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#15 National
Election System that Bites the Bullet --
Real Teeth to Save Democracy
Alan F Kay, 1/1/2005, amended 9/16/2005
Summary
Can be characterized as a system that brings into the precinct polling place close to the exit location a separate short ballot election covering only the few offices in each state in any national election. The short ballot must be filled out just after a voter completes the full ballot that additionally includes all county and local offices up for the same election. Short and full ballot choices made by each voter must be identical.The Corruption of the Voting Process
The essential basis for the corruption of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 is the enormous amount of money that falls into the hands of, or can be controlled by, the winner. The two major party candidates need to spend, a prodigious sum (now around a half a billion dollars each – a billion dollars total), for both primary and final election campaigning (mainly for media coverage, principally TV) in order to be competitive and to have a good chance of winning. The billion dollars needs to be raised from contributions by individuals (both large sums from a relatively few wealthy and millions of small contributions from others) and organizations of all sizes, primarily large corporations. Corporations stand to receive a variety of benefits from the new administration: tax reduction, easier tax avoidance (like utilizing off-shore affiliates), lucrative government contracts (military alone over $80 billion per year), Fed short-term interest-rate adjustments, and both eased enforcement and reduced regulation by the FCC, FTC, IRS, SEC, and other agencies. Many corporations contribute to both parties. With much to gain and little to lose, the financing of presidential campaigns, (culminating on inauguration day January 20, 2005, charging $10,000 per individual voter invited to the inaugural festivities, yielding a final $40 million total) produces a huge "return on investment" for corporations. Most corporate contributors net at least twenty times more than the cost of their direct and indirect campaign contributions.The media plays an important role in this corruption. The mainstream media depend on huge corporate advertising dollars and on access to political news and editorial content that top political leaders can, if they wish, choose to accommodate or withhold. In addition, the big media mogul empires, like other multi-billion dollar corporations, are also beneficiaries of a huge multiple "return on investment". These three groups of "players", (1) top political leaders, (2) mainstream and mogul dominated media, and (3) financial backers of political campaigns have all learned in the last few decades how to take full advantage of each other in what can be considered a three party, or three player, game -- at the expense of the general public and perhaps some honest political leaders.
Attacking Voting Corruption First for National Candidates Only
An important point is that this pressure for huge financial backing of campaigns is much greater at the federal level than at the state and local level. Only the federal government can "print money" or more exactly "coin money and regulate the value thereof" (US Constitution, Section 8.5), which is the source of all the goodies obtained by the three players in the game. The purpose of this Incubator Proposal is to thwart such corrupt activity that subverts democracy in the US.The issue is national. A new national election system is required. The US Congress is the proper body to take responsibility for creating high quality national election procedures and standards. In contrast, an improvement of the honesty and fairness of state and local election procedures, although certainly desirable, is fraught with complexity and diversity. The case will be made that democracy can be saved at relatively little cost by a good national election system and will lead to state and local clean-up of election practices.
Mandatory Short-Ballot Exit Polling
The 11th Incubator Proposal can be thought of as a way to bring exit polling inside the precinct with both the expectation and challenge to system design to produce a voting process that is at once, simple, easily handled, air tight, fair, and incorruptible.It is assumed that voting anywhere in the US will proceed with whatever process each precinct or polling place offers, as varied and diverse as such processes are, including all of the voting features that vary from state to state, precinct to precinct and election to election. The diversity includes overseas and absentee ballots and both early and provisional voting. Voting is no longer conducted on a single day. Valid overseas ballots arrive at one time, absentee ballots perhaps at other times, early voting stretches over days. Provisional voting may or may not be counted depending on state law and local interpretations.
For clarity, the ballots cast by any of this great variety of modern voting processes and systems are here called "full ballots" because the "full" list of national, state, and local candidates and referendums as appropriate to each precinct appears on the ballot. When voters have cast their "full" ballots and would otherwise exit the precinct, the one new feature that the national legislation would introduce comes into play. The voter is directed and required to go to a close-by booth and cast a further, confirming "short" ballot, a paper ballot to be marked and cast by the voter, and only covering candidates for national offices. These offices are (a) President/Vice president; (b) either 0, 1, or 2 US Senators (depending on the 6 year re-election cycles of two Senators per state in biennial elections); and (c) 1, sometimes no, Congressional Representative. Only, at most, four marks need be made by a voter to complete the short-ballot.
