A right or a privilege? - Voting in constitutional republics

[iNow]

1. Voting accepted as an inalienable right. Accepted by the three wings of government - and by the people.

2. Voting treated as such - with full weight of government supporting the right.

3. Bodies that arrange voting (in UK it is local councils under central guidance) given funding, time allocation, and power to put in place multifaceted voting arrangements from old fashioned place your mark here (we can still tick a box on a paper here in UK) to secured online voting. This system to be identical nationwide and not varying at a local level - or as close as possible

4. Central body (independent from body in 3) with well funded local apparatus to check system, run tests and highlight flaws, inequities, and difficulties.

5. Make voting day a national holiday where people can have off work without fear of involuntary termination

6. Undo gerrymandering and divide districts in simple geometric shapes having no more than 4 sides, while potentially also removing the electoral college

[imatfaal]

5. Make voting day a national holiday where people can have off work without fear of involuntary termination

6. Undo gerrymandering and divide districts in simple geometric shapes having no more than 4 sides, while potentially also removing the electoral college

 

5. Yes - although in a country as vast as the USA why not a few days - say Thurs through to Sunday with Thursday as a National Holiday. They had to keep lots of stations open well past closing time last election because of huge queues still waiting outside at previously scheduled end of voting - how may people just looked at queue, didn't realise the law said they must be accommodated, and turned and went home?

 

6. I have never understood the need for the electoral college system in a simple election across the entire Nation. There probably are good reasons for it still existing; but everyone is voting for a President and each vote should have the same weight - so why not just count the votes? We cannot do that here in UK as we do not elect our head of state and our head of government is elected by the party that forms the government. But the USA seems tailor made for a simple head count - whoever gets the most votes gets the keys to the big white building on Pennsylvania Avenue

[MigL]

7- reduce or eliminate lobbyist and their influence from governments.

 

Oh, this isn't a political/governmental wish list ?

I vote in favor of the voting holiday anyway.

[Endy0816]

6. I have never understood the need for the electoral college system in a simple election across the entire Nation. There probably are good reasons for it still existing; but everyone is voting for a President and each vote should have the same weight - so why not just count the votes? We cannot do that here in UK as we do not elect our head of state and our head of government is elected by the party that forms the government. But the USA seems tailor made for a simple head count - whoever gets the most votes gets the keys to the big white building on Pennsylvania Avenue

 

 

The founders wanted to limit the chance of both mob rule and rule via a small group.

 

Has been modified over the years though. A number of states have requirements that their electors vote based on who wins the popular vote.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Endy0816

[iNow]

8) Find a way to ensure approval ratings and incumbency rate are not so inversely correlated.

 

The system wreaks of corruption and dysfunction when (like today) approval ratings of congress are consistently at 14% or below, yet incumbency (meaning existing reps get RE-elected at each new election cycle) is at a staggering and jaw dropping 95%. This likely relates to #6 above, but surely extends beyond.

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The founders wanted to limit the chance of both mob rule and rule via a small group.

Indeed, quite right and a laudable goal that is, too. Perhaps there is a better and more modern way to protect minorities from the aforementioned tyranny of the majority, though?

[iNow]

FYI for anyone wishing to explore these ideas of tyranny of the majority and electoral college further, a new thread has been split off to accommodate exactly that (btw - thanks, imatfaal): http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/87259-tyranny-of-the-majority/

[iNow]

On the subject of getting people to vote, we've noted that getting young people to vote is often quite difficult for various reasons. An interesting study shows that pre-registering them (sign them up such that they are automatically registered upon their 18th birthday) is rather effective at mitigating this lack of turnout:

 

 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2483860

Recent research has cast doubt on the potential for many electoral reforms to increase voter turnout. In this paper we examine the effectiveness of preregistration laws, which allow young citizens to register before being eligible to vote. We use two empirical approaches to evaluate the impact of preregistration on youth turnout. First, we implement difference-in-difference and lag models to bracket the causal effect of preregistration implementation using the 2000-2012 Current Population Survey. Second, focusing on the state of Florida, we leverage a discontinuity based on date of birth to estimate the effect of increased preregistration exposure on the turnout of young registrants. In both approaches we find preregistration increases voter turnout, with equal effectiveness for various subgroups in the electorate. More broadly, observed patterns suggest that the campaign context and supporting institutions may help to determine when and if electoral reforms are effective.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/13/how-to-get-young-people-to-vote-register-them-before-they-turn-18/

 

Their approach then assumes that the mere fact that you turned 18 on, say, Nov. 3 compared to Nov. 5 is essentially random. Thus, they use birthdates as a way to estimate the impact of preregistration on turnout.

 

They find that preregistration did increase turnout among these young voters in 2012. Below is the graph showing the discontinuity: the increase in turnout among those born after Nov. 4, 1990 that is, those who would not have been eligible to vote in 2008 and were therefore more likely to preregister:

 

[see link above for image]

 

You might think that anything that increases the turnout of young people would inevitably benefit Democrats, since young people lean toward the Democratic Party. But that is not what Holbein and Hillygus found. Although preregistration tended to add more Democrats than Republicans to the rolls simply because more young people registered as Democrats it actually reduced the Democratic advantage among those young people who actually voted. Holbein and Hillygus write:

 

We estimate that approximately 37% of partisan voters mobilized by preregistration in 2008 were likely to vote Republican in 2012; in comparison, only 32% of young voters in Florida voted Republican in 2012.

As Holbein and Hillygus note in conclusion, many proposed ways to increase turnout fail to live up to expectations. But preregistration seems to be an exception.