Voting

The Left Says

Everyone’s voice needs to be heard. Punitive voter registration laws silence and disenfranchise voters. Hyper-partisan redistricting efforts silence and disenfranchise voters. Big money decides elections, not people, issues, and candidates. Our democracy should not be for sale!

The Right Says

Voter fraud is a real problem. I have to show ID to cash a check, buy a beer, or pick up my kid at school. Why is it so unreasonable to show an ID at the polls to elect our representatives in government? The other side complains about money in politics, but Free Speech means that people get to say what they want, as often as they want, as loudly as they want… Too bad, if you don’t like the message. You don’t have an unalienable right to not be offended.

The Solution

Election fraud or tampering become treasonous offenses. The electoral college is archaic, but is easily fixed if its electors are chosen by popular vote in each congressional district (not in winner-take-all state-wide elections). Voting should be online, with two-factor authentication (and before you start worrying about hacking, remember that we bank online just fine, and election fraud & tampering would now be treason).

Ignore all exit polls (we should forbid them, but that doesn’t sit well with the 1st amendment). Use Ranked-Choice Voting¹ in all elections (a.k.a. “instant run-off,” where voters rank as many candidates as they want, in preferential order). This leads to coalitions rather than polarization.

Have voting districts that are drawn by independent civil servants (with public input), based on criteria that include compactness, natural & political boundaries (but not competitiveness). An easy analogue would be to use school districts, because they are drawn without partisan considerations, generally.

Finally, we should know who is spending all the money – we don’t want China secretly funding someone’s campaign. Probably, we should ban foreign money in our elections, but at the very least, we should assert that the right to free speech is not the right to anonymous free speech. …much of this is covered in the American Anti-Corruption Act. So maybe just start by passing that.

¹ Ranked-Choice Voting at Ballotpedia.