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Election fairness seems to be an increasingly contentious topic in the U.S., with many on the right alleging that democracy is being undermined via election fraud and many on the left alleging it is being undermined via attempts to disenfranchise people and throw out legitimate election results. Meanwhile, independents and supporters of alternative parties see a system that has long discriminated against them. Here are a few proposals for maximizing election fairness and security that don't just side with the left or the right:
• except for voters out of the area (e.g. overseas) or disabled (e.g. bedridden), voting should be done in person on Election Day
• voting should not require government identification; rather voters' fingers should be dipped in ink to deter repeat voting in the same election, as is done in some countries
• all candidates should have the same number of words in voter pamphlets to present their platforms
• candidates should not be charged any fees for ballot access or to have their statements published
• all party-based ballot access restrictions should be abolished
• all write-in votes should be counted, with the name of each such candidate published in the results with the number of votes received
• electronic voting should be abolished, and all ballots hand-counted (computers too subject to hacking or biased programming)
• custody of ballots should be videotaped and the video streamed online from the moment a ballot is submitted to the moment it is counted
• all candidates should be included in official debates and given equal time
• all government-funded media should be required to give equal coverage to each declared candidate
• multi-round elections and debates should be used to winnow initially large numbers of candidates that would presumably result from the implementation of some of these reforms
• seats in legislative bodies should be allocated on the basis of proportional representation as is done in some countries (e.g. a party whose candidates receive 5% of the votes gets 5% of the seats)
What I would like to see in this type of analysis is how much each measure could improve either fairness or security. Otherwise, it's a grab bag of ideas, some of which may do nothing, while a few could potentially even be harmful.
That said, I'll argue against a specific one because I often see it presented as an unalloyed good while, in reality it's a trade off between two sets of negative consequences:
This actually works in the opposite way than how it's intended to work, ie. it gives an disproportional amount of power to some parties. Consider an election between three parties: A, B, and C. Both A and B obtain 48% of votes. C obtains 4%. Now, in order to form a government, either A or B needs to find a way to persuade C to join them, which means that party C holds, in this moment an incredible amount of power. Actually, it will continue to hold, despite accounting for only 4% of voters, an incredible amount of power because it can, at any moment, decide to break up with either A or B, leading to the break up of the government.
There's also another problem, in that assembling coalitions out of smaller parties necessarily entails going against what each party's voters voted for.
Re-using the A, B, and C example, imagine that party A is pro-X while B is anti-X, while those who voted for party C don't care about X. If party C were to assemble a government with one of the other parties, it will add its weight to the pro- or anti-X side, thereby betraying its voters' "don't care about X" stance.
(Note that I'm basically summarizing Karl Popper's thinking on this problem).
Personally, I think the two-party system works better in the US because of its dynamic, diverse culture. I would be curious if it would introduce some dynamism into other countries.
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