically ‘finding’ their records on election day (or discovering that actually they’re supposed to go to y precinct instead of x location, or ensuring that there are insufficient balloting machines in poor areas and so on), then fining them for failing to cast a ballot) is super high.
My concern is with #4.
Making voting mandatory will not engage the apathetic. They won’t suddenly care and do research and make an informed choice. They’ll tick a box and go about their day (probably pissed that they have to take the time to do it in the first place), and that is a terrifying prospect. Am I wrong or…
10 Election Reform Policies that anyone who cares about the democratic process really should support.
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