Posted on 11/10/2020 4:34:13 AM PST by TermLimits4All
So here are my thoughts on future elections moving forward. Feel free to post your comments and suggestions. With the obvious vulnerabilities uncovered in not just this election but the past couple of elections with computerized voting systems I feel this method should be scrapped. The way to ensure the accurate tally for any candidate in my mind is: 1. Nationwide voter id 2. Paper ballots only 3. Fingerprint stamp on ballot 4. Open and monitored counting of ballots with security and cameras like they have at all casinos. 5. No vote by mail or absentee ballots. Absentee only if physically unable to get to precinct.
I like your post and your ideas. They make perfect sense.
Take: “It seems the computer age has ushered in the opportunity for increased fraud in many arenas including our elections.”
This is also obvious on so many other levels, such as it allows us to be monitored via our phone conversations, vehicle travel, hacking into our credit systems, hacking into medical records, - the list is endless as to illegal activities the computer age brought us. The point being, with all the other obvious tampering with our digital toys, elections are no different. The safest communication is by mailing a paper letter. The safest medical records are paper ones in a locked file cabinet. It only stands to reason the safest vote is a paper one.
And your idea about mail in ballots. Again a prime opportunity to create fresh illegal ballots to sway the elections. They need to be limited only to a person that can actually validate the physical impossibility of being able to vote in person.
Your ideas all have to do with making all legal votes verifiable. For that reason the rats will never go along with it.
If people abide fraud in elections, we might just as well do away with them. (Either the people, or the elections.)
ML/NJ
You forgot: Registration in person three to five weeks before the election. (I.e. for that ONE election. Registration does not carry forward. For those to young to know or remember, that’s how it used to be, in New York at least.)
ML/NJ
Going forward, the Constitution says that the STATE LEGISLATURES determine how the state will choose their Electors for President and Vice President.
If the state legislature decides that their electors will be chosen by an arm wrestling contest between the candidates, then that is how the electors of that state will be chosen.
The only thing that the Trump Campaign is doing right now is that the state legislatures in the disputed states have set up a popular vote election process through state statute to choose their Electors, and that law has been violated.
I think states need to establish auditable election system and pass audits every two years, before a national election. National elections because that makes it something the Congress can do. Not the next Congress, sadly.
Voter ID is just one facet of an auditable system. Clean registration rolls are another.
We have already experienced the co-opting of political elections by the massive electronic masters of Silicon valley
and this recent election is just the beginning.
The best way to freely express our political convictions,
is to go to only paper ballots, except in rare personal instances.
Paper ballots alone hold the electronic games to a minimum.
Remember when we were told that the sanctity of the electronic vote was regional,
and therefore could not be tampered with because we were told that there was no internet access.
Well, we told a lie as evidenced by the recent Dominion voting machine fraud.
Go back to paper ballots, which can be verified, with bi-partisan trained observers to oversee the elections !
Eliminate the electronic cheaters !
You are correct. Very interesting ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ficae6x1Q5A&feature=youtu.be&t=145
Since voting is most definately a national security issue, armed federal agents and federalized national guard shall
A) set up, check, and certify equipment.
B) Store, transport, and guard both blank and filled out ballots
C) Release ballots only when both parties are available to watch the count.
D) Secure the tabulations and release BOTH parties numbers across all jurisdictions at the same time.
E) Enforce local, state, and federal law and have arrest powers
Monitor with all ISR equipment available including videos, SIGINT, IMINT, etc.
No unsolicited mail out of ballots. Only secure absentee ballots. Also, the voting prior to the elections needs to be minimal, the longer the time, the more harvesting opportunity.
No felons vote unless pardoned and all restitution paid/time served
Anyone on welfare cannot vote
Anyone convicted of any type of fraud/deceit if misdemeanor cannot vote
Anyone who has limited mental function or on certain psychotropic drugs, or has been involuntarily committed cannot vote
Anyone who abuses controlled substances or more than 3 DWIs in 7 years cannot vote
Anyone diagnosed with dementia/alzheimers or other disease of the mind
anyone convicted of any polling or election fraud, however minor
We must keep mentally ill and dishonest people from voting.....not just felons.
Also, the Department of Defense should be their own precinct with all voted tallied and guarded 24/7 and flown in under arms so no one can throw them away.
VOTE VOTING
Election integrity should be EASY...
- Condense voting into a single weekend-ish. Polls are open 24/7 Thurs morning at 0600 until Sat night at 2200. That gives everyone almost three full days to vote, weekdays and weekend, morning, day, and night. No excuse to not have time. (Possibly condense to Fri06 through Sat22, if above is too long.)
- Indelible purple ink. Everyone dips a finger/hand/nose in it when you get your ballot. People with a purple ink hand can’t vote. (Already did, duh!)
- Obviously, IDs are required. If a mostly ghetto place like India can do it for billions of people, we certainly can!
