The Franklin County Democrat
The truth for a change.Office: 6908 West Argent, Pasco, Washington
US Mail: PO Box 4883, Pasco, Washington 99301 USA
Email: news@franklincounty-dems.org
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The Franklin County DemocratThe truth for a change. |
Published by the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee Office: 6908 West Argent, Pasco, Washington US Mail: PO Box 4883, Pasco, Washington 99301 USA Email: news@franklincounty-dems.org |
| www.franklincounty-dems.org | Sunday September 05, 2010 | Weather at 13:22 PDT:  Fair, and 71 ° F. |
NEWS
EDITORIAL
OPINION
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Reed's electoral reformBy David Chassin, Saturday January 10, 2009In a news release yesterday, Secretary of State Sam Reed recommends that the legislature adopt new election rules and policies. Some seem like good ideas, but others present serious problems in our view. Most prominent among the proposals is to allow on-line voting for military and overseas voters, and to require mail-in ballots be returned by election day, instead of merely postmarked by that date.
We think having ballots due in by election day is not reasonable because that puts the delivery delay out of the voters' control. The postmark is the only legally recognized date stamp when something is mailed. There is too much uncertainty about how long it takes to deliver mail and many voters deliberately want to wait until election day to cast their votes.
On-line voting also presents serious problems. There is absolutely no way to ensure that somebody online is who they say they are. It's bad enough with signatures on paper but digital identification is even more vulnerable to falsification and online fraud laws are largely untested in context of election law. We should also mention the fact that there's no such thing as a completely secure computer system, and that polling server spoofing is a very real possibility. On-line voting also eliminates the possibility of having a certifiable paper trail for vote confirmation.
Reed also suggested that voter registration be allowed much closer to election day, arguing that the current system allows that possibility. In fact it should be allowed right up to election day, with the proviso that the ballot is not opened until the registration is cleared with the state database.
To address the problems arising from the top-two primary systems, Reed also wants to see changes regarding the parties, including defining what constitutes a party. This would prevent candidates from listing parties that don't really exist. However, it is our view that it solely the parties who should have the authority to decide which candidate can use the party's name on the ballot and not the candidate. The party is an association with a legal name and nobody has the legal right to use that name without permission. The party name is just like a brand name or a trademark.
Reed also has suggested that the PCO election needs to be moved back the general election, and has proposed changing the minimum votes needs to be a fixed 20 votes rather than the current 10% of top vote-getter from the same party, which is far too difficult to determine. We agree that this is generally a good idea, but it could impair the ability of minor parties to elect PCOs.
Although Reed didn't address this issue, we would also like to see a change in the vote counting rules so that a single candidates vote is reported as a % of the ballots cast, not votes received. We think there's something wrong about unopposed candidates getting 100% of the vote when they didn't get all the votes. Often, votes undervote as a means of opposing a candidate rather than writing in another name. Send us your comments to Reader's Letters |
Featured LinksPresident Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address |
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Excerpts from President Obama's speech August 9, 2010