If you were to redesign the election process in the U.S., what would it look like?

Parliament

I, too, would rewrite the Constitution and eliminate the presidential system we have and institute a parliamentary system. It’s much more stable.

I would get rid of the electoral college and make it a popular vote.

I would not have caucusing during the primaries where people know how you are voting.

I would have big warnings to people who live in states with closed primaries. When they register to vote I would have a huge warning they have to agree to, and I would make those states advertise during morning news a prime time a few weeks before the election in their state.

I would give tax money towards campaigns and cap amounts that can be spent, but I haven’t thought that completely through yet.

- I think an online voting system would be a disaster. If the server gets hacked, the entire election becomes rigged.
– No country Ned’s a special holiday to vote. In Ireland the voting polls are usually open from 7 am to 10 pm. So even if you are working on that particular day, there is still time to vote.
– Continue to use paper ballots. Electronic systems can malfunction
– Voters could be supplied a reference number that coorisponds to their voting card. You could have a website to enter the reference number for conformation. That way the voting is still anonymous and private.
– Possible
– Your country should have the same rules nationwide. Most other countries function like this.

I think you could possibly reduce the voting age to 16. A lot more young persons are interested in politics these days. In my opinion what American politics needs is a stringer focus on more parties. We have over 10 parties in the Ireland and they have a similar system in the UK. America is far too big to only be focusing on two main parties. You need to advocate more support for the alternatives to democrate and republican. The alternatives are already there, you just need to support them.

I would require some kind of proof of mental competence – as well as citizenship and unique and verified registration in one place – in order to be admitted to the voting process. Beyond that I would not venture to judge the merits of the person’s political beliefs. But I would want to be certain that they understand simple logic, basic cause-and-effect and knowledge of the meanings of words in the language of the ballot that they were voting on. (Perhaps if they could also demonstrate a basic awareness of history, at least who-did-what-to-whom-and-approximately-when and a proven ability to recognize some of our current political leaders, then they could be awarded extra ballots.)

I realize that a lot of people will still vote based on looks, class, skin color, gender (this year women seem to be the primary offenders in this area, it seems), astrology and other kinds of magical thinking, but if we could at least exclude those from voting who cannot think in any other way, then at least the rest of us wouldn’t feel that our votes are being cast against a hopelessly overwhelming weight of morons.

Who, me? It would look like an orgy involving TheThree Stooges, every female cartoon character ever excluding Betty Boop & a travelling trampoline act comprising entirely of dwarfs born in Buenos Aries.

Move election day from Tuesday to the weekend.
Make early voting available in all states. It is already available in most. I am not sure about the security issues of mailing ballots to everyone. It is done in a few states and, if it can be made reasonably tamper free, it should be universal.

At the very least, I want a weighted, tiered voting system.

I want to be able to say “candidate A is tops, candidate B if not A, and Candidate Q is awful”.

That way a third party vote isn’t automatically a vote for the least desirable candidate, and a popular independent has a chance of being elected if enough people from both sides place them as “second choice”.

Caucuses should be done away with. Our system should not be decided by the few thousand people who could get away from work at 6pm.

Everyone should be automatically registered to vote once they reach the age of majority.

Proportional voting is a wonderful idea. Thank you, @Seek. They have a good system in New Zealand.

As a none American… Couldn’t you guys at least come up with a system that doesn’t take 12 months to sort out (and that’s before you add on the campaigning bit that started last year? The year before?) I’m pretty sure that you couldn’t come up with a more complicated or convoluted system if you tried and you still only end up with two viable candidates.

I think that the money needs to get sorted. People who can afford it can buy their way to power. That’s so wrong

Simply add the option of a vote of no confidence.

@NerdyKeith @DoNotKnowMuch

The right of the US states to set their own parameters is Constitutionally protected.

@SecondHandStoke the constitution can, and has been, amended. Given the current system of presidential voting was designed to keep the slave owning southern states happy it might be time to have a look at it.

