I think absentee voting, other than for military and foreign service officers in Embassy’s should be abolished. This kills the snowbird double vote in Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Open the polls for 24 hours on election day. Declare it a public holiday so nobody has to work and nobody has an excuse. If you’re too sick, scared or lazy too bad.
No local or state issues may share the ballot with Federal elections. Yes, this adds cost and complexity but so be it.
The only things on the ballots should be President, congressional representative, Senator - PERIOD. This prevents confusing ballots.
Every ballot in the country, regardless of state uses the same format. This prevents confusing ballots.
Open the poles at midnight on election day in each time zone for 24 hours.
Collect ballots every 8 hours and take them to a central counting center. (This will keep city “X” from being accused of stuffing boxes.
Not the voting booth but the ID table where you pick up ballots must be streamed live for 24 hours. The view must include the voters face. This corrupt election judges from giving someone two ballots.
At 11:59PM the polls close. At that point the last ballot boxes are turned in AND NO MORE BALLOTS CAN BE ADDED FOR ANY REASON except a disaster (The voting location catches fire, tornado, etc. Nor can any poling station have hours extended.
Media may take exit polls but may not publish the results until all polls, nation wide close. Exit polling results must be labeled with words like: “Presumed, Polling suggest, Unofficial Results.” They can’t say we “Know candidate X won the election.”
No results are posted until all votes are counted. This means that East Coast returns will not influence West coast voting.
No electronic voting booths. All ballots must be on a machine-readable paper card.This removes the ability of technology to be hacked.
The counting center must have a LIVE video link showing ballots boxes being opened and placed in the machine to count. This cost next to nothing with the internet. Everyone should be allowed to watch the votes being counted.
All results are published/announced 12 hours after the final vote. The people in the counting center do not know the totals as they place the ballots through the reader. But, a computer can read those ballots and process the information.
Purge all voter registration older than 4 years. (i.e. Just like a driving license you have to reapply every four years -—— In person. Yes this will add to cost.
Abolish same day registration. Voters must be registered 7 days before the election and must present a valid SS card when registering and when voting. (Bang a lot of duplicate voting stops right there.)
Just my thoughts
Man! Those are GREAT thoughts - if only we could get them implemented. Sure would fix a lot of things.