Sierra Magazine
10 Steps to Better Elections
Our electoral system is in tatters. Here's what we can do to fix it.
by Steven Hill
THE U.S. ELECTORAL SYSTEM is our nation's crazy aunt in the attic. Every few years she pops out and creates a scene, and everyone swears that something must be done. But as soon as election day passes, we're happy to ignore her again — at least until the next time she frustrates the will of the people.
Under a fair, equitable, and democratic system of voting, Al Gore would have been elected president in 2000, and George W. Bush would still be whacking weeds in Crawford. In 2004, even though Bush won the popular vote by some 3 million ballots, the election was still tarnished. Florida replayed its 2000 debacle with attempts to purge African-American voters from the rolls, and voters who requested absentee ballots but never received them were barred from voting in person.
There were hundreds of complaints of voting irregularities in Ohio, with voters in some black precincts waiting in lines at polling places for seven hours because of voting-machine shortages. Some voters were required to show identification, even though the demand was illegal. Approximately 92,000 ballots failed to record a vote for president, most of them on the same type of discredited punch-card systems that malfunctioned in Florida in 2000. Ohio election officials may have improperly disqualified thousands of the 155,000 provisional ballots cast. Bush won the state — and thus the presidency — by 118,000 votes.
ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES PRIDES ITSELF AS A beacon of democracy to the rest of the world, for the second time in a row our presidential election appeared bumbling, if not outright fraudulent. Sergio Aguayo, an election observer and political scientist at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, told BusinessWeek that the partisan way our election was run "looks an awful lot like the old Mexican PRI," referring to the notoriously corrupt ruling party that dominated Mexican politics for seven decades. President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center monitors elections around the world, said that in Florida, "some basic international requirements for a fair election are missing."
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