- No gimmicks like motor voter, same-day registration, provisional ballots, harvesting, etc. You vote on voting weekend, unless you qualify for either exemption below: [Possible other exceptions for elderly/medical issues? But then too easy to be abused by people that don’t truly need, or filled out by care workers instead. Hm. I think better to not have these exceptions, but open to arguments/methods otherwise. - here’s an idea: only those legally disabled (80% VA or higher / equivalent) are eligible for the med absentee.]
= Early/absentee voting is ONLY for military personnel and government civilians, who are assigned overseas. (CONUS mil / other Fed is required to give soldiers/employees time to vote.) Ballots are to be sent to these people (who can request it online/phone/etc) NLT one month prior to voting weekend. (Arriving to them at that time, not being sent!) Include automatic confirmation to the voter when the ballot is received (submitted). Auto-investigation if ballot is NOT received back at all. [Possibly change this, if an online voting method is reliably and securely developed, better than a month-early ballot.]
- Every single ballot has a unique number for the voter, tear-off receipt like raffle tickets. Every submitted ballot is available online (www.vote.gov, easy!) so you can check to see how your vote was counted in the official tally. Only you know/have your number, so there’s no outing of ‘who voted how’ info. This prevents mis-tabulations, votes being forgotten in a trunk of a car, etc etc. A high enough percentage of the populace will likely check, so faking any of this will be very difficult.
- Also, vote.gov shows complete totals for each city/county/precinct/etc, so anyone can see how many people voted in their area. [For now, metainfo saved on SD card on voting machine, uploaded later. Until we have a fully secure online-capable voting machine.]
- Every dead person is marked on the voter check-in list, and anyone attempting to vote as a dead person is held for psych eval for a minimum 72 hours (at least until voting is over) (should have a sheriff deputy at every location, State police if Sheriff’s office can’t handle em all at all hours).
- Voting is the location where your residence is. None of this bullcrap of letting a student town have students control the politics, when hardly any of them actually live there. Local places, however, can choose to allow non-resident voting for local stuff only (vacation home, summer home, rental home, etc owners do have a property interest in a place they may not domicile, stuff like that), but this is subject to very strict scrutiny.
- Ballots are only in the national language (English). There are extremely few cases of people who can legally vote who legitimately can’t speak English: naturalized citizen, over I think 65 doesn’t require English proficiency, but everyone else eligible to vote should be speaking fluent English. Requesting an interpreter requires proof of naturalization over such age.
- All total votes are reported from each precinct NLT 20min after polls close, ±5min. This prevents big cities from determining how many fake votes to add to the total when ‘needed’. Each polling station has Reps from the two biggest parties (or three/four if we ever get to that point) who have to sign the count. (Or, could be just a SoS employee, but I think better to have someone from opposing major parties.) (Note this is simply total number of votes cast, not a full tabulation of how the votes went, that can be accomplished within the current usual time standards) - This is VERY simple, a hand tally by the workers of how many people come through, and compared to the tallies added from all the machines. There shouldn’t be ANY surprise votes, as the total number doesn;t depend on tabulating or anything, just a count of the number of eligible people who went through each location.
- Definitely until fixes are in place, but good to keep after: EVERY SINGLE STATE is required to compare county voting lists to change-o-addresses for people moving out of each county, dead people lists, and so on. Quick n easdy way to find some places that likely have fraudulent votes.
- A minimum of 1% of counties per State, randomly determined, are audited for a full hand-recount to verify any machine counting. States with less than a 55-45 split are required to audit 2% of counties.
- All voter rolls are fully dropped (archived) after each Pres election (say, a tenday after inauguration, to give States time for any downticket runoffs before purging, but can be extended in extreme recount circumstances). You have to re-register for next time, so this helps remove dead people and people who moved to a new voting district. Also somewhat eliminates the populace that’s ambivalent about voting and waits until the last minute. If you don’t care enough to register on time, you obviously don’t care enough to be worth an opinion in the vote.
- Registration closes two weeks before the first election day. EVERY registration is to be verified with at least one source of public info by the SoS office. Presentation of job-type identification at the time of registration is acceptable (A/B lists). .1%(?) minimum is audited each year to verify.
- All States are required to share voter info. This allows for people with vacation homes or other properties to vote in local elections affecting them (if such locality allows for it), but limits them to only primary residence for federal stuff. So really just the Pres, as States can individually determine if they allow CongressCritter voting by residents only or all property owners as well. (They shouldn’t, but that’s each State’s call)
- And, of course, voting weekend is moved to the weekend after tax day. No-brainer. (And, tax year is shifted to match the fiscal year instead of calendar year. then voting actually lines up closely with tax time!) [THIS IS IFFY ACTUALLY. SEE TAX CHANGE SECTION]
- Mandatory minimum jail time for cases of vote fraud. These need to be serious and HURT.
