The US Voting Process

15 January 2003

I guess I've got a few thoughts rolling around about the voting process here in the United States.

When I lived in California, they had a pretty good system for registering voters.  Or so it seemed.  The people working at the Department of Motor Vehicles were morons, of course, and they required that my wife fill out a voter registration card, even though she told them that she wasn't a citizen (she's Canadian).  But she filled it out and then got a polite card from the Secretary of State (March Fong Eu at the time) telling her that she couldn't be registered to vote because she wasn't a citizen.

Now, they seem to have problems with this idea in some states.  Some states will register anyone and let anyone vote.  Or so it seems.

Doesn't every citizen have a social security card?  And don't you need to put that on your voter registration?  It should, then, be easy to correlate and make sure that the person trying to register is actually a citizen.  And to nullify their registration in another jurisdiction.  (Remember a couple of years ago where college students in some mid-western state were voting twice, once at home and once at school?)  Of course, my wife also has a social security card, but she can't vote.  The government should know about this correlation somewhere, just like they did in California.

Of course, this also assumes that the people working at the polling places are checking a photo ID to make sure that the person who says they're me actually is me.  Last time I voted they didn't even check my photo ID although I had it available, so I guess I could've gone up as my neighbor (who I knew wasn't going to vote) and cast a vote for him.  I'm sure he wouldn't have minded.

Additionally, voter turnout in this country is awful.  This may be because there's so much dirty money and so many asinine  politicians running that people feel they're voting more against someone than they are voting for anyone.  That may be solved by correcting the problems in the campaign finance arena.

Anyway, one way to get voting up is to give everyone a $20 tax credit for voting for each election.  If there's a correlation between social security number and voter registration number, that's easy.  Right?  Remember, your social security number is also known as your Taxpayer ID.  Additionally, there will be a $20 payment added onto your taxes if you're not even registered.  (If you're a non-resident alien, you're exempt from both the credit and the fee.)

Also, elections should be considered null and void if the total number of votes cast is not equal to or greater than 50% of the registered voters in a voting district + 1 vote.  So, if there are 10,000 registered voters in a district, 5,001 have to vote for the election to be considered valid.  The winner won't necessarily get a majority of votes from a majority of people that they're to represent, but at least a majority expressed an opinion.

One more thing while I've got your attention.  Political campaign signs.  I'm sick of 'em, particularly the ones that the people leave up long after the election is over.  Let's lobby our local town councils to make these things considered litter if still around 2 weeks after the event.  This will also mean that the idiot having a garage sale and not taking his or her signs down will be littering if they haven't cleaned up all of their signs two weeks after the event.  Each sign left up is one violation.  Most municipalities have littering ordinances that are $100+ for each piece of litter.

May as well make it a prettier country while trying to make it a more politically aware one.