Will our voting system ever change?

I think it's so funny that we watch this election go on for months and months--we watch hundreds of millions of dollars get spent in order to sway us-- and then we get about 12 hours on one Tuesday to finally act.

Now I know it's not quite that simple; many people have actually voted already, in fact. But the truth is, they've designed a system where everyone gets the "chance" to partake when in fact, they really hope everyone doesn't.

And it's not even worth calling election day a "holiday". Banks and post offices get to take Columbus Day off, but voting isn't even THAT important: for most of us, voting is something we need to cram into just another day of the week. And let's face it, some people don't make enough money (especially in these times) to show up late or miss hours on a regular work day. Without giving election day "holiday" status, are we in reality discriminating against the poor, if only a little bit?

We tell kids that voting is important, but it's not important enough for them to stay home from school and watch what happens, to take in its value. It reminds me of those "don't smoke" ads that are so nerdy you wonder if they're trying to get credit for saying 'don't smoke' but in reality they hope you don't listen.

If elections were 3 day holidays--something you could do on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday, wouldn't that change things? If you could register ON SITE in all 50 states, wouldn't that confirm how "important" elections supposedly are? Wouldn't it make sure that Seattle's numbers wouldn't be influenced by rainy weather or Michigan wouldn't be affected by an unexpected snowstorm?

Or is that just it--they want us to all have the ability to participate, but they pray to God that we don't?

As someone who voted in an election today here in Australia, I can say that I've always thought one of the most admirable things in our voting system is the fact that all elections and referenda are held on Saturdays. This allows people to take part more easily (which is particularly important given that voting is compulsory here). A weekend election might boost numbers in optional voting juridictions too.

Free for downloading until November 10, The Teaching Company has a lecture on voting “the quest for a perfect voting system”:
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/VotingFreeLecture.aspx?ai=31815&WT.mc_id=FLPT008...

(Also, free until 3 November, a lecture on Great Leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/GreatLeaderslecture.aspx?ai=31817&WT.mc_id=FLAct...

Jason,
The blessed "Founders" bequeathed to us a Constitution with significant flaws in design. The fact that voter registration and voting procedures are left to individual states, and the popular vote in presidential elections is parceled into 50 pots (i.e., the electoral college), means that unevenness in voting conditions and the possibility for fraud and the denial of voting rights (e.g., the American South from 1875-1965) is a given. In recent decades (i.e., after the Voting Rights Act of 1965), Republicans have done whatever they could to make it more difficult for people to vote (under the guise of preventing voter fraud), which is reminiscent of how things worked during the segregationist days in the south. Some states deny voting rights to felons, others do not. This is an absurd system and the only way it can be fixed is if Presidential and Congressional elections are conducted by the federal government. That would mean a uniform system and a uniform system of procedures and rules across the nation. If participation is seen as an obligation of citizenship, then Presidential and Congressional elections would take place on a national holiday. If Republicans were serious about preventing voter fraud, they would push for a uniform electoral system.

Why do some people have trouble remembering the very simple lesson of primary school history: we are a federal republic of states, and not a direct democracy.

Vive la république.

Uniformity sucks.

Nooooooo!!! Not a federal republic of states! All this time I actually thought the federal government had power to do things, like raise the drinking age to 21!!!

I would like to see two changes to the electoral process for Presidential (Federal) elections.

First, election day should be a Federal Holiday. It's not like as if it would sneak up on anyone. (Possibly the day after as well, to recover from the party, or that depressed feeling).

Second, I am a huge fan of the electoral college system. It comes as close to the original idea, while incorporating direct democracy as any I can think of. It's important when the people in Iowa, or Ohio, or Nevada, or New Mexico feel that by golly their vote IS important. Otherwise, the electorate will become more and more compartmentalized as the Coasts and Flyover Country. However, that said, I think the Electors should be elected by Congressional District (following the FF's initial vision, sort of) with two additional Electors apportioned by the upcoming representation in the Senate.