- Winning. In order to win EC votes, each State splits their votes based on their Congressional districts. Note from Legislature section, these are computer-generated to be as compact and equal as possible, 50% based on population and 50% based on area.
RELATED:
- Primaries are relegated entirely to the parties, government is not allowed to be involved aside from potentially hosting vote locations (such as libraries, schools, rec centers, fire/police stations, etc).
- Likewise, why do you associate with a certain party for elections? There should be nothing individually party-related on an official basis. We’re all, supposedly, Americans.
- Parties decide how to hold their primaries, and if they’re smart, they’ll come up with a formula based on Govs’ and State Reps’ and CongressCritters’ party affiliations to determine who is the most Repub/Dem, and then time their primaries in descending order. No more of this stupid “Iowa is first” bullshit. And hey, maybe we’ll finally be able to get the damn corn out of our fuel tanks!
- It would be interesting to make that part of the primary process: once a week/month, each candidate is assigned a random issue of the day, and they have to do a five to ten minute explanation to old-time Americans (17/1800s) explaining both sides of it, and why they support which side. No help from aides or other staff, they have to show, themselves, that they can understand the issue and at least half-ass an explanation.
- Likewise, Pres debates are modified to mostly eliminate the moderator. Each candidate picks an equal number of topics/questions, then they discuss amongst themselves on each bit. Say, hour-long debate is three topics each, and nine-ten minutes per. Give 2-3min alternating discussion, or mostly free-talk. Moderator’s only job is to keep the debate civil.
- It would be awesome to limit voting to landowners/military only, but that’s pretty politically impossible.
PRES DEBATES
—Someone else posted a good idea about chess clocks, and I’ll expand on it much further. Two hour debate for example, each candidate gets an hour on the clock. Moderator introduces them, then flips a coin on who goes first.
—Each candidate gets a button that does four things. Mutes their own mic, unmutes the other guy’s mic, stops their own countdown clock, and starts the other guy’s clock. They can talk as long as they want, no interruptions, but they only get half the total debate time. They also get a pen n paper to keep notes for their responses to each other.
—Moderator has a button that mutes both and freezes both clocks, but his only role is to provoke conversation if the candidates hit a stop in their debate, from a list of questions/subjects whose exact wording was agreed to by both candidates prior. Or keep things civil if it gets heated/personal, but since each candidate is in full control of handing over the mic, it should remain rather calm. And move, since going slow only hurts yourself and your clock. Plus I’m sure each candidate wants to save their time to try and be the final speaker.
—After both clocks hit zero, they each get two(?) minutes for closing thoughts, muted from each other, so there’s no further debate/rebuttals/continuation of debate from whomever goes second, it’s just a short closing speech.
—The moderator can then thank both, end the night, and remind the audience about what circus is on at 8pm eastern tonight, and/or beg everyone to watch the Cowboys and try to prop up their ratings dive.
- Likewise, Pres debates are modified to mostly eliminate the moderator. Each candidate picks an equal number of topics/questions, then they discuss amongst themselves on each bit. Say, hour-long debate is three topics each, and nine-ten minutes per. Give 2-3min alternating discussion, or mostly free-talk. (Or hey, now that it’s figured out, do chess method above!) Moderator’s only job is to keep the debate civil.
- multi-debates. Do 1-2 debates per candidate, where they can pick 5-10 moderators, then other campaign selects from that group. Then do direct above. Then last 2-3 debates follow the chess clock method, so moderators don’t really matter, but maybe pull from some less-political people. This gives the first 2 or 4 debates where candidates can pick questions to push themselves or really go after the opponent, then the less moderated one where they can go back and forth on some agreed topics. More civil, hopefully.
** Note all of these debates are to be held in a neutral location (stadium/arena, civic center, hotel ballroom, ampitheatre, zoos, convention centers, etc.), scattered around the countrry, and can be attended/reported on by any press organization. No “home crowd” at the CNN or MSNBC or Fox studio. Candidates are REQUIRED to attend these debates to be eligible for election. Each campaign gets 1/3 of the audience tickets to be handed out at their discretion, the other 1/3 can be split between the host location, city host mayor, and debate sponsers (something’s gotta pay for the location rental, AV, snacks, etc.).
The media keeps demanding evidence of “systemic” fraud. That’s B.S.. If even ONE fraudulent vote is clearly identified it proves that the election system is unsecured and that it lacks integrity.
That would require legislation in every state or a US constitutional amendment. Don’t expect either.
Get off your butts and vote in State and Local elections, and make sure Republicans are in charge of the Electoral process.
I rescinded my voter registration today. Unless mail in voting is outlawed, I’ll never vote again. Otherwise, it’s just an effort in futility.
And also had taxable income.
Adopt system of Mexico and India...
Better yet, just return to the original U.S. system, make only property owners voters and eliminate women voters... /s
Hospital stay covers nursing homes. I was shooting for simple, not a 1000 page legal document covering every possible scenario.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.