Modest proposal for voting: make voting a 2-step, in-person process.
Step 1: create an electronic questionnaire/quiz for prospective voters where the answers are fill-in-the-blank (type via touch keyboard). Make it 16 questions—basic stuff that tests four things, 4 questions each: basic literacy, basic spelling ability, basic knowledge of civics, and basic knowledge of what each candidate stands for. Each quiz is a random combination of questions drawn from a pool of thousands of questions. No multiple choice: too easy to guess. And if the prospective voter fails at basic spelling (or any of the other sections), then s/he is obviously not competent to vote. To sum up: a prospective voter has to pass all four sections of the quiz to prove s/he is competent to vote. Passing, for each section, means 3/4 questions answered correctly.
Step 2: after successfully completing the quiz, the voter gets a printed-out, ID-linked chit certifying s/he passed the competence phase of voting. This gets checked, along with ID, as the voter moves on to the actual voting. The voter then goes to a private voting booth where s/he receives a paper ballot that is also printed out, filled out manually, and slipped into a waiting ballot box.
Maybe this is cruel, but the way I see it, there is no need for the competence phase to be private: let everyone see how everyone else does on the quiz. Display each person's score on a large monitor, in big font. If you can't spell a word like "constitution," you really should be disqualified from voting, and everyone should know it. Same for if you can't read and understand a basic paragraph (maybe fourth-grade level), or if you can't name the three branches of government, or if you can't tell whether a policy quote attributed to your supposedly favorite candidate is actually from that candidate. No need to make the quiz too hard, and there should be no trick questions; we're just checking for basic competence. (This could also be made into a test of basic English skills—no giving the quiz in 27 languages, as when you go to the DMV and fill out forms in your native tongue.)
What do you think? Too pie-in-the-sky (I find it pragmatic)? Too slow of a process (just add booths!)? Too complicated (it's just one extra step)? Too elitist (right—basic knowledge is elitist)? Too many points of failure (i.e., too easy to game)? Too expensive to implement? Too stressful for people who are easily stressed by tests (boo-hoo)? ...Too racist? Go ahead and lay it on me: what's to prevent such a measure from being put into action? Is there something unconstitutional about verifying a voter's competence? Me, I say we work on winnowing out all the incompetents first, then let the rest vote.
Yes, I realize one major flaw is that smart, evil people can still vote. A risk I'm willing to take.
While I agree in the broadest sense that voters ought to have some baseline of general knowledge, everything you have described here in one form or another has been either outlawed by Congress or struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Spelling and language tests were the most common way of disfranchising black people in the South after the Civil War.
ReplyDeleteI've advocated, in hypothetical-land, that in order to vote a person must be 1) of age (arbitrarily 21 for me), and 2) have assets over a particular value (arbitrarily I say $50,000). The assets are probably still an unconstitutional measure if you are talking about constitutional law in the United States. This would remove lots of poor people from the voter rolls. Which again is not where we are going or have been going historically in US history. But in my world order, this is probably how I'd do it.
There are so many man-on-the-street interviews out there, now, in which people are asked basic questions like, "Is Africa a country or a continent?"—and the interviewee doesn't even know what a country is. Call me elitist, but these types of people have no business being anywhere near a voting station.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, though, if most of my proposal has already been outlawed or ruled unconstitutional, then by all means, let the unwashed, uneducated masses vote! After all, it's only America's future.
I wonder just how many young voters (relatives or care givers) are filling out elderly dementia and Alzheimer's mail-in ballots and those in old folk's homes. Voting should be in person with proof that the voter is the person entitled to vote with only names listed reverse alphabetically with no party affiliation on the ballots.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I am in favor of in-person voting.. And in-person voting, for the most part, on Election Day. We do have too many problems with how votes are recorded and tabulated across the US. While I am not in favor of national standards for voting, as elections are constitutionally a state-level affair; I am in favor of states looking around and seeing what works and doing that. In my own county, votes are cast on special paper forms. It is like an old "scan-tron" form. You fill in the circle and that is your vote. It is read by an optical reader and counted. If you have a problem, there is a paper ballot that can be counted. This seems pretty simple and easy on the balance.
ReplyDeleteDifferent localities list names differently, and I have no objection to that.
I am also very much in favor of showing a photo id in order to vote. Objections to that are specious.
Yeah, the Constitutionality of your proposals is questionable. But to me, these basic civics things should be taught in the schools, not the CRT crap indoctrination taking place now.
ReplyDeleteAnd as your other commenters alluded, the real issue isn't so much about stupid voters as it is invalid ballots. Voter ID, vote in person, vote with pen and ink. That would go a long way to restoring integrity in our elections.