New Regulations Eliminate the Temptation for Corruption
Despite a typically long list of minor party candidates, only the leading candidates (currently Republican and Democrat) are included by name to keep the short-ballot short. Voters who have voted for a minority candidate on the full ballot simply mark "Other". This is made fair for all voters by a rule that presidential candidates are excluded by name and their votes must appear under "Other" unless the party endorsing the candidate has received a substantial percentage, like 10%, of votes in the previous presidential election. For each office only one candidate per party is allowed, since we are considering only final, not primary, elections. The simpler approach, allowing every candidate's name and party affiliation on the short ballot would multiply the size of the short-ballot enormously and produce other complexities that will be apparent when the layout of the ballot is described.An extremely important point is this. the enacted national legislation must require that when votes are counted for national candidates, the short ballot totals prevail in each precinct if there is any discrepancy between short and full ballot totals. To help justify such an extreme measure, voters may have to be required by law to cast their full and short ballot national candidates choices identically and to vote their short ballots promptly after they have cast their full ballots, or be subject to a small fine, like a parking ticket. There is no reason for voters to change their minds in the few minutes between casting their first and second ballots. Knowing that the short ballot results will be final and will prevail over any results of full ballot voting makes clear to the builders, developers, testers, installers, and maintenance personnel of the non-government organizations, like Sequoia, ES&S, Diebold and others that provide all the new and old voting technology, will have to sharpen up their reliability, integrity, and incorruptibility standards and procedures. Although not explicitly required by the new law, these improvements will almost certainly flow down to the state and local offices and referendums on the full ballots by the next election. The providers of voting machines and equipment will have to shape up or be removed in disgrace and perhaps slapped with indictments for fraud or other felony charges that should be incorporated into the National Election legislation.
Short-ballot voting. As voters emerge from full ballot voting booths they are directed by signs and roped stanchions to enter an open short ballot booth, where a precinct worker hands out short-ballots, one per voter. The short-ballot is a single one-sided page, probably 8.5" by 11". At the bottom is a readily detachable stub, perhaps 1" by 8.5". The names of the national candidates with a blank box next to each name appears identically both on the ballot and on the stub. Procedural instructions are posted on the wall of the booth and poll worker assistance is available for the disabled or for those who are confused. Short ballot voting is done manually by the voter placing a checkmark in a box next to the name of the candidate chosen. The mark will probably be by a special, conductive pencil. There are no machines in the booth.
A special barcode straddles the bottom of the short-ballot and its stub, in such a way that barcode readers can read the same numbers from the ballot as from the stub, even after the two are separated. The barcode numbers, left to right, are coded as follows: for the state (2 characters), for the county (2 characters), for the precinct (perhaps 3 characters), and for the number that is all that identifies each individual voter (probably 3 characters). The individual voter's number is also prominently printed out on every short-ballot, but not on the stub. The number is here called the "sequential number", but is a random rearrangement like this example: if there may be 1000 voters in a precinct the sequential numbers are a random rearrangement of numbers 1 to a thousand.
Voters may choose to copy that number onto the stub, important if they wish to retain the stub. A few may just memorize the "sequential number", so that even if their stub is obtained by someone else, it does not reveal how the voter voted. It may also be desirable that the 150-200 million ballots required for a national election be printed by the federal government when the primaries (national offices only, of course) are completed and the names of all final candidates are known. The US Bureau of Printing and Engraving should probably do the printing, using impressive looking and not easily counterfeited techniques that link the stub to the ballot-proper and make forgery of either stub or ballot easily detectable. Special provisions may have to be made for house congressional districts that cut across county or precinct lines.
No more than four checkmarks are required if a voter votes for all offices on the ballot. Voters may skip any office by leaving boxes for that office blank, creating an "undercount", requiring even fewer checkmarks. Voters tear off the stub at the perforation. Voters are advised to keep the stub, but not required to do so. Voters cast their ballots into a simple, single slot, voting box that has no mechanical or electronic mechanisms in or near it, and promptly leaves the booth. The process should not take more than 60 seconds, many times faster than filling out the full ballot, so that roughly only one short-ballot booth is required for as many as ten full-ballot booths. If there is one short-ballot booth for every five full-ballot booths, there should never be a line waiting to enter a short-ballot booth.
Spoiled ballots If voters spoil a ballot by checking a box on the short ballot that, as required by law, does not duplicate the voters' full-ballot choices, such voters are given (up to say 2) additional ballots to replace the spoiled ballot. If the ballot is cast before the voter explains that the ballot was "spoiled", this does not apply. The precinct worker fines the voter (something like a "parking ticket") under a provision in the law preventing improper use of the short ballot and makes a note of the skipped ballot number to reconcile the number of short-ballot votes cast in the precinct that day with other means for a voter count in the precinct that day.
