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Originally posted by Liquor Dealer
"Sure the system could be a lot better.. but why think about that when florida uses ballots people can't even understand, and media coverage affects the outcome. I say take the whole mess electronic, count it all at once. "Please touch a picture of your candidate and/or their affiliated party symbol please." It's a presidential election there shouldn't be any room for bullshit excuses."
-saladami
These are some very good ideas. We live in the central time zone and often the networks have predicted winners before the polls close here - and long before many Californians have had a chance to vote. I don't know what the logistics would be, or how secure this would be but anything would beat what we have now.
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I think that eventually a system like this will be the way things are done. Some communities have already experimented with using networked computer systems to collect and tabulate votes. If I weren't so damned lazy I'd google for the articles I've read on the subject. Basically, like any new technology which is ripe for screwups, miscounts, fraud and exploitation, computerized voting is going to have to be vetted and proven safe and secure over and over again before the people trust it, and will probably have to work its way slooooowly up from small communities to larger. But I agree 100%, paper ballots are crap.
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I really think that if politics are going to ever be really fair the entire system needs to be changed. The very idea of starting to run for an office two years before the election is ridiculous. Let me throw something at you. Let's make it against the law to even announce you are a candidate until 90 days before the election and that you can spend no more campaigning than the salary for the office would pay for the term of office.
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Again, I'm 100% with you on finance reform, and I must say that the 'spend what you'll be paid' rule is an excellent idea which I haven't seen before. As far as the 90-day window for candidacy, I wonder why you feel this is important? For sitting officials I can see not wanting to have the spending all their time campaigning. But the people who run for office are usually professional politicians; why should they have to muzzle themselves if they know what seat they want to hold and how they want to use that power? Incumbents have a paid staff to handle their image precisely so they don't have to worry about campaign issues while they're running things, if I understand correctly. I think that a 90-day window rule would just lead to candidates (incumbent and challenger both) campaigning by other means for one year and 270 days.