YOU are Democracy’s Margin of Error

We’re deep into the Presidential election campaign, and with it the constant, seemingly endless legion of voter preference polls conducted by almost any news outlet, university, or individual capable of setting up an auto-dialer, using the statistical function on their calculator, and having a blog. Many of these polls, despite their dubious data sampling techniques, show the candidates in a neck-and-neck race to be the next President of the United States.

In this Constitutional Republic, the Right to Vote is fundamental to proper functioning of our country, and exercising that Right by voting is probably the single greatest civic responsibility you have as a citizen. So, it’s probably an extremely good idea to accurately ensure that (a) everyone eligible to vote is registered to vote, (2) they only vote once, and (c) their vote is properly counted: Anything else is tantamount to larceny.

Unfortunately, according to a February, 2012 study by the PEW Research Center¹, when it comes to United States voter registrations, of the approximately 212.5 million US Citizens eligible to vote²:

Roughly 24 million are invalid or inaccurate – about 12% of the total
More than 1.8 million are for a deceased person – about 1% of the total
Roughly 2.75 million are duplicated in another state – about 1.3% of the total
Roughly 51 million eligible voters may not be registered – about 24% of the total

Bottom line?
About 13% of registered US voters are inaccurate, invalid, or just plain dead.
Even if most of these are proven invalid and expunged from the voter rolls, our voting system still misrepresents at least 24% of eligible voters.

Put another way, it’s the margin of error for 19 of the 50 states – or, 363 of the 538 Electoral Votes – decided during the 2008 Presidential Election.

And, while most states elections invoke an automatic recall when the difference is less than 0.5% of the votes cast, they’re only re-counting – not verifying – those votes.

Look, I need a valid ID to get a library card, drive a car, use my bank, obtain credit, visit or attend a school, work for the government or nearly every private firm, join the military, purchase liquor, cigarettes, or lottery tickets, enter a bar or casino, pick up medications, fly on a commercial airliner, collect government benefits (eg: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Disability, SNAP, etc.) and, in the state I reside in, to vote: The least we can do is make sure everyone has a legal and valid ID in order to vote for representatives responsible for defining the laws governing all these activities and more.

If this isn’t concerning enough, since 1932 only about half of eligible voters vote in Presidential elections (the rates are even lower for Congressional elections):

(Click to enlarge)

So, here’s my humble list of suggestions on

How to improve the voting system in the USA

Tie voter registration to another critical document. The document should require a current and valid legal address with a photo, such as a driver’s license, college ID, medical card, etc. (Note we already have “Motor Voter” rules in some portions of the country.)
Make election day a holiday. Don’t just close the schools, close all businesses except for vital services, and have polling places open from 6am to 8pm. If the only thing you’re allowed to do is vote, then you probably will.
Total news blackout while polls are open. I’m glad this country has Freedom of the Press, but I’m not fond of the “Observer Effect” when the ultimate objective is getting people to watch more ads, or worse, to influence polling by predicting winners & losers while polls are open. Press outlets should wait until after every single polling place is closed.
Compulsory Voting. You must vote, otherwise some guaranteed government benefit is reduced or denied (Sound harsh? We already do this with Selective Service). Compulsory voting works in countries like Brazil, Belgium, and Greece, so why not the United States? Just think of it as “ObamaCare” for keeping our Constitutional Republic healthy.
Ballots must include “None” as a voting option. Don’t like any of the candidates? Tired of choosing “the lesser of two evils“? Now you don’t have to: Simply vote for “None”, and if “None” wins the majority of votes it might be time for the political parties to consider fielding candidates who might truly represent their constituents. Of course, a majority of voters figuratively declaring the “Emperor has no clothes” might be unilaterally declared unconstitutional by a judge.
Secure ballots. Each voter ballot must include a unique security identifier that is, ideally, impossible to circumvent. Identifiers are tied to a particular polling place but not to an individual. No “photocopying” of ballots are allowed.
Federal oversight of polling places. How about having the Department of Homeland Security oversee & manage each voting place, including crowd control, voter verification, the dispensing, collection, and counting of ballots, etc. rather than, say, the New Black Panther Party? For added protection against improprieties, make sure personnel assigned to a particular town’s voting precinct cannot be from that town or any adjoining town. We send representatives to far-flung reaches of the world to observe their voting, so why not here?

Chances of anyone paying attention to my suggestions? Zero, or thereabouts, I suspect. But, that shouldn’t stop you from exercising your Right to Vote this November 6th – you’ve probably already expended more time and effort it would take simply by reading this blog entry.

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