 Elections (as a concept): There are ways in which they Should Be Done
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Nov. 7th, 2012 @ 10:41 am 
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(As an aside: I really haven't been posting much, as well as failing utterly at keeping up with my reading list. I can tell in part because my new computer is a good few weeks old now, at least, and I still didn't have a bookmark for the Dreamwidth update page.)
So, I've been following the US election closely-ish, because American politics have an impact on my own country. In retrospect, we, as a planetary community, shouldn't have let America become the only superpower, and we shouldn't have let their economy become as connected to everyone else's as it is... but at the time, how could we know that? America used to be non-interventionist in matters outside its own borders very much to a fault, and after the Great Depression, their economy was well-regulated. There was no way we could have anticipated the modern Republican Party, we just couldn't.
And yet, the wingnuts of the so-called GOP (and why is it called that, seriously? It's the younger of the two main parties in American politics. WTF, America?) are the biggest current threat to my country's economy.
Still, along the way I've noticed a few things that are just, regardless of your political affiliation, objectively wrong about how some countries run elections.
Bipartisan Election Officiation
No. Just no. Do you know what the bodies that organise and run your actual elections should be? Non-partisan. Partisan politics has no place, at all, in the mechanics of the electoral process.
Voting Machines
The idea of voting machines still confuses me, frankly, because what is this, I don't even, especially when it comes to the existence of voting machines that don't leave a paper trail at all. Voting machines that can "need recalibration" because they miscount votes, voting machines that can just be hacked to lie outright - do you even care about your election being fair, at that point?
Ballots should be cast on paper. Paper ballots should then be counted by people. With other people watching. If you have multiple questions being decided, you have a separate slip of paper for each question, colour-coded, and then you sort each stack by how people voted, and it's not that difficult. And that way, if anyone is unsure about the accuracy of the vote count, you know what you can do? Count them again!
And you avoid the sub-issue, which is:
Privately-Owned Voting Machines
Words can not express my shock and confusion when someone mentioned to me that Mitt Romney's son was, via Bain Capital, buying voting machines in swing states.
How could such a thing even be possible? Something which is a part of the very important process by which your government is selected should not only be unable to be owned by someone with partisan interest in the result, it shouldn't be able to be privately owned BY ANYONE. The infrastructure of your elections should be owned by your NON-PARTISAN electoral commission-type body.
Voting on a Weekday
If you are going to hold your election on a weekday, it should be a public holiday. Voting should be something *everyone* can find time to do.
And finally...
A Personal, Less Objectively True Opinion
If you didn't vote in your country's election, and you could have, don't you dare express any kind of complaint about the government. Shut up until you've voted, because if you didn't vote, you didn't do your most basic, most elementary civic duty. Which means civic society owes you nothing. You blew off your chance to participate in governance, and therefore you ditched your right to object to how that governance proceeds. If you could have voted and didn't, just sit there and take it, whatever happens, because you sat there and let it happen, so just. shut. up.
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November 7th, 2012 08:07 am (UTC) |
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I kind of imagine that if Australia held elections on a public holiday, everyone - everyone - would vote early and go away for the actual public holiday.
I wonder if it's even possible for the Americans to fix their voting system. I understand each state decides how voting is done for that state. How would anyone ever get them to agree when some of them seem to disagree with federal management of things on principle.
Though I'm with you. I like our system. At least it wants us to vote.
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