What's All This Brouhaha? » Voting

The suboptimal way to run a primary election

Eric — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:40:53 +0000

The DNC ruled that because Florida and Michigan held their primaries earlier than party rules allow, Florida and Michigan delegates will not be allowed to vote at the convention. Apparently the party feels that the voters of those states should be disenfranchised because their representatives broke party rules. Now there’s a big controversy about that, and one proposal being floated is to allow them half votes, more or less as the Republicans have done.

A friend who probably prefers to remain nameless suggests that the voters that aren’t entitled to a full vote, rather than half, should probably get three-fifths of a vote.

My opinion is that party primaries should be conducted, and paid for, by the parties, and not by the states. As long as they are paid for by a state, the party should be required to honor the outcome of the primary, without regard to the date on which it is held.

Ron Paul Has Already Won

Eric — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:32:52 +0000

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. explains that Ron Paul Has Already Won.

Ron Paul is the only “mainstream” candidate I would prefer over Barack Obama, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to win the Republican nomination.

Larry Lessig on why he supports Barack Obama

Eric — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:52 +0000

Larry’s blog entry links to both a video and a transcript.

Easy Voter Guide

Eric — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:34:15 +0000

On the De Anza College campus yesterday, I happened onto a pile of leftover Easy Voter Guides.Â While in general I think it was a well-prepared and useful guide, I did find one suggestion in it rather funny.Â Under “How to Decide Which Way to Vote on a Proposition”, one method they suggest is “Find out where the elected officials you respect stand on the issue.”

Unfortunately the set of people I respect and the set of people that have been elected to public office are disjoint sets.

It’s possible that the 2008 Presidential Election will remedy that situation, if Barack Obama is elected.Â While I don’t agree with all of Obama’s positions, he strikes me as having more integrity than any of the other mainstream candidates.Â My top choice would be Ron Paul, but it doesn’t look like there’s any real chance that he’ll win the republican nomination.Â Unfortunately running as a Republican doesn’t seem to much improve the electability of Libertarians.

Support H.R. 811 voting system reform

Eric — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:27:26 +0000

H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007,Â would require all voting systems to have a voter-verified paper trail, which would allow us to trust touchscreen voting machines.Â This would ensure that recounts are possible.Â Current machines from Diebold and some other vendors have no paper trail, and recounts are not possible.Â (There have been some claimed “recounts”, which really just amounted to reading the memory card from the machine a second time.Â If it was wrong the first time, it will still be wrong the second time.)

It is vital that we have confidence in the integrity of elections, and this bill would improve that considerably over the current state.Â The bill would also require hand recounts of the paper ballots in at least 3% of precincts chosen randomly.

Please let your representatives know that you want them to support H.R. 811.

[via Freedom to Tinker]