This diary is in response to gmoke's
Rigging the 2008 Election. Having read her/his list, I'm largely in agreement. Definitely in the spirit, if not all the details.
Below is my list of election reform proposals, in brief. I've been updating it as I learn more.
Kick it -->
This is my personal list. (Originally posted on
WashBlog.)
Our group doesn't have any official positions as of yet. Maybe soon. Though I would expect most Dems and progressives to more or less support the following.
1. All software used in elections is open for inspection by the public, on demand. We have a current rule (vs law) that vendor supplied software be held in escrow, which is ignored.
2. No conflict of interest between election officials and political campaigns, a la Ken Blackwell and Kathleen Harris. I don't know how to phrase this; hopefully someone can chime in.
3. Public financing of all campaigns. Like the proposals floated by Fair Elections and Washington Public Campaigns. Public finance is optional for candidates. Rules in place to prevent abuse.
4. Publicly "owned" campaign debates. Open to all parties.
5. No corporate contributions to campaigns, a la Texas (those pesky laws Tom Delay violated).
6. Open up the ballot to third party candidates.
7. Eliminate "first past the post" (aka "Winner Takes All") elections. (Steven Hill, of FairVote fame, wrote the book "Fixing Elections", which has the best overview I've read, even if it's a bit wordy.)
7a) Replace with IRV for executive races. Alternately, I'd support Fusion Voting.
7b) Replace with IRV + proportional representation for city councils, House delegation, and other multi-seat positions. Alternately, I'd support "fair redistricting" to eliminate gerrymandering and incumbency. (British Columbia is experimenting with citizen designed districts which maximize competitiveness.)
8. Re-enfranchise ex-felons. I favor the Vermont model, where felons retain their voting rights, even while incarcerated. But would settle for Oregon model, where felons have their rights automatically restored on release from incarceration.
9. Restore fairness doctrine, where all candidates and issues have equal time on our media.
10. Popular election of President (eliminating Electorial College).
11. King County Auditor is an elected position. Directly responsible for elections. Like all our other counties. I've heard arguments both ways about partisan vs non-partisan position. I don't have a strong opinion, but would probably lean towards partisan, mostly because I don't believe anyone is non-partisan and would rather have it out in the open.
12. I am deeply sympathetic to all calls for paper ballots manually counted. Yes, all elections can be rigged, paper or not. Duh. But paper ballots counted by mutually suspicious antagonists is about the best possible system (to the best of my knowledge). Just like Canada does it. Unfortunately, Canada's elections are easier to count manually than ours. That's a design problem, easily solved. But it'll take time to get there.
13. Against the privatization of our elections. Others make this point a lot more eloquently than me. Paul Lehto (his lawsuit against Sequoia Voting Systems), Thom Hartmann, and many others pounded on this theme at the National Summit to Save Our Elections last year.
14. More or less against vote by mail, which is the mandatory use of 100% mail ballots. The idea is to increase election integrity, not decrease it. All of the arguments in support are actually wrong (e.g. it's not cheaper, it doesn't increase turnout, it's a whole lot more complex). The worse bit is the experience of the U.K., who have done vote by mail the longest: vote by mail (aka postal voting) leads to a long-term decline in voter participation.
Okay. That's my current list. Have at it.
Update: Added points 13 and 14.