Short Ballot Only Voters Another provision of short ballot voting can be used is to allow "short-ballot-only" voting. Citizens who enter the precinct and are not allowed to vote because they are not registered or are disqualified by various state rules, or do not have proper identification, or really only care about voting for national offices and do not wish to vote for any state and local candidates, can chose to vote a short ballot only, providing they have some proof of citizenship and possibly meet other national standards. The best way to provide proof of citizenship is for every citizen to be granted an identity number (e.g. social security number) and issued a national identity card identifying the person by various means (name, address, dob, perhaps picture, etc., and uniquely by a number).
A national identity card improves on the use of driver's licenses or social security cards sometimes used in place of a still non-existent national identity card. The national identity card would be for the unique purpose of accurately allowing those entitled to vote to do so fairly and simply. Every "short-ballot-only" vote cast must be so identified in the short-ballot voting process, so the totals for such votes are added to all the votes of full-ballot voters who also cast short ballots. This feature means that the usefulness and validity of short-ballot voting is maintained and acts as a check on the validity of national office totals that are produced by the full-ballot counts. For this purpose the voter's identity card must be used to imprint his/her short-ballot with the voter's identity number.
Preventing "short-ballot-only" double voting. Without further protective measures, there is little to stop "short-ballot-only" voters from voting two or more times in one election. The problem arises because the short-ballot-voter is not required to be registered, but is only identified as a citizen allowed to vote for national candidates – but, of course, allowed to vote only once per election. All voters exiting from the full ballot booths to vote in a short-ballot booth have already been registered. One of several ways to prevent multiple voting is to place an easily spotted, non-erasable mark on the hand, or elsewhere, of short-ballot-only voters just after casting their ballots. Any attempt to vote a second time is prevented by the precinct worker who passes out short-ballots and pleasantly turns away anyone trying to vote who has been marked as having voted once.
State Officials Responsible for Full and Fair Vote Counting of all Cast Ballots Received Through the Day Before Election Day. Only full ballots can be cast before election day. County election supervisors must, before election day, collect all legally voted full ballots received by them according to their directions given when these ballots were distributed to voters, and count the votes for each of the national offices in each category: absentee, military, early voting, and allowed provisional. These four category counts for each national office must be aggregated by county with the two other categories, short ballot only, and full ballot totals. If flawed vote counting occurs, the county supervisors and the state Secretary of State under the the national election legislation will be subject to significant criminal charges, particularly if the four categories vote totals imply a change in the winner for any office in the county (for county supervisors) and in the state (for the Secretary of State).
Errorless Voter-Verified Short-Ballot Counting
At the end of the voting day, the short ballot totals, both with and without short-ballot-only votes included, both separately and added in, are posted on the window of the precinct and at several selected locations and remain for some time (until there is no further contesting of final outcomes). At such locations as the library, town hall, post or newspaper office, the individual vote choices uniquely identified by the sequential number, with many voters knowing only their own numbers, are prominently located for public viewing along with prominently posted totals for each town, city or county vote counts (obtained by adding together the appropriate precinct counts). Voters can individually and quietly check that their own vote is correctly included in these tally sheets from their short-ballot stubs' sequential number or from memory.Media reporters and official or political party observers, will be driven by all the zeal and competitiveness of each major party and by knowledge that some members of the general public may also do similar checking. One way or another, the totals for each precinct will be verified as correctly included in the votes at the town/city, county and state levels within a few days. Losers in close elections should not concede until at least a few days after election-day. The great confidence and consequences of anyone finding and correcting a simple incorrect addition, will mean that some observers will be easily able to accomplish that. Guaranteeing the voter-verified fairness of the election procedure for national offices vote counts will be accurate down to the single vote, just as your bank balance to the dollar is daily correct even though calculated by a transfer system processing over a billion checks a day.
Election outcomes should in time be as accurate, down to a single vote, for state and local elections too. Americans will look back and smile at all the lame excuses political leaders from 1792 to 2005 have given for accepting typical national election errors of one or two percent (now a million plus votes) as compared with the new accuracy. After a national election system as described herein is in operation, any election considered a "tie" would have to be a mathematically exact tie – a truly rare possibility.
For other national election reform activities, which unfortunately do not deal with the most serious problems of corrupt vote counting, click HERE.