Before I would propose a redesign, I would ask myself: why is it that voter suppression is so prevalent yet barely noticed in so many places? I was watching a news clip yesterday of a line snaking down the street and around the block of folks waiting 3 hours to cast their ballot.

The system needs to eliminate the unfair advantages given to the two mega parties, and to super-wealthy and corporate donors.

So:

* Allow voters to express their approval or disapproval for any or all candidates for one position, not one all-or-nothing vote.
* Require a favorable opinion from the voters for anyone to hold public office.

So it would look a lot like one of these graphs, but perhaps with even more candidates, and not broken down by male/female, but basically this. This gives a view of how much each candidate is actually approved by the voters, without any “lesser of two evils” or “you’re wasting your vote” dilemmas, and with a positive approval needed for anyone to be elected.

On the financial side:

* Reverse Citizen’s United
* Have public funds pay for the campaigns of all candidates with a certain number of supporters.
* Greatly limit or eliminate monetary private campaign contributions to specific candidates. Donations could be made but would be spread to all candidates.
* Restore some actual unbiased free press, rather than allowing media corporations to choose what to report and how to report it based on their owners’ agendas.

As for your specific questions:

- Would you support an online voting system?

Only if we can find a way to secure the bejeezus out of it, probably requiring multiple independent audits and open source technology. The problem with any computer-based system is there is not very much human oversight, so fraud can be perpetrated far too easily because it could involve only a few people and would tend to require technical expertise to detect. It needs to be really, really un-messable. One way might be if the system would allow anyone to check their own votes, though it might require everyone to be able to see how everyone voted, which would cost anonymity, which is not good. Paper ballots that have to be handled by many people, most of whom are volunteers interested in fairness, is very hard to come close to beating with technology that removes most people from the process.

– Would you support a federal holiday to allow people to vote?

Sure. And/or use an existing holiday, or always use a Saturday, or allow voting over 3 days or a week, not just 24 hours.

– Should we be using paper, electronic, or a combination of both types of ballots?

As I wrote above, we should use paper as long as electronic votes cannot provide as good or better security. We know corporations are interested in buying our elections, and are willing to use anonymous agents and spend billions of dollars to do so, so it was to be very very secure, which means transparency and public oversight. I’m not aware of any electronic system that’s as secure as paper.

– Should there be a way to confirm that your vote was counted?

Ideally yes.

– Would things be different for primary vs general elections?

See my previous post. It wouldn’t require a primary election. However there could be an elimination round, which might make sense, and it could be something much less secure, because it would just be something like you need to show you have some threshold of support.

– Should we do away with caucuses?

No, we should do away with having two large generic parties that dominate elections and act like gangs. The existing parties can exist and do what they want, but we should make them far less dominant by changing the election system to a fair one, as I described in my first post above.

– Should there be a federal standard for all election rules and processes, so that states are not allowed to make up their own?

There should be some federal standards, to avoid SNAFUs from incompetence and/or corruption, but some amount of state freedom to do as they want can be good, as long as it doesn’t cause serious problems.

- And what about voter eligibility and registration? Should this happen automatically at 18 years old, or should there be a manual process for registering? Should there be any actions which a citizen could take that would invalidate their right to vote (felony, etc)?

I think the main thing is it should be very easy for citizens to register. I don’t like automatic because it implies automatic citizen tracking that I don’t approve of. I think that there should be a review of felony voting invalidations and what the standard should be. Maybe a national referendum after an investigation is presented to the public. This is especially important because “it is known that for decades the “war on drugs and other police targeting has been aimed at removing voters’ rights from targeted groups, such as African Americans.

Thanks everyone! Some great responses here. I’ve been slammed with tons of work since I posted this, so I hope to respond later or tomorrow.

For president elections it would be purely popular vote. No electoral college. No delegates at all. Conventions, if they existed, would be for entertainment and introduction of the nominee purposes.