RE: Lobbyists

[Denise Hood <hoodsx3@aol.com>]

Joe stated:

"Of course, making election day a national holiday, creating one national window of voting time, using the same voting machines in every distirct nationwide, feeding all of the tallies to one center in each state then on to DC, and holding ALL tallies until the window closes, might bring everything under greater scrutiny."

Joe, you are so right-on about this! There has been much made in this discussion of the fact that there is so much voter apathy, and such poor voter turn-out in elections. But, other than bemoaning it (myself included), and making educated guesses that voter apathy is a reflection of voter ignorance, no one really proposed a possible solution. 

For years, we have been in need of the sort of election reform that is designed to include more people in the process. 

Why, other than tradition, do we need to have elections on a Tuesday, with most of the time the polls are actually open during the working day? Many people cannot make it home from their place of work before the polls close. Why don't more states provide for "Motor Voter" absentee ballot registration, or make absentee voting available to all voters in the state? Why not switch election day to a Saturday, or make election day a national holiday, so everyone has access to the polls? Why not extend the voting period to 24 to 48 hours? 

Are we honestly to believe that no one in Washington is interested in legislation that would act to remove obstacles to voter participation? Or does the present system actually act to exclude a certain segment of our society, which might vote a certain way? So this "lack of interest" in election reform that will embrace voters and make it easier for them to vote may actually be intentional, and designed to guarantee a certain election outcome, or at least very heavily influence it!

After the debacle in Florida, we have to take a hard look at voting practices that exclude. National attention has been drawn to the nightmare resulting from a "national draw," and the horrible consequences of two presidential candidates balanced on a razor's edge. IF there is now no interest in reforming our election laws, to absolutely guarantee that no one's civil rights or voting rights are denied, (due to ballot tampering, faulty ballot designs, felon purges that illegally remove thousands of legal voters, non-uniformity of ballots and machinery, as well as non-uniformity of elections codes from county to county within the same state, not to mention shameful partisan Supreme Court intervention, designed clearly to favor one candidate, while denying the rights of the other), then we have to ask ourselves why no interest? 

Citizens everywhere around this country should be demanding immediate reform to an electoral system that allowed an election nightmare like the 2000 election to happen. They should be demanding a full and complete investigation, and whatever reforms are necessary to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. This election, it was Florida, and the election miasma propelled Bush into the White House. Next election, it may be your state, and help another party's candidate. Will we stand for it then? WOuld those who stood to gain the most from the fiasco this time around have stood still and allowed a 5-4 Liberal majority Supreme Court to do to them what has been done to those of us who did not support Bush?

In the past few months, since election night, I heard many comments made about how this election has made many feel mistrustful, and hopeless, and like "their votes don't count", and many who were interviewed stated that "they would never vote again!" This is an outrage which none of us should stand for. 

If anyone seriously wants to deal with the problem of voter apathy, the time has never been riper than now, to probe deeply, learn form the mistakes, and reform the system to include as many Americans as possible in the process, and insure that no one's voting rights are infringed upon, or denied ever again.

This is the U.S.A. It is a new millenium. There's no excuse for the absolute mess our electoral system has been exposed as being by the 2000 election. We must demand of all our legislators that they make election reform their #1 priority in this session. Anything less should be viewed with extreme skepticism and suspicion!