Monday, March 1, 2010

Write-ins Only, Please

What do you guys think about a write-in only ballot?

In the past, poll taxes and tests have been used to weed out the more ignorant/ethnic citizens from voting. We obviously don't want to do that, but it would be nice if voters were more informed, and people who were totally ignorant of the candidates and issues just stayed home.

Say candidates must register with the election board for consideration, but once registered that is all they have to do to qualify. After that, they just have to get their name out to as many people as possible.

This would eliminate the wholly ignorant voters without stopping people from voting. Only votes from people who actually know candidate names would count, without confronting the problem of denying suffrage to some people.

It might also elminate the endless R-D duopoly by allowing anyone and everyone an equal footing on the ballot, instead of just having the top 2 candidates listed.

This way, a candidate who might be hated by R's and D's would have a better chance.

Also, it would reduce the negative influence of primaries, wherein strongly partisan candidates are able to play to their base to get their party's nomination. If party 'nomination' became nothing more than an endorsement, perhaps we might see a different class of candidates (or, if we're lucky, a different class of parties).


I'm just thinking out loud hear. Does anyone see any serious potential drawbacks to this plan?

No comments:

Post a Comment