The electoral college is the only thing standing between us and electoral chaos, yes it gives us the occasional minority president, but it spreads the power around. Without it small towns, medium cities, small states and entire regions would never see a candidate or be involved other than casting their vote. No, elimination of the EC would be a disaster for our political system. With the EC candidates are required to run in all fifty states, or the majority of them anyway.

With the exception of the two above points I think our system is just right.

I was heartened by the unanimity of the SC in turning down the Republican's attempt at massive voter fraud in Ohio. A legal repudiation that must sting. Just another group of America Haters I suppose. But I thought Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts were supposed to be the Republican lap dogs.

(1) We could get some way towards a more transparent and fraud-proof system, without having to have a Constitutional Amendment, by forming a blue-ribbon panel of the Great and the Good from across the political spectrum, having them spend a year or so studying the problems and proposed solutions, and the coming up with a system which would be recommended, but not required, for each state.

(2) Voting ought to be made more difficult, not easier. I still believe that Starship Troopers describes the ideal voting system (vets only).

(3) The "democratic deficit" in modern politics could be met, to some degree, this way: let each Congressional District form a "Peoples' Assembly" of, say, 500 people, elected by some form of Proportional Representation like the Single Transferrable Vote.

It would have no power whatsoever, except to hector the local Congress-critter by passing resolutions.

Let it be elected yearly, to reflect popular opinion.

Powerless, it would be under the radar of the moneymen.

Anyone could run for it. If you are elected, you get a minimal salary -- enough to cover expenses. It meets over the weekend once a month, so having a job doesn't disqualify you.

Proportional Representation (a terrible idea for a real government) means various minority political opinions get some voice. It would also be a training ground and possible stepping stone to real politics for ordinary citizens to do an end-run around their party machines. It would let people of various political persuasions encounter each other and possibly coalesce around the things they had in common.

A totally impossible dream, of course.

#8 point 1 - Yes! Without a verifiable system we have no clue as to whether we are living in a democracy or not.

The only problem with point one Doug is the next group of "Great and Good" are probably twenty years in the future, if not more.

Whether voting ought to be more difficult is, I think, separate from differential difficulty. Should it be easier for wealthy people than for poor ones? Should it be easier in some neighborhoods than in others? I don't think so.

The Starship Troopers model also has a differential difficulty problem, though Heinlein does not describe it. The difficulty of federal service depends on what assignments you get, and those assignments are made by those who have already come through it. The system as a whole would be a prejudice amplifier. We would get a world where whites get grueling and challenging desk jobs, while blacks get the easy stuff like uranium mining and deep sea garbage recovery.

What would be a truly neutral difficulty-enhancer? I can't really think of one.

Amtep: Sure, no system's perfect. Actually, though, I believe you will find that the American military is way ahead of civilian society in terms of providing opportunity for the less privileged, minimizing racial prejudice, providing some approximation of the same (horrible) experience for everyone -- even the kids from Harvard have to go through Basic Training, and some of them get to lead infantry platoons. But here our argument is really with nature, which makes us all very unequal in the first place. And, of course, the current problems of voting would still apply to vets too.

I still think that some serious gesture of caring about the state, above oneself, should be required of those who want to influence its direction. Those who have "other priorities" when personal sacrifice is required shouldn't be able to require sacrifice of others in the future.

Gene: I don't understand your point. I'll bet I could nominate a dozen leading conservatives who would meet with your approval as honest and intelligent people, and you could do the same from your side for me. We're not really dealing with a partisan issue here -- everyone at least gives lip service to honest elections.

The Starship Troopers system is only one of the plausible voting schemes that Heinlein tossed out.

Somewhere, he also proposed that the franchise should be limited to those who have a direct stake in the future: and therefore be limited to mothers only.

The system as a whole would be a prejudice amplifier. We would get a world where whites get grueling and challenging desk jobs, while blacks get the easy stuff like uranium mining and deep sea garbage recovery.

So you agree with codyed:

RACE. PERMEATES. EVERYTHING.

Vindication!

Doug, we are too close to the rancor that colors everyone's perceptions, whether we wish to admit it or not. I believe BushCo will be the nadir of the current cycle of divisiveness. The results of Reaganism are all too plain to continue. As our culture assimilates and deals with the social problems affecting us we will move into an "era of good feeling" in which codification of change will be confirming rather than innovative.

