OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

I agree despite the loss of pine in doing so...seems like the only good way to get it right.

But all those hanging chads could or could not be counted.

I don't think we need to bring back paper votes, but the voting machines should keep a paper record of when the votes were cast and for who. We definitely need strong controls that allow multiple political parties to oversee the loading of software, the machines, and the vote counting.

We have one of the simplest and most reliable paper/electronic ballot systems.

A person simply completes an arrow (fills in the middle of the arrow) to vote for a person or to vote yes or no. An electronic reader scans the ballot and logs the votes right in front of the voter. If there is any problems with the voter's ballot (stray marks, light arrows, double marks, ...), the machine rejects the ballot and the voter can re-vote on the spot.

The voters' paper ballots are kept in the bottom of the machine and picked up in case there is a need for a machine re-count or even hand-verification.

Tell that to the retards in Dade county Florida.

Diebold is rigged. Bush was elected, fraudulently, for a second term because this machine added to his votes. There was no way to verify but there was testimony that the machines were fallible by a high ranking member of the company. I saw a video clip from the trial on Aaron Russo's "From Freedom to Fascism" DVD.

Real election reform is needed to make elections fair.

Repeal Help America Vote Act of 2002, and start over. HAVA 2002 is flawed because it formalizes the corruption of Florida 2000 and applies corruption nationally. (HAVA 2002 was written by voting machine companies, presented by Representative Bob Ney of Ohio. Ney is now in jail for his ties with lobbyist Abramoff who is also in jail.)

Citizens who are 18 and have a SSN should be able to vote.

Use SSN as the national voter data base. (The National Voter Data Base can prevent multiple voting by voters who have residences in more than one state. [Real voter fraud])

Eliminate photo ID requirements.

Voting shall be mandatory.

The preferred method for voting shall be vote-by-mail.

Make mail-in ballots postage free. (This was supposed to be investigated in HAVA 2002, but the HAVA 2002 commission appointed by President Bush somehow did not get around to it.)

Voters get a tax reduction for voting.

Voters keep receipt from ballot package. Also, date-stamped confirmation of receipt of the ballot shall be sent to the voter by the local elections office.

Both receipt from package and confirmation of receipt required to get tax reduction.

Federal elections and primaries shall be national; all same date and same times independent of time zones.

Funding for all federal election campaigns fully and exclusively funded by federal government.

No private or special interest funding shall be allowed.

Free and equal access to media for all candidates.

Campaigns shall be limited to six months.

Campaigns shall be about issues only.

Candidates who use personal attacks against their opponents shall be penalized by having the values of their votes get reduced by 10 percent for each attack.

Have as many primaries as it takes to get to a majority vote.

Each primary eliminates half of the candidates for each office.