Electoral Reform — Reviving Democracy Depends on It
Democracy in America is pure fantasy. Electoral fraud is Exhibit A. Reviving the republic starts off with reforming how we elect public officials. Short of that, darker days are ahead. Lots of ideas are around, and here's a few:
- enfranchise all US citizens automatically at birth (like in Venezuela) under one uniform national law for all elections — federal, state and local; do it by constitutional amendment if necessary;
- affirm one national minimum voting age; under the 26th Amendment it's 18, but states have latitude to lower it;
- remove all prohibitions against voting, including for ex-felons and current inmates, most of whom are imprisoned for non-violent offenses such as illicit drug possession (the US is the only democracy that denies ex-felons the right to vote; overall it's in the bottom rankings of world electoral democracy and with good reason);
- de-privatize elections; let only (federal, state and local) unelected civil servants run them under a nonpartisan election commission; keep politicians and business interests out of them;
- repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and expose its scheme to let private corporations run elections using easily rigged touchscreen electronic voting machines;
- prohibit electronic voting; mandate hand-counted (and easily verifiable) paper ballots for all elections — federal, state and local; by constitutional amendment if necessary to encompass other reform provisions;
- end the Electoral College for presidential elections — again by constitutional amendment; democracy means rule by the people; elections should be solely by popular vote;
- adopt proportionally representative governance in place of winner-take-all;
- move to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) under which voters rank candidates by order of preference; as many or as few as they wish with lower ranking ones not counting against higher ones; then count first choices; candidates with a majority of them win; otherwise, candidates with the fewest first choices are eliminated; votes for them then go for voters' second choices; the process continues until one candidate gets a majority and wins, and there's no need for expensive and time-consuming second rounds when they're held;
- publicly fund elections and prohibit all private contributions; democracy can't work based on one dollar equals one vote;
- prohibit paid political advertising; require all broadcasters to allocate enough free time to all candidates ahead of elections as a requirement for using the public airwaves; begin weeks, not months, ahead of election day;
- prohibit computerized voter registries to eliminate the possibility of mysterious purging;
- prohibit gerrymandering practices; allow only decennial redistricting to account for population changes, not to work for partisan advantage or to favor incumbents;
- publicly fund independent exit polling and keep commercial interests out of it; allow no results to be released until all polling stations are closed nationwide;
- let international and independent observers monitor polling sites;
- make election day a federal holiday and require employers to allow enough time to vote with no docking of pay to do it.
These and other reforms will go a long way toward fixing a broken system. Rigged for the powerful, and returning the most fundamental of all democratic rights to the people — where it belongs. Short of that, darker times are ahead, as if they're not bad enough already.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen AT sbcglobal DOT net. Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.