#14, I think if cody changed his formulation from RACE. PERMEATES. EVERYTHING. to TRIBALISM. PERMEATES. EVERYTHING. I would be more inclined to jump on board. There are many white males over the age of sixty who do NOT belong to my tribe.

Gene: You may be right, and perhaps would, if the US were alone in the world. But I fear that we are going to face terrible challenges, mainly but not exclusively from the Muslim world, in the next few years. The set of possible solutions available from the respective liberal and conservative toolboxes are not nearly adequate for them.

In some ways, it is like the US coming out of WWII. Everyone was expecting the Great Depression to resume, and what happened instead was the Cold War.

I have no idea what is going to happen -- one possibility is a new realignment, bringing together liberal and conservative internationalists, and liberal and conservative non-interventionists.

Bob: Mothers only, huh? That is a Heinlein fact I did not know. Since he was (sort of) on the Right, perhaps he was influenced by the fact that in some countries women used to be more conservative than men, when it came to voting.

I'm fairly sure Heinlein just had a pregnancy fetish :) Making babies was the gold at the end of the rainbow for... *counts on fingers* all of his female characters.

"A person is a zygote's way of making another zygote. This may be the meaning of life."

Notebooks of Lazarus Long

#19 It is precisely the meaning of life: the perpetuation of it. Once accomplished, You no longer matter: what freedom and joy there is in that.

I'm pretty sure Heinlein understood this.

Doug at 17: Somewhere (Expanded Universe, maybe?) RAH tossed out a half-dozen ideas about the franchise, probably including some mutually contradictory ideas.

It's not necessary to assume that he was personally committed to any of them. Including the version he used for Starship Troopers.

And Heinlein was on the Left (EPIC) for a while, too.

There has been some discussion of Heinleins politics in the SF group, off and on, he apparently was a pretty right wing sort of guy.

Heinlein . . . Hainline . . . Ummmm?!?!?

No, not a landsman so far as I know. I'm not a Heinlein expert and if I am wrong here I know others will be quick to correct me, but ...the rumor was that he had joined the Minutemen (very far right-wing underground armed group in the early 60s -- they were fond of sending liberals and leftists a printed postcard which ended "..even now, the crosshairs may be on the back of your neck"), but really, he was a libertarian for most of his life -- I didn't know about EPIC -- , and many of his novels have attitudes towards the traditional family which would make us conservatives faint.

AmtepI think you are mistaken, or at least bending the stick way too far, on his female characters. He was ahead of his time in portraying strong women, although many of them were also 'submissive' towards their men and indeed wanted to have children. (Perhaps this is a formal contradiction, but is not a real-life one.)

We need to read his novels in the context both of their times, and of the nearly 100% white male readership for science fiction then (and now?). I still recall being startled, as a teenager, to encounter the women in his novels. And, although almost all of his characters are white -- and you can find some anti-Chinese racism in a couple of his books -- his rare portrayals of Blacks are uniformly positive. In one of his novels he advocates terrorist bombing of a Ku Klux Klan rally. And this was stuff written in fifties, remember.

Well, since we are way off topic, I will give my opinion of Heinlein, which is somewhat colored by the last book I read of his. This was Sixth Column, also published as The Day After Tomorrow where Asians, by virtue of their high birthrate, take over the US. Fortunately a small group of scientists remains free, and discovers a new class of ray that can do almost anything. They utilize their knowledge to create a weapon that will kill only Asians.

At the time, I was working as a hydropulper operator. Now, you may not know the destination for most of the mass market paperbacks that don't sell, but the retailer tears the covers off, sends the covers to the publisher for a full refund, and the rest are sent to the hydropulper, where along with countless copies of National Enquirer and other quality publications, they are ground up, mixed with water, and pressed into cardboard. Where I worked, the cardboard was used as the substrate for asphalt roofing shingles.

I elected to rescue this Heinlein volume from the hydropulper, but once I read it I realized that the highest and best use of the book was to be recycled for the pulp content.

