Fixing Our Electoral Process

Mike Critelli, Executive Chairman at Pitney-Bowes, blogs at Open Mike.

And he offers some thoughts on the problems with our current electoral process and some detailed, insightful solutions in his post: Citizen Engagement.

I liked his whole post. Here's two failures he points out along with some solutions:

Our elections are generally held on Tuesdays, for reasons that go back to when we were an agricultural society and farmers needed to travel for a day to get to the polling place. Having an election on a single day and having it on a work day no longer makes sense. It would cost more money to let voters be able to vote over a several-day period as they do in Texas, and it obviously would cost more to have polling places open on the weekends, but voting is so important that expanding the time that citizens can vote is a worthy use of our tax dollars.

There should be a requirement that paper ballots, supplemented by explanatory material about candidates’ positions and issues subject to referenda, be available online and be mailed to every citizen for every election.

And he practices good blogging with his disclaimer:

As a provider of a secure voting-by-mail solution, Relia-Vote™, we are well aware of the criticality of a secure voting system. We support the philosophy embedded in the Help America Vote Act to upgrade both the in-person and the mail voting systems to enhance security.

And Mike finishes with:

Ultimately, democracies are successful to the degree that citizens feel that elected and appointed government officials listen and respond to them. Regardless of the formal processes in place, citizens respond to being treated with respect and deference.

Amen, brother. And to that I add Democracies are successful to the degree that citizens reward their elected leaders responsible for listening, responding and representing their (citizens') interests by voting for those leaders that do, and voting OUT those leaders that don't.

To date, we as citizens haven't upheld our end of this relationship. We have the leadership now we've earned.

Comments

[Mike Critelli]

I certainly agree that we need better leadership. I have confidence in the voting public, provided that leaders properly inform and educate them. Unfortunately, I see many examples of active concealment of big issues. For example, government officials at all levels have done everything possible to avoid communicating the degree to which they have created huge unfunded retirement benefit liabilities for government employees. Effectively, there has been a huge wealth transfer from the public to well-organized, reasonably well-paid government employees.

There also is an active concealment of the condition of much of our infrastructure, such as transportation, electric, sewer, water, and other vital systems. Data on condition of roads and bridges is available, but it is hard to find. We tend to learn about these issues only when a bridge collapses.

The media does not help us because it focuses on the sensational event rather than the situation that is a true crisis, but has not yet manifested itself in a spectacular event.

You perform a valuable service in your blog. Keep it up.