Fair and Honest Voting

Recently, HBO produced an excellent documentary called Hacking Democracy. You can (and should, IMO) watch it in full here. If you weren't worried about electronic voting machines before, you will be after you've seen it. The machines facilitate cheating in elections on a larger scale than ever before, and this country has seen its share of vote fraud.

So what's the solution?

Here's one article that suggests ideas that constitute an excellent start. From The Nation, via CBS News online, ten ideas to fix and/or strengthen elections in the US:

1. Establish an election day holiday.
2. Establish national standards for elections.
3. Promote and protect the right to vote.
4. Require reliable voting machines and a paper trail.
5. Require nonpartisan election management.
6. Make voting easy and trustworthy.
7. Re-enfranchise citizens denied their voting rights.
8. End the duopoly. Both parties are guilty of redrawing Congressional district lines to protect incumbent seats.
9. Establish a constitutional right to vote.
10. Fund campaigns publicly.

(More detail on each idea can be found in the article.)

Given the abuses that we've seen in the last several elections, these ideas are the foundation on which democracy in the US may rest. Certainly they will go a long way to ensuring that elections are fair and honest.

Remember, if you can vote this Tuesday, do vote. If possible, get a record of your vote.

(no subject)

Turner Classic Movies is doing a night of political movies. I got called in to the living room at about 8:45 (started 8:00) when maya_a discovered that 1776 was running; naturally, I sat down to watch.

What I didn't know was that this was the uncut (shall I call it goyische? :-) version, containing the song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men". This pleased me no end -- and annoyed me, in that I would have taped it had I known it was on and that version.

In any event, I'm still wiping my eyes and trying to sort the earworms ("Mama, Look Sharp" and "Is Anybody There?", tonight).