Heinlein subsequently repudiated the book, I understand, but I never read another of his. He seemed to have a very questionable attitude to little girls too. In The Door Into Summer the protagonist falls in love with an 8 year old girl and becomes engaged to her. He then travels into the future where he finds that she has faithfully waited for him.

I guess I'm skeptical that he's the best choice as a source for US electoral reform ideas.

JMcGarve: The anti-Oriental stuff was written at the beginning of his career, I think. His best work -- and at its best it's just good juvenile fiction -- was written in the late 50s and early 60s. You shouldn't let his early work prejudice you against his later, assuming you like science fiction.

He does have a thing for little girls -- see Podkayne of Mars for another example. But, as with Lewis Carroll, I think it is unfair to draw a straight line from his idealization of their innocence, to a direct sexual motive. And as for indirect sexual motives, apparently they drive almost everything we do, according to some people.

I also think it is wrong to reason that his possible attraction to eight year old girls disqualifies him from having sound opinions on other issues. After all, the founder of a great world religions, a Religion of Peace, a religion we all respect, had the same proclivity.

On the other hand, you could cite a persistent theme in his other novels which does undermine him as a source of political advice: a very cavalier attitude towards the rule of law. He seemed to like the idea of someone (a Heinlein surrogate) with the power of life and death over others, unrestrained by painty-waisted carping critics and doubters.

Interestingly, one of his short stories, as I dimly recall (Factcheckers, get to work!), has a Black woman, chosen as the Vice President for purely political reasons, who finds herself President of the United States due to the sudden demise of the original holder of that office. Her cabinet gathers, and its leader patronizingly tells her she cannot, of course, exercise any real power. She then proceeds to do so, and to institute the libertarian paradise.

Doug: About Heinlein's women, perhaps I overstated my case in order to provoke a response. I'm sure you would never stoop to that :)

In truth, I was hoping someone would swoop in with a counterexample, because I really can't think of any.

In Glory Road (SPOILER) the female lead turns out to be the empress of the galaxy and has no interest in having kids that I recall.

In one of the "explore the galaxy" novels the hero makes some mildly disparaging remark about female mental ability, and the lead female then proceeds to crush him at chess, again and again and again, to learn him some manners. This female has no interest in child bearing that I recall.

Nor does the female physicist who discovers the FTL drive in the "explore the galaxy" novel about the separated twins (although she is a minor character, only "on screen" for a few pages).

On the topic of Heinlein's attitude toward women, he simply defied any kind of left-right, feminist/anti-feminist dichotomy. In the third sentence of Friday, Friday kills a man who is following her. Feminists, iirc, don't like that novel because Friday isn't a strong enough female character (it's amazing what ideology does to warp people's thinking).

Another snippet from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long: "Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking."

The majority of his female characters (at least after the 1940s and 1950s) were basically rocket engineers, physicists, mathematicians, genetic engineers, etc. Just like his men. Heinlein worshipped ability; he didn't give a damn how many X chromosomes you have.

The reason feminists loathe Heinlein is three-fold:

(1) A lot of his very strong, very able female characters (most of them? I haven't counted) want to have children eventually. (Horrors!)

(2) His very strong, very able female characters don't have any hatred or bitterness toward men.

(3) His very strong, very able female characters never whine that they're oppressed by the patriarchy.

In the feminist mindset, all this puts Heinlein a notch below Satan.

Amtep. Overstate a case? Moi? Now my feelings are hurt.

Other strong Heinlein female characters: the woman in The Puppet Masters who is the female counterpart to the secret agent hero, who observes of her that if a man tried to put his hand on her and she didn't like it, he would most likely "draw back a bloody stump".

I suspect his women were modelled on his wife, who was (she died in 2003) a remarkable person in her own right:

"Ginny is a chemist, biochemist, aviation test engineer, experimental horticulturist; she earned varsity letters at N.Y.U. in swimming, diving, basketball and field hockey, and became a competitive figure skater after graduation; she speaks seven languages so far..." Damon Knight in the introduction to The Past Through Tomorrow.

She also served her country as a Navy WAVE in World War II."

I don't know if she could field dress a moose.

..using only her fingernails, lol!