Digby recently brought up two issues in her blog, Hullabaloo, and I thought: why not try this!
(1) There's a problem in this country with low voter turnout and voter ID laws and expensive and exhaustive investigations into voter fraud do not help. So here's a way around the problem...
-allow any self identified adult citizen who walks past any polling place to vote (polling places would have ballots for all municipalities within some reasonable radius)
-stamp the hand of the voter afterwards to prevent double voting - this works for nightclubs!
At least test the idea. The major source of fraud is people lying about citizenship; outside municipality voting would be another (smaller) source of fraud. This would only be a problem in areas with high immigrant populations... one solution is to have fewer polling places in these areas or make them less visible... but most people tend to be truthful so this is probably not a big problem. It would be interesting to test... two towns with similar population and demographics: one with standard pre-registered voters and one open to all citizens - how many eligible citizens actually vote and how do common candidates do in each situation?
(2) Conflict in the Middle East is ramping up again with ISIS and worries about Iran developing nuclear weapons (and Israel's war drums don't calm the water) amp up the tension. So how about we try something different...
-since it is often women who resist war, why not give them some economic power over their male warmongers? treat women as heads of households in a major humanitarian effort... they must apply in person with their dependent children to register for benefits. need a simple inexpensive and permanent marker of registry... perhaps tattoo a dot on a hand? benefits could be tailored to the needs of the population and adjusted as needed to minimize the possible influence of male authority figures.
This would likely be cheaper in dollars, lives, long term veterans' benefits and international esteem. If the alternative is war, isn't peace worth trying... even something completely wacky?
No comments:
Post a Comment