Reinventing voting

Recently, as a fun little exercise to pass the time, I wondered how would I – if I magically had the power – change the way we vote here in the US.  Now you could say this was a pointless exercise, but thinking of alternative voting styles could lead to story ideas which, honestly, I have too many as it is but I can’t say no to more, but more importantly it can make me wonder how could we go from what we currently have to this “better” system?

First off, I would make some no-brainer changes.  I’d get rid of the Electoral College, I’d make some standardized methods for drawing districts to try to do away with gerrymandering, and I’d make Election Day a holiday.  I’d also introduce ranked choice voting.  I think a lot of our political problems stem from being stuck with a two party system, and ranked choice would let us explore other, better, options.  Another thing I’d do is make some standardized set of rules for polling places: if a population exceeds X, you either have to open another polling place, or have the one polling place open for so many days before the election.  The goal would be to have the time from showing up at the polling place, checking in, and voting to be measured in minutes, not hours.  Worst case scenario, maybe half-an-hour. 

Another change I’d make would be automatic registration.  Once you turn eighteen, you’re a voter.  Speaking of registration, for a few days after this post is posted, I’ll be having a Voter Registration Drive Book Sale, where I ask American adults to either register to vote or to check their registration, and as a reward, you could grab four of my ebooks for free.  Maybe hold on to them so you have something to read while you wait in line to vote come November.  This blog post has all the details.  And if you came across this after the sale, still, register to vote or check your registration.  There are a lot of problems in this country, and the easiest way to fix some of them is for We the People to have our voice heard, i.e. voting, which requires you to register.  And if you’re not an American citizen, I hope you engage with your country’s government however you can.

Now, all of these changes I think make sense, would improve our elections, and could possibly be done without some divine intervention.  Don’t get me wrong, it would still be a Sisyphean task, but it might be doable.  But the automatic registration does raise a complex problem: keeping track of voters.

Let’s say you’re building a country from scratch.  How do you keep track of the voters?  Well, you give every voter an ID number.  So you set up this bureaucracy that keeps track of where everyone lives and you give them a number that people use a couple of times a year, at most.  And you make it a crime for banks, or businesses, or anyone but election people to ask you for this number.  And then you set up this entirely separate bureaucracy that keeps track of where everyone lives for tax purposes.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just combine these bureaucracies and supply everyone with some sort of national ID that works for tax purposes, and other financial matters, and for voting whenever there’s an election?  But you don’t want the one number stopping someone from stealing your identity to just be about as long as a phone number.  But if your ID number is 400 digits with multiple internal checks, nobody will remember them.  Meaning you’ll have to give everyone cards with their photo and basic information, and then some QR code.  Which means banks and employers will need to scan your QR code, meaning there will be plenty of opportunity for your data to be hacked, meaning the need for even more security firewalls, which … wait, wasn’t I just talking about voting?

I started with such a simple idea, but even trying to build it from scratch would be a colossal nightmare.  And even without the 1001 special interest groups that would fight against, or try to twist it for their own purpose, trying to change our current system would be … a colossal nightmare of a colossal nightmare.  And I think a lot of people realize that, and give up.  But that just leaves us at the mercy of those who won’t give up.  So register to vote, get involved, and maybe together we can make some slight changes for the better.