The reason that I haven’t blogged much lately is that I promised to post less about politics. I’ve been consumed by politics, both the presidential and local elections.
I am also putting together a proposal for electoral reform, centered around:
–Increasing the number of states (hopefully all) legalizing Electoral Fusion, which was once widespread but was squeezed out by the larger parties in the late 19th century. Only eight states have it right now.
–Expanding the use of absentee ballots (for all elections down to the local level) to include people that can’t get off work to vote and parents of children too young to leave their child alone. I know far too many people that can’t vote because they work 10-12 hours shifts or have to take care of their kids.
–Anti-Gerrymandering laws to remove the lock down that certain parties have on districts.
These are only first steps toward true electoral reform, but it’s a start toward encouraging more voters on both sides of the political spectrum, especially in local elections.
Actually, I’d love to hear what you have to say about my electoral reform ideas. My proposal isn’t complete, and you might find your ideas in there.
Have a great day.
casandersdotnet 
I love the idea of more absentee ballots for more elections, but I feel like they are more susceptible to fraud. There needs to be a way to make sure the ballot is filled out by the actual person, and not being filled out and returned by someone else. Something has to be done, though, the system that’s in place now is broken.
I’m not sure if they are more or less susceptible to fraud, though at first glance it would appear to be. Currently at the voting booth in New York, you just sign your name next to where they already have your signature on file. With an absentee ballot, you have to sign at the bottom to certify that it’s your vote, so I assume that they would match your signature up with the one in their database. I’m not sure if they do it differently in other states. The potential fraud would then come from the board of election workers who would be checking the signature validity and tallying the votes.
More concerning is that there would be a database with your voting record out there, negating the concept of “secret ballot.” But since political party affiliation is already in the Board of Elections database, that secrecy is already limited.
This is just the conversation we are hoping to start as well. I am at unriggingamerica on both wordpress and facebook. Hope you will consider joining your discussion to ours. The politicians are not going to reform themselves therefore we can, we must and I believe we will.