The world I imagine: Making votes count

By DEBBIE JORDAN
July 14, 2004

The best thing that can be said about American politics in the last couple of months of 2000 is that it provided a perfect example of how not to run an election!
So far in this series I've tried to offer solutions without focusing too much on the problems. On this subject, however, I'm dangerously close to blowing my-admittedly uncustomary-ladylike demeanor. Though I try to avoid outright partisanship, I must emphasize that this country must take steps to establish a truly democratic electoral system so that nothing like that ever happens again.

Of course, I know that won't happen soon . . . at least not until the powers that be can possibly imagine a world where every vote counts!

The first thing that must be done to guarantee everyone their right to vote is to change the timing of elections. Limiting them to 12 hours, with general elections held on a single weekday in November, when weather and/or work keep many voters away from the polls, was always a bad idea.

The general election must be moved to a time of year when the weather is milder, such as early October or late September, and elections must be held when more working people can get to the polls, such as a Saturday or a Sunday. The length of time for voting must also be expanded to at least 24 hours, or even better, 24-hour access to the polls over a liberal week-end, say, Friday morning to sometime Monday. In fact, an entire week would be best to guarantee that people who work odd days or shifts can exercise their rightful access to the voting booth.

Of course, in the world I imagine, those ubiquitous community centers in every neighborhood would be ideal polling places, but until that happens, most of my ideas on this subject would work now with little trouble-and the will to improve the situation for all voters.

The only way to guarantee that all votes are counted accurately is to implement a verifiable electronic voting system. While lawmakers and judges debate the question of whether voting machines should have a paper receipt, I suggest they take it a step farther and set up a system that will guarantee that no candidate will ever have to request a recount again.

Electronic touch machines should be installed in every polling place in the entire country, along with printers that produce two hard copies for every vote cast. The voter would keep one copy, and the other would go to a data-entry operator who would key these votes into a different system. With votes recorded in two separate systems, totals can be run on an hourly basis to make sure the two records balance. Any time a conflict arises, the paper tickets can be the final authority for balancing a batch of votes.

Incidentally, internet voting could be implemented the same way. Voters would print a copy at a web page which clearly instructs them to do so, a printer at the server end would automatically print copies as votes come in, and the votes would be keyed into the second system for the verifying balance.

To assure accuracy, each system could be operated by members of a different political party and monitored by representatives from each party, as long as those political divisions exist. This balanced approach would guarantee that no one could get away with programming a system to rig an election, as has been suspected with the current front-runner in the electronic voting-machine race. The point of this dual-record plan is to provide a fail-safe system and prevent errors from ever cropping up again.

Finally, this country must abolish the anti-democratic institution known as the Electoral College. Traditionalists consider anything the Founding Fathers did to be sacrosanct, but I must remind them that this wrinkle was devised as part of a nascent system that already denied suffrage to most citizens to prevent the working class from gaining too much political power over wealthy white male landowners.

While the question of the fairness of the College, if not its constitutionality, has long been discussed, the principle of "one man, one vote" was firmly established as a legal precedent when Jimmy Carter was first elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1962, a landmark decision that President Carter details in his book, "Turning Point."

While the Electoral College doesn't give a single vote to each district, as did the old "county unit" system, it is so unbalanced that its legal demise should be a foregone conclusion-if only someone would bring the question up before the legislature or the courts. Then, and only then, would Americans be able to elect a president democratically, with no fear of being outvoted by this specter of the past!

These ideas are directed toward the election process itself, but the election of 2000 also shed a harsh light on several of the old "dirty" tricks that are used to keep many minority voters from casting their votes. In my next article, I'll discuss those problems and offer some solutions. Stay tuned!