Elections

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

This topic contains a variety of proposed election reforms.

Elections and referendums are the foundation of democracy because they enable the people to choose their leaders and representatives and approve (or reject) proposals, with the understanding that everyone consents to be governed by the outcome which is determined by a majority or super-majority of voters, even if they disagree with it. The legitimacy of government depends on the integrity of elections. The consequences of elections that are rigged, or perceived to be rigged, are the same as the consequences of a government that intentionally violates the constitution — the people will dissent and the government may face resistance, insurrection, or civil war.

Comparison to the United Nations:

Article 21.3 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”

However, elections can be operated in a way that subverts the will of the people. In the United States, the electoral college and “first past the post” voting can result in a winner that is not supported by a majority of the population. In contrast, ranked choice voting produces results that are supported by a majority of the population every time. Also, political party entanglement captures the electoral process for one or two dominant parties and prevents other parties from expanding their reach.

The following is a collection of proposals to maximize election integrity:

* Voting districts
* Voter eligibility
* Voter registration
* Representation in the legislature
* Voting districts and representation
* Constructive abstention
* Voting methods
* Ranked-choice voting
* Election immediacy
* Federal elections
* State elections
* Local elections
* Post-election challenges

Separate state elections from the party primary elections

In many states the “primary” elections to select from each party the candidates that will run for office in the state elections is actually part of the state election process. This needs to stop. Parties are, of course, free to select their candidates to promote in the state election, but their internal business of how to select candidates needs to remain an internal matter and the state needs to stay out of it. Each state needs to have laws on candidate eligibility and voting process and the parties should have nothing to do with that process other than promoting their own candidates. Citizens should not have to declare their party when they register to vote — that’s an artifact of the state being too involved in the party’s internal process. A citizen should be free to be a member of more than one political party and to vote in the internal processes of any party in which they are a member. That doesn’t make much sense for the two-party system of the United States, but that system is barely functional and has fostered a winner-take-all, us-versus-them mentality in the two parties that is unhealthy for democracy. When the parties are reformed to be single-issue parties, it makes a lot of sense for citizens to be members of multiple parties — they’ll pick the issues they are most concerned about and support those and be involved in those.

Prohibit informal polling at voting sites

News organizations love the attention they get when they publish updates on their estimates of who is winning a race. This news is not factual because it’s based on a sample of voters who are not obligated to even answer correctly about who they voted for. Furthermore, some people might see the poll results and mistake them for facts, which then causes confusion and distrust in people when the actual results are published and they don’t match people’s expectations from the estimates. some news organizations “call” the election and declare a winner before all the votes are counted and possibly before everyone even finished voting. Even worse, when a significant number of votes are sent by mail, they aren’t reflected at all in the polling site exit surveys, and if the people who vote by mail tend to favor different candidates than people who vote in person, possibly because of propaganda by one party that discourages voting by mail, the exit surveys will be even more wrong.

The voting is secret so asking someone how they voted is counter-productive to secrecy, and also exit polls can be used as a guise to identify people who voted a certain way and harass them later or intimidate them before the next election.

Finally, publishing estimates from exit surveys enables candidates to believe that they are winning and might cause them to try and disenfranchise voters for the other party, even calling for voting to stop while they’re ahead.

All these problems are caused or facilitated by the practices of surveying a sample of voters as they exit the voting stations and publishing those results as if they are facts and “calling” the election before it’s done.

The proposal is simple: prohibit the practice of publishing results of exit polls during the election, including “calling” the election result before the election results are published by the local government or voting district that collected them. The practice of conducting and publishing those results during the election interferes with the election itself and therefore is not peaceful.

However, the people do have an interest in knowing how things are going. So instead of surveying individual people as they leave the voting site, news organizations can instead collect the voting results from each voting district and publish their tally. Those results are facts and news organizations will then be reporting on the same numbers that higher levels of government (state and federal) will be seeing and also reporting and everything should match. This means that instead of people watching the news on election day for these reports, they’ll get the news the following day or as each voting district finishes counting everything it could be over the course of the next few days.

In small, local races where all votes are in person, it’s possible for voting districts to report the winners the same day and for the news organizations to report on this the same day.

Modern technology makes it possible for all eligible voters to vote on election day and for the results to be published the same day. However, this should not be a requirement because if there is a disruption, it must still be possible to conduct lawful elections without modern technology and to publish the results as soon as they are known. Every effort should be made to enable eligible voters to cast their votes on election day and to make the results known on the same day.

Election day

Elections are important and the people must have an opportunity to vote so election day must be considered a federal holiday. Any business or federal agency which requires employees to work on election day must limit work to no more than 4 hours from any person.

Transport crews or people deployed in military or civilian service can work a full day on election day but must register to vote remotely.

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