America’s exceptional voting system

2012-11-06  

Even as the election season mercifully draws to a close, the media keeps churning out articles that remind us of the dismal state of the American voting system. The left-wing and the right-wing media trade competing conspiracy theories, preparing their narrative to explain the loss of their favorite.

David Frum | NSB

In this environment, the commentary by David Frum stands out – particularly for his un-American willingness to look for benchmarks outside the United States:

The kind of battle we are seeing in Florida – where Democrats and Republicans will go to court over whether early voting should span 14 days or eight – simply does not happen in Germany, Canada, Britain or France. …

The United States is an exceptional nation, but it is not always exceptional for good. The American voting system too is an exception: It is the most error-prone, the most susceptible to fraud, the most vulnerable to unfairness and one of the least technologically sophisticated on earth.

Frum is correct to point to a non-partisan election administration as a key factor for efficient and trustworthy voting – no gerrymandering there.

His other observations may be a tad superficial. For example, what does it mean to be the “least technologically sophisticated”? Germany uses no technology whatsoever — all ballots are on paper and counted manually on site, and yet there are usually reliable results available within the hour after closing the polls.

And a lot of additional factors make elections in Germany more robust: reliable voter rolls, a multi-party system, a voting system more aligned with the popular vote, just to name a few.

But the key issue really is trust. It is not simply that the elections are run by civil servants, but that they are trusted to do the job right. While civil servants may be belittled as narrow-minded, slow, inflexible bureaucrats, few people would doubt their integrity and their allegiance to the constitution.

In the United States, however, government employees tend to be seen as accessories of the government’s evil scheme to strip citizens of their God-given rights. And as some of the forum comments on Frum’s article make clear, a nationwide harmonized voting system would be seen as even more of an influence of the federal government over the states.

And that’s where, once again, a principle dear to the American public will get in the way of a more pragmatic and efficient solution: The right of every state to establish the most inferior voting system in the nation shall not be infringed upon.

When the police state starts making sense

2012-09-27

What’s the difference? Left: A national ID card abhorred by most Americans. Right: A driver license from the Land of the Free. | BMI, California DMV

Voter fraud, voter ID laws, early voting eligibility, poll station hours, and absentee ballots have emerged as the latest battleground in politics and in courts nationwide. For a country that practices elections since nearly 250 years, the voting process in the U. S. seems in utter disarray. Heck, is voting really that difficult?

A hero in the making

2012-08-18

This week’s media hyperventilation over the nomination of Paul Ryan for vice president was a reminder what the election is all about: It’s not about political direction, but about casting the heroes for the next four years of political drama.

Guns and the frontier

2012-08-12  

Colt Walker Model 1847 | Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes you meet a truly great mind, brilliant in so many ways, totally awe-inspiring. But after a while you may also find that there is a scary streak of insanity running somewhere deep down between the folds of his oversized brain.

That’s probably how even the most sympathetic Germans feel about America and its obsession with firearms.

The politics of drama

High Noon | Universal Pictures

“A moment of great drama” – that’s how Jon Stewart lampooned CNN’s botched reporting of the health care ruling. And thinking about it, drama seems to be a lifeline of American politics.