Now that
the mid-term election is mercifully over, I’m sure we’ll hear renewed calls
for election reform—especially from the losers.
While I agree some changes are warranted, those I’d support are aimed
at attacking election manipulation and skullduggery not enhancing it as did the
Campaign Finance Reform Bill. However,
since political elitists naturally prefer a system they can control, my ideas
will probably never be considered but I’ll suggest them anyway.
[I use
the word “attack” not “eliminate” skullduggery because when you have a
professional political class as we do, they’ll always find ways to manipulate,
get around or unashamedly break any law ever passed—elimination is
impossible.]
Without
exception, require proof of citizenship and eligibility before allowing
anyone to register and vote.
This may be an obvious no brainer to us but the unscrupulous don’t like
it because that would cut voting way down in several key segments of their
political constituency—illegals, felons and dead folks
Abolish
punch card ballots.
Dimpled ballots leave the election vulnerable to what we’ve already
seen—fraud and exploitation. We
should do away with those and adopt a universal system of optically scanned
ballots. We have that system in my
county and it works fine. It
combines electronic vote counting with paper ballots that can be used for any
required verification. There are no
hanging or dimpled marks or pregnant chads requiring divine revelation to
determine voter intent. Absentee
ballots should be similarly marked with ink—no punch cards and no internet
voting. A web based system wouldn’t allow hard copies to be
retained and only permits a more sophisticated kind of fraud; e-fraud.
Do
not call election results until all polls are closed.
This would greatly lessen media hype on election night and reduce the
arguments about who was discouraged from voting in the west because of early
calls made in the east.
Assign
Electoral College votes.
For presidential elections, I’d consider doing away with Electoral
College delegates but not the Electoral College system.
Eliminating the system itself would essentially disenfranchise most of
main stream America. Without the
Electoral College, a candidate would only have to win the few historically
liberal hotbeds of our major population centers to win the presidency.
The rest of America’s mostly conservative strongholds would become
inconsequential and that’s exactly why many liberals are suggesting
elimination of the Electoral College.
One
reason we have delegates is that in the 18th century the way to cast
an electoral vote was by the human hand in a central meeting place.
Not so today. The change I’d consider is assigning the state’s
electoral votes to the winning candidate after state certification of the vote
count was complete. This would
retain the Electoral College concept keeping all of America in the election
process and eliminate delegate tampering by political hacks. Politicians, on the losing side have been known to dig up
dirt on the delegates in order to persuade them to change their vote from
the election night winner to the loser as happened in 2000.
If we assigned the votes, we’d eliminate such persuasion
by removing the human targets. But never
remove the Electoral College process; that must stay.
Shorten
the election cycle.
Presidential candidates today are required to canvass the country for
months pandering to every little caucus, straw poll and primary just to generate
the momentum necessary to keep contributions flowing!
This takes time; time takes money and money takes contributors and large
contributors always come with quid pro quo
deals. Why not shorten the primary
and general election campaigns to a month each.
You could argue the exact length for these two cycles, but for now,
let’s focus on the concept rather than the details.
The
political parties could declare several candidates internally as they really do
now anyway and the primary campaigning would last about 4 weeks.
The country would vote on the same day in a national primary and be done
with it. No need to go after momentum
where the Iowa Caucus or New Hampshire primary sets the tone for subsequent
states because the sheeple have allowed media hype to win out over independent
thought. Best of all, there would be no yearlong campaign requiring
multi-millions of dollars, endless speeches and countless lies.
Let’s
establish the official start date of the campaign season as April 16th
– the day after tax day should have people in a proper mood to consider what
they really want in their next leaders.
Run debates and ads for a month with unlimited, but publicly revealed,
contributions to the candidates and hold a national primary in mid May—and do
it on a weekend to help those with jobs vote more easily.
The general election campaign would begin immediately after the primary
and go for about a month. The
general election would be held in June, again on a weekend, and a new set of
leaders sworn in on July 4th—what more appropriate date?
Such a
national election system would reduce the money required by shortening the
overall process and spare us from the torture of nonstop political rhetoric. In
fact, such a process might convince a better crop of folks to run if the race
didn’t consume their lives, honor and fortunes for over a year.
This
would limit transition time between administrations but folks could adapt. Since
work always expands to fill the time available, even a year of transition
wouldn’t be enough for some politicians.
Term
limit all elected officials to one and only one 6 year term.
With no
hope of re-election and no need for raising re-election money, politicians
couldn’t entrench themselves in power, corruption and influence peddling for
life so we just might be able to get some fresh, more decent and effective
leadership for a change…maybe.
Postscript:
At some point, we may hear calls for election reform tied to a
constitutional convention “…to make common sense reforms…for the children.”
Don’t buy into that! The day we
agree to allow official meddling with the entire constitution is the day
politicians begin officially meddling with our rights and dismantling the
constitution legally. The “modernization”
of the Bill of Rights to make it a “more
living, breathing” document would be the first “reform”
and the
concept of pre-eminence of the individual over the state would officially die…
“In the interest of society’s overall
welfare”… Yeah, right! So if what I’ve suggested gets tied to an
overarching constitutional convention, forget I ever said anything.
Just the
view from my saddle…
Contact
Colonel Dan: coloneldan@bellsouth.net