Happy Election Day!

As I sit and wait for a few people to go down to the Hill and watch election results, I've had time to reflect on how we could improve election day. Here are some of my election suggestions:

Make Election Day of a Federal Holiday. I won't go as far as suggesting compulsory voting like Australia, but seriously, if we get Columbus Day off, why not election day? People ideally would have some more time to review issues and candidates, more people have the chance to be poll workers (its actually really fun), and there wouldn't be problems about people not having time to vote. I think it also symbollically sends a good message that we value civic engagement.

Stickers for everyone, including absentee voters. I heard shocking news from Alex that in Syracuse, they don't give out the "I Voted" stickers. Now I don't want people going out and making uninformed votes just to get a sticker, but I think that they're a fun little reward for rocking the vote. I like the fact that people can proudly display that they voted, and it even helps remind other people to do so. Furthermore, people who actually take the extra step to request an absentee ballot and pay the postage to send it in deserve a sticker. I was sadly stickerless today for the first time.

Get rid of ballot initiatives. I could write a really a long blog entry on this because I have indeed written long papers on this. In summary: direct democracy nice in theory, absolutely horrible in practice. California had 13 ballot initiatives this time, absurd.

More federal rules and oversight. It's cute that we let counties run elections their own way because they know the locals better, etc, etc but we need better standards for fairness. Did Jim Crowe laws and Grandfather clauses teach us nothing? Between bad ballot layouts (think butterfly ballots) to faulty electronic voting, to polls closing at different times (as early as 6pm, that's just silly).

Flog the Liars. The commercials, automatated phone calls, the campaign literature, and so much general shadiness. Ok, so there's that first amendment thing and difficulty in proving that people are really lying/misleading, but it's just sad to see. A girl can dream.

I really could go on with real gripes and suggestions but I don't want to sound bitter (nor do I actually have time to list everything). Despite all my grievances about our system, I actually do like democracy.