Possible Voting Reforms

[The Vorlon]

There are lots of reasonable sets of rules you could adopt for elections.

Out of these many many sets of rules, I would like the Federal government to pick ONE of them, and I frankly really do not care which one, and apply it consistently, uniformly, and equally at every polling place in the land.

A national standard of punchcards where "swinging gate" chads count but "pregnant" chads do not...?

Sure, I can live with that, or the other way around is cool too... just pick ONE standard, proclaim what that ONE standard is BEFORE the election, and then apply this standard equally and in a consistent manner AFTER the election.

Optical scanners work.

Touch screens work,

Punch cards work,

Benidictine Monks doing caligraphy on parchment paper with feather quill pens works...

Pick any ONE of a zillion possible standards, ratifty that ONE standard, and apply it consistently everywhere.

Elections will never be perfect, it's just the way it is. 

Let's just make sure they are equally imperfect everywhere in the same imperfect way

[The Vorlon]

Good ideas, Vorlon, as long as this only applies to federal representatives and senators.

The states have the constitutional right to determine how their presidential electors are chosen, and of course, to run their own state and local elections.

I really, really like the idea of touch screens. Ever since I got my permit, and I had to take the test using one.

Nothing could be easier, and I can't imagine it ever "failing" to count a vote for legitimate reasons.

The key is that within each state that they have uniform rules - NOT different rules in different parts of the same state.

For example,, lets say Vermont passed a rule that you had to register to vote by having a Benidictine Monk hand caligraphy your registration card, and you had to delivery that registration by carrier pigeon.

Silly - Yes, but also fair as long as EVERYBODY in Vermont used the same method.

Same with voting machines.

In an optical scanner county, 99.5% of votes get counted, in a puch card county, about 98.x %.

If I live in an optical scan area my vote is more likely to be counted than if I live in a puch card county.

This is not fair.

Interestingly enough, the technology does NOT need to be perfect, just consistent.

For example if we had vote readers that shreaded into tiny bits 50% of all ballots without counting them, while silly, would be a perfectly FAIR way of counting, as long as EVERY county had the same machines and EVERY vote had the exact same 50% chance of being shreaded.

The technoloy does not need to be perfect, just equally and consistently flawed