Election reform (United States)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Election reform is a process for attempting to ensure more fair elections. Although a strictly ideal voting system is impossible to achieve (see Arrow's impossibility theorem), many current voting practices are felt to be very poor measurements of voters' preferences.
Election reform became a popular topic in the United States as a result of the 2000 Presidential Election, which involved considerable debate over the correct result of a presidential vote in Florida. It has also been provoked on numerous occasions by the American electoral college system for choosing a president. This system has allowed presidential candidates who did not win the nationwide popular vote (fewer votes overall) to win the Presidency, including George W. Bush in 2000.
Electronic voting is one reform widely promoted in the U.S. since 2000, suggesting that modernizing voting machines can improve the vote recording process and election tabulation. The problems with paper ballots are often cited by proponents of election reform. They can include errors in punching the ballots for instance, the infamous chads in the 2000 Presidential Election. Other possible errors are poor ballot design, such as the infamous butterfly ballot.
Problems with voting are not limited to voting machines, but include how the voting system is constructed and methods of intimidation and district alignment called gerrymandering that discourage certain groups from voting and encourage others. Many Southern states at one time included fees, tests, or police at voting booths to discourage blacks from voting; these have been abolished.
Other reforms are suggested for resolving the problems the plurality voting system has with deciding races of three or more candidates. One popular method is instant runoff voting, a system of vote counting in which votes for third party candidates can be converted to votes for other candidates if no candidate wins a majority. Many experts believe a form of the Condorcet method (esp. Schulze method), a system similar to instant runoff voting, does a better job of deciding extremely close or ambiguous elections involving three or more candidates.
Campaign finance reform and voting rights/suffrage also are frequently cited as arenas in need of reform. In the U.S., reform of the presidential debates also has become an increasingly contested issue as many citizens object to the debates being controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties via their privately controlled Commission on Presidential Debates.
[edit] External links
- National Committee on Federal Election Reform
- The Constitution Project - Election Reform Initiative
- AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
- Commission on Presidential Debates
- Citizens' Debate Commission
- Open Ballot voting (aka fusion voting)
- Open primary elections exist in a number of states, allowing voters to vote in primaries without formally joining a party.
