< Here's an objection: The time required. Those endless votes mean that only people with a lot of time on their hands could participate. If you were hoping to stack the deck in favor of "producers", it ain't gonna work.

oh, that right, I am supposed to be a conservative trying to limit the wealthy to vote. . .

really I said what I mean "I want to limit voting to people you honestly give a damn".

You'd get retirees (remember those Dade County voters? Yeah, give 'em a new butterfly ballot every few days, yeah, that's the ticket!), the unemployed and otherwise government-supported, the independently wealthy...

if the working can get out to vote on election day, then they can do so next week, and the week after. Maybe have the election cover two days.

Doing it online would open up participation to shutins, such as those in mental hospitals and in prisons.

it would also defeat the purpose because voting would be made easy. . . that why I don't support online voting.

If you mandate by law time off so that the employed can vote, how many billions of productive hours would be lost?

do we mandate time off on election days for people to vote now? I find time, and If I know I can't, I send in an absentee ballot. Or lets say you drop your ballot off a ahead of time personally in an envelope. (but limit this to only a week or two in advance so that you can't mail in all 50 ballots at once)

It would be terribly expensive to set up and operate. There might be economies of scale in some areas, but there'd also be capital investment in full-time voting facilities, and long-term staffing. This would surely catapult those obscure little county election departments into major bureaucracies.

I don't know, we didn't have that expensive of an operation when I was officer of election first time voting. I got paid 80$, there were 7 people in my district working (mostly retired folks).

There would inevitably be errors and consequent challenges generated by a system rushing frantically through election after election. In fact, the process couldn't proceed any faster than the time to resolve each legal challenge.

ah! and you would get consequential voter backlash for frivolous lawsuits wouldn't you? remember gores approval went down for keeping his challenge alive. subsequent elections would make his challenge moot.

besides they are the exception rather than the norm. Furthermore with more advanced ballot systems at the poles you cut down on the number of election officers and the very frequency of the elections would make it more sensible to use less error prone, more automated voting booths with electronic vote sending.

What would happen if an election dragged on through the entire term being contested?

well you could put on a cap to the elections before you just went with a plurality. . . or you could just determine that neither of the candidates are good enough for the people to want a change.

Actually, in terms of political pork, this has something for everybody. It just might fly. Only, it might not produce quite the result you were hoping for.


you said earlier You'd get retirees (remember those Dade County voters? Yeah, give 'em a new butterfly ballot every few days, yeah, that's the ticket!), the unemployed and otherwise government-supported,

well the retirees would get real familiar with the butterfly ballot scheme wouln't they? however I would prefer a computer system housed at each voting office. that would be easier. Maybe a big touch screen monitor that cycled through the choices.

as for the "unemployed or government dependent": I would expect those too lazy to bother holding up a job to be too lazy to hold up the voting regiment and schedule. I would expect those out of work for legitimate reasons on the other hand not to fall victim to this tendency.

-Justin Kelly