Govt & Election Reform Mega Thread

Archy1221 said:
Overseas voting could have an exception.  In-State voting 2 weeks. 
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I don't know what the magic time period is. Everyone needs to have the ability to vote easily while shrinking the time frame of the overall election.

I think we all can agree that having just one day for everyone to vote in the middle of the week is stupid and is counter productive to allowing people to vote.  Many states have realized this and why they have early voting and mail in voting.  Those are steps in the right direction.

 
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LINK

This is appropriate, because the For the People Act is plausibly the most important legislation considered by Congress in decades. It would change the basic structure of U.S. politics, making it far more small-d democratic. The bill makes illegal essentially all of the anti-enfranchisement tactics perfected by the right over the past decades. It then creates a new infrastructure to permanently bolster the influence of regular people.

The bill’s provisions largely fall into three categories: First, it makes it far easier to vote, both by eliminating barriers and enhancing basic outreach to citizens. Second, it makes everyone’s vote count more equally, especially by reducing gerrymandering. Third, it hugely amplifies the power of small political donors, allowing them to match and possibly swamp the power of big money.
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What about the idea of just getting rid of primary season and let whoever wants to run in the general elections run?  As long as they hit the normal qualifications to make the ballot.  Why should only one Dem or one Rep or one of any party be on?  People in later primary states wouldn’t be forced to support a candidate chosen before they had a chance to weigh in.  

 
Archy1221 said:
What about the idea of just getting rid of primary season and let whoever wants to run in the general elections run?  As long as they hit the normal qualifications to make the ballot.  Why should only one Dem or one Rep or one of any party be on?  People in later primary states wouldn’t be forced to support a candidate chosen before they had a chance to weigh in.  
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I assume you are only speaking of the presidential election at this point.  There is an advantage of a primary season - it can replicate the pressures of being in office and show the true 'metal' of the candidate.  I'm old enough to remember Ed Muskie having to bow out of the 1972 Dem primaries because his emotions got the best of him.  Granted in 2021, showing emotion is more acceptable but not back then.  Or Gary Hart and his Monkey Business in 1988,. etc.  Having primaries allows the little know candidate to rise and gain traction and get his/her views out. Without primaries only the best known and best financed would win in a winner take all general election. 

I think what would help is to do the following:

1. Have more regional primaries.   -  Do away with the single state on a single date primaries.  Each region has certain issues that they share and those issues could be highlighted.  I remember as  a kid when SD and Calif had the same primary date - which state got the attention?  Not hard to guess.

2. Rank scoring - instead of winner take all (which isn't representative of the voters' choices) do rank scoring.    Candidate A may do well in the NE region but by the time we get to the last region, perhaps candidate F might be strong in that region where he overtakes candidate A based on an accumulation of ranked voting through all of the regional primaries.

3.  One regional primary per month - the last Friday, Saturday & Sunday  weekend of the month.  Do it on the weekend to allow greater access (not everyone works 8-5 M-F).

4.  Regions  & voting months:  Divide the states into 6 regions - balanced as much as possible by their electoral college weight

January:  Deep Southern States  NC, SC, Ga, Fl, Al, Ms, Tn   95

Feb:   Farm belt   (Feb being a shorter month, typically farm issues in the main issue and their can be a focus on this major issue for the region)

and farmers aren't in the fields in Feb.  SD-Ks, Min-LA, Wis, Ill,   - 87

March:   Northeast / New England, NY, MidAtlantic states to Maryland - the worse of winter is over   92

April:   SW/Mountain West states  Tx, Ok, , Nm, Az, Ut, Wy, Mt, Id   86

May:   Pacific Coast:   California, Oregon, Washington , NV, Alaska, Hawaii   84

June:  Industrial Midwest   Ind, Mi, OH, Pa, WV, Ky, VA   91   (had to add Va here to not over load the south)

5.  July:  Party conventions

electoral_map_2012-2020.jpg


 
Pence speaks ... finally

About election reform and against the Dem proposals for election reform.    He doesn't mention Trump - I think he is severing the ties to the man if not the ideas.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/03/election-integrity-is-a-national-imperative/

Some of his comments after he mentioned 2020 election irregularities:

Congress will vote this week on HR 1, the so-called For the People Act, a massive 800-page election overhaul bill that would increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally qualified eligible voters.

In 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s new voter ID law, the ruling noted that America has a long, well-documented history of election fraud. The court cited the 2005 report of the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, which said the “electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud.”

HR 1 would eliminate those safeguards and prevent states from implementing new, needed reforms. Polling shows that large numbers of Democrats did not trust the outcome of the 2016 election and that large numbers of Republicans still do not trust the outcome of the 2020 election.

We have to do everything we can to change that and ensure that the American people, no matter which political party they favor, have confidence in the fairness and security of the election process.

HR 1 mandates the most questionable and abuse-prone election rules nationwide, while banning commonsense measures to detect, deter, and prosecute election fraud.

The bill would force states to adopt universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration for any individual listed in state and federal government databases, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles and welfare offices, ensuring duplicate registrations and that millions of illegal immigrants are quickly registered to vote.

States would be required to count every mail-in vote that arrives up to 10 days after Election Day. States must also allow ballot harvesting—where paid political operatives collect absentee ballots from places such as nursing homes—exposing our most vulnerable voters to coercion and increasing the risk that their ballots will be tampered with.

At the same time, state and local election officials would be stripped of their ability to maintain the accuracy of voter rolls, barred from verifying voter eligibility, and voter ID would be banned from coast to coast.

Congressional districts would be redrawn by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Illegal immigrants and law-abiding American citizens would receive equal representation in Congress. Felons would be able to vote the moment they set foot out of prison.

Leftists not only want you powerless at the ballot box, they want to silence and censor anyone who would dare to criticize their unconstitutional power grab.

HR 1 is also loaded with ill-advised changes to federal campaign laws that would impose onerous legal and administrative burdens on candidates, civic groups, unions, nonprofit organizations, and ordinary citizens who want to exercise their First Amendment rights to engage in political speech, including on public policy issues that are vital to the life of our nation.

Under HR 1, donations to many private organizations would be made public, exposing millions of Americans to the radical left’s cancel culture crusade.
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Pence is yet another toad. There should be consequences for this kind of garbage.

Pence pushes false election fraud claims in denouncing Democratic reform bill


Pence expressed concern about "the integrity of the 2020 election," citing "significant" and "troubling" voting irregularities in an op-ed for the conservative publication Daily Signal.


 
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, and Pence did not make any specific claims in his op-ed. Rather, the former vice president continued to promote the misinformation pushed by former President Donald Trump that led Trump supporters to storm the US Capitol as Pence joined the Senate to certify the election's results.
 
While in office, Pence never publicly challenged Trump's false claims that the election was stolen from him, but he didn't address the matter after he certified the results on January 6. In his last days in office, he touted administration accomplishments and avoided questions from the press amid Trump's impeachment, and has largely kept a low profile since President Joe Biden's inauguration.
Pence described the events of January 6, which put him and his family in direct danger, as "tragic," and said the insurrection "deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America."
 
 
Yes, Pence is pushing the unsubstantiated  narrative about fraudulent voting.   I guess he didn't learn anything after Trump targeted him during the insurrection. 

 
TGHusker said:
Yes, Pence is pushing the unsubstantiated  narrative about fraudulent voting.   I guess he didn't learn anything after Trump targeted him during the insurrection. 
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yeah...there was a part of me that felt sorry for the guy when Trump sent the mob after him.

That didn't last long.

 
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