From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Tue Nov 14 2000 - 08:37:42 MST
From: "Don Klemencic" <klemencc@sgi.net>
>One reform I hope to see come out of this situation is some kind
>of standard balloting system. Computers could be used to make most
>of these irregularities impossible. They could make it impossible
>to submit an illegal ballot. They could display the names of
>candidates the voter has tentatively chosen for his confirmation.
>They could warn him if he has left any office unvoted. To maintain
>a paper trail as a safeguard, for each office voted a ballot slip
>could be printed: 10 offices, 10 slips. That would allow the
>machine to pre-sort them by the voter's choices. If, to
>reasonable tolerances, they had a standard weight, the machine
>count could be verified by weighing each stack of ballot slips.
>The voter could be given the chance to review the ballot slips for
>errors. He could abort and start over, or confirm and allow the
>ballot slips to fall on the stacks. The tallies could be kept
>essentially in real time as the voting progressed, and
>the winner of a state would be known with certainty when the poll
>closed. This seems like a reasonable standard to me.
Sometimes things move fast. This morning on the news, David Orr the
cook county registrar of voters was demonstrating a new idea.
We've started using a desktop computer based machine that tabulates
the votes. Instead of dropping a ballot into a ballot box to be
counted later, Orr is suggesting placing the ballot directly into
the machine. The machine will reject it if there is a double vote,
so the person can vote over.
This has to be voted on, and may be approved by the end of the
week.
>As far as other voting systems I think you want to keep things as
>simple as possible. That seems to be a weakness of the Borda
>system if there are many choices. How about just giving the voter
>a chance to make a second choice?. As a first stage elimination
>determine the two highest vote-getters from first choices. If the
>voter's first choice is not among the two highest, but his second
>choice is, then count his second choice in a second-stage
>supplemental count. Of course this could be generalized from 2
>choices and 2 counts to n choices and n counts if you wanted.
>Having two choices would make it more appealing to vote for an
>'unelectable candidate'. The second choice could be kept for the
>mainstream candidate you least dislike. This system would make it
>much easier for a "fringe" party to gain substantial support. And
>for precisely that reason, I don't think there is a snowball's
>chance in hell that the Dems and Reps would allow it to come into
>existence.
>But it's interesting to think about.
I like the idea of a Borda system for the primary.
On the day of the primary all states would vote.
The first part of the ballot would give you the opportunity to list
a party affiliation, Democratic, Republician, Green, Libertarian,
Extropian, what have you.
Then you would vote for the candidates, all candidates, in your
order of preference. This would allow for a number of different
types of analysis based on location, party affiliation, what have
you. This primary could be preceded by debates in which all
candidates could participate.
The results of this primary would be good fodder for the individual
parties conventions.
Brian
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