Doing Elections Wrong

As stories come in from the U.S. polling places, I am reminded of one of the most ridiculous aspects of the U.S. political system: its archaic and difficult voting system. I continue to believe that the single most important change that can be made to the U.S. democracy is to sort out these structures. Consider just a few things that come to mind right now:
* you need to register to vote. Most countries don’t do this – if you’re a citizen, that’s all the registration you need. Sure, if your records aren’t up to date then there’s a bit of extra paperwork and the election staff will glare at you, but your vote will still be welcomed and counted. Not so in the U.S., where you need to go through a registration process. This, apart from being a barrier to participation, also opens the door to the kind of Republican shenanigans we’ve seen the last few elections, with voter registrations being strategically challenged and blocked. There’s simply no good argument for voter registration as a separate process, and as long as it remains then participatory democracy is weakened in the U.S.
* Election day is Tuesday. That is, of course, a day when the vast majority of people have to work. Sensible countries schedule their elections for weekend days, for obvious reasons. Apart from everything else, scheduling on a weekday puts barriers in the way of vulnerable low-wage workers who don’t have much autonomy over their work schedule, either because of their particular work arrangements or because they can’t afford to take a few hours off.
* Voting takes too long. Some details from reader accounts on the front page of Salon’s War Room blog as I write: “…the line at my polling place at 7:30 this morning… snaked around a parking lot and down the street and around the corner. The hour and a half I spent in line…” (St. Louis, Missouri); “My wife, daughter and I arrived at the polls about 6:40am, 20 minutes before they opened, and the line was already out to the road from the HS gym. We only have one polling location in town and it becomes a logistical nightmare. After we voted and were driving home the backup to get to the HS was already a mile long and cars were turning around and giving up. In a town of at least 12,000 registered voters, probably more, we desperately need more than one polling location.” (Londonderry, New Hampshire) Again, these are huge barriers to participation.
* Voting machines: from the archaic devices and poorly designed ballots that gave us the hanging chad debacle in 2000, to the Republican-connected Diebold voting machines that don’t give a paper trail, through a report on CNN (that I read an hour ago and can’t find now) that votes on one machine were being switched from Dem to Rep and vice versa – this is, frankly, embarrassing. Ruth’s post the other day, “My favourite thing about New Zealand elections is that you vote with a fat orange felt pen, a clear sign of a serious democracy at work”, takes on another meaning – a fat orange felt pen can’t screw up your vote for you.
There’s more, of course, this is just off the top of my head and not even as a citizen of the U.S. And none of this is old news. In fact, I just discovered Wikipedia has a big article on exactly this set of issues. Change is urgently needed. It will take grassroots pressure, top-down resources, skilled systems designers and leadership, but it must be done and perhaps under Obama the political will that has been lacking in the past will finally be there. Otherwise, the U.S. will continue to elect its presidents under a cloud of confusion and corruption.