Live Free, Vote Hard!
by Cody Keenan on February 12, 2008 in Opinion
Better luck next time, sucker!
By now, you’ve learned two things: 1) We’re witnessing the Most. Important. Election. Of. All. Time. and 2) America doesn’t make mistakes.
Combining those two truths, you no doubt understand that our electoral process is second to none. With that in mind, here’s a quick guide to the colorful tapestry that is voting in the United States. Take it back to the leaders of your home countries for guidance! I’ve also printed up several handy wallet-size cards.
Keep It Interesting. Let’s be honest, voting can be boring. So it helps to keep people on their toes by changing voting practices and hours by state and by city. Last Tuesday, nearly one thousand voters showed up in Virginia demanding to vote, when their primary was actually yesterday. Gotcha! And in the ten years I’ve been voting, I’ve voted with pen, pencil, marker, hole punch, touchscreen and lever. It’s like a democracy buffet and I want seconds!
Some states hold caucuses, which are fun too. Basically, they’re big parties where the campaigns give you cookies and, rather than vote in the usual sense, you stand with a group of people supporting the same candidate as someone counts heads. Caucuses work on the honor system as I’m sure some founding father intended. Last month, I was an observer at a caucus site in Iowa in which my preferred candidate needed just one more supporter to pick off an extra delegate. There was no oversight; I could have caucused and been counted. (I didn’t. Fortunately, all Americans are just as trustworthy.)
Hire the most experienced poll workers. The poll workers at my polling place in Somerville were almost as old as democracy itself. That means they know what they’re doing. Sure, I had to repeat my name and address four times before finally writing it for an octogenarian worker, but there’s no substitute for generations of experience.
Embrace Technology. Forty percent of all votes in America are now cast on electronic voting machines. Six states with electronic machines require neither random checks of the machine nor paper receipts of your vote, because ensuring legitimacy can be cumbersome.
There may be slight mishaps from time to time. Last Tuesday, several machines malfunctioned in New York and others were decertified in California over tampering fears. And in New Jersey, the governor was forced to wait a half hour to vote because machines were down. But like Donald Rumsfeld said, democracy is messy.
The CEO of the largest voting machine company is a big donor to one of the parties, but no one has proven that he’s rigged an election yet. And fears of teenage hackers manipulating democracy and robbing you of your vote are probably overblown. No one can understand them anyway. “4LL j00r 4MER1C4n 90vERNMeN7 M b3L0n9 t0 uZ. Pwn3D!!!1!” What does that even mean? If they can’t use proper grammar, they probably aren’t sophisticated enough to steal an election.
Have fun! Sometimes, lines can be long and tempers can be short. So it helps to entertain voters. In Chicago, for example, twenty who tried to vote last Tuesday discovered that their pens didn’t work. Poll workers claimed it was invisible ink. Actually, the “pens” were plastic styluses for electronic machines. The twenty disenfranchised voters thought it was hilarious, and couldn’t wait to come back in November with acid-filled flower lapels.
Stash a celebrity on hand. Chicago’s a great town for voting. You can vote twice, even if you’re dead. But last week, one downtown voter discovered that her polling place wasn’t ready, and she was afraid she’d get to work late. Fortunately for her, Oprah Winfrey walked by and, upon hearing the story, stayed with the voter until it was sorted out. Imagine if Oprah hadn’t been there? Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and George Clooney have special UN sanction to man international polling places. Give them a call.
Save the voters from themselves. After the 1980 election, the Democratic Party created “superdelegates” in an attempt to give party insiders more control over the nomination process. A superdelegate can be an elected officeholder, a member of the Democratic National Committee, or unelected past party official. He or she can cast his or her delegate vote for any candidate – even if the voters of his or her state voted differently. Now that’s free choice!
Approximately 20 percent of the delegates awarded in the Democratic nomination are superdelegates – and each is worth tens of thousands of average American votes. So if the pesky grassroots voters choose the wrong candidate, the infallible party elite put things back on the right track. And, while I don’t want to spoil the surprise, there are one or two superdelegates right here at HKS! You may have even taken a course with one!
Just in case, maintain a strong judiciary. If the people muck everything up, you can always have the courts decide.
It’s going to be difficult to implement a system this perfect in your home countries, but freedom isn’t free. And hey, it works: before last weekend’s primaries and caucuses, seventeen million Democrats and nearly ten million Republicans had already cast votes in 2008. And most of those counted.
Photo credit: Mother Jones Magazine
Written by Cody Keenan · Filed Under Opinion
Cody Keenan is a former Opinions Editor of the Citizen. Prior to his time at the Kennedy School of Government, Cody worked in the United States Senate from 2003 to 2006. He spent last summer on a leading presidential campaign.
A Chicagoan and graduate of Northwestern University, he blames his Midwestern roots for his affinity for meat products and perennially losing sports teams. In this space, he hopes to write columns on string theory, metaphysics, and behavioral economics, but will probably just stick to politics and American culture.
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