I was reading
georgia 10's excellent and constructive suggestions for electoral reform in the US, and I added this :
- First, there are existing international guidelines for clean, fair democratic elections, but - beyond that :
- India has done an astounding job of wiring itself up with a voting system that can accomodate it's 670 million voters.
How ? - a simple, cheap PCs running open source voting software. This approach - and such machines ( US $230 each vs. $3300 for the comparable Diebold machine ) can be adapted for the US and - provided that the system can be made secure - the entire US could be fitted with a uniform, open-sourced voting system for less than US $2 billion ( calculating quite liberally )... AND - there's more ! Yes, American Democracy ! Order now and you can get not just the Ginsu knives and the Ronco food processor with 97 different attachments, but.....( WAY more inside - woo woo! )
Seriously though - here's the expanded version. Scroll down for "Rebuilding US voting system, trusty, cheap, and tasty too!" :
Why not look - besides to the electoral practices of other Democracies - to the evolving international guidelines for Democratic elections ? There are, indeed, general guidelines that have been developed ( hint - the US doesn't meet them ) that would be very useful in the formulation of a better US system.
See : the OSCE and also The Institute For Democracy and Electoral Assistance,
Especially this ( Pdf ) : "International Electoral Standards: Guidelines for reviewing the legal framework of elections - This book sets out the basic legal components governing elections for the purpose of reviewing, drafting or amending electoral legislation.These Guidelines are an attempt at distilling such electoral standards as a means of contributing to uniformity, reliability, consistency, accuracy as well as professionalism in elections."
Also, INDIA ! has developed it's own open-source voting software that runs on a PC. No paper trail, but India's voting machines cost less than 1/10 the price of Diebold machines, so if they could be equipped with some sort of strong-encryption verification software, the US could retool it's whole darned voting system for...... let's see : one machine per 100 voters. How many voters ? Well, 100 % or eligible voters is about 200 million. best to build in some over-capacity to prevent lines and minimize the hassle. So :
$230 US (cost of indian made voting machine)
2,000,000 - machines necessary for average 1/100 machine to voter ratio.
$460,000,000 - total cost for all the voting machines, less the cost of encryption software and ancillary expenses.
US $1 Billion should do it. But, let's be liberal, eh ?
So : US $2 Billion, federally funded, saves American democracy : Pretty cheap, I'd say.
"Rebuilding US voting system, cheap, fun and tasty too!"
Now, here's and idea for a cheap, mostly low tech and very secure system that should be quite bulletproof. ( 'course, the Canadian paper way is great too, but American's love gadgetry, so..... )
First of all - it's not even NECESSARY to buy voting machine PC's from India, when simple generational succession could easily provide 2 million used PC's - that would otherwise go into LANDFILLS, or get sent to the Third World to be scavenged for precious metals ( a toxic process ). Voting machines can run on 300 mhz PC's with 64 mb's of RAM just fine - if the OS is lean ( and why wouldn't it be ? ) :
American THROW AWAY enough working PC's to fully equip the nation with more than enough machines for a standardized voting system by 2002. For free ( mostly ).
We can send tall those funky Diebold and ES&S machines off for scrap, or just load them into barges and tow the barges out into the Bermuda Triangle, to wait there until a hurricane or freak wave sends them to the bottom of the sea.
End of THAT problem. Moving right along....
These freebie machines needn't run on funky Windows. Linux will do just fine, and I'm sure the computer security community can design or modify the appropriate interface, bulletproof firewalls, and strong encryption technology to safeguard against most hacking attempts. Open source - again - is the most robust.
BUT..... people also like paper - something tangible that they can take home. So here's my idea :
- Voter shows up, at polling place, w/driver's license, and maybe one other piece of ID ( not, say, 13 ). Voter can vote from anywhere, and all adults of legal age can vote once.
- Voter makes choices and then gets a printed receipt which serves - for the purposes of a recount - as a legal ballot. The receipt also has an alphanumeric password key or - maybe - some sort of strong encryption key that can be printed ( I hope I haven't showcased my tech-idiocy there ). That receipt - signed by the voter - is then scanned back into the voting computer and the voter's choices are then sent - via strong encryption - in triplicate to three different vote tabulation centers run - respectively - by the Democrats, the Republicans, and the UN ( maybe we could add another center overseen by the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Billy Graham, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer ). For extra points and fun, those central tabulating centers can run on different OS's - Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Unix - and they will each serve as a check against the others, to prevent tampering with any one of those four master databases.
If - time come to tabulate final results - the 4 databases don't agree within a certain narrow margin, then a recount is pretty simple. Also - the voter's key enables that person to check to make sure that the data center's recorded results are as intended and - if not - the match between the paper ballot receipt and the E-version copies allows the voter to rectify the mistake - to bring the database record into accord with what the paper ballot receipt recorded as the voter's choice.
Pretty good, huh ? I baked it myself - maybe a little too much butter and egg, yeah, but not bad for a first try at saving democracy.
Also - to incentivize voters to actually go to the polls - we could enlist participating restaurants and fast food chains to provide free food coupons for voters, for burgers, fries, pizza, and healthy veggie snacks for the healthful crowd, as they left the polls. Burger King and McD's would surely do it, and if they did it, well...... everybody would get on board and so all the voters would go home happy in their secure, low tech (mostly) voting franchise, to eat their tasty snacks and watch the results on TV.