Like many of you, the first thing I woke up to this morning was "Kerry calls Bush to concede". Definitely
NOT the way to start a day.
We need to address one of the issues that plague our voting -- NO PAPER TRAIL. If we're going to lose, at least I want to lose without the whiff of illegitimacy. In 2006, there will be even more electronic voting, and the trend will only continue. We need to start dealing with this NOW.
Some people here talk about open source voting systems, others talk about voter-verified, still others advocate a return to paper ballots. Here is my two cents:
No one will support a return to paper ballots unless massive fraud is discovered in an election. and without a paper trail, no one can discover fraud.
We need to start from the ground up and get states across this nation to use a uniform method to vote, or at least a uniform method for vote verification.
Proposal: Create a web clearinghouse from which we start a campaign to put initiatives on any state ballot we can. What does it take to put an initiative on your state ballot? A petition? How many signatures? Send in the information, and it will determine whether it is within reach for 2006 to put such an initiative/proposition on the ballot.
Create a bipartisan effort to "count every vote". At the very least, we can get the meme out there and propagated at the ground level that THIS IS A GOOD THING to have every vote counted. The Republicans love to say that they want to see every vote counted, so they would not oppose this publicly, but they'll stop at nothing to limit vote count. If we can reform the structure of vote verification, it will be much harder for them to do this, or at least close one door for them to do so.
Thoughts?