One of he problems with being a genius is that you tend to over think things and make them more complicated than they need to be. All you would need to ID yourself so you could vote on the internet is the same driver's license or state ID card that you now use to vote in the real world. Instead of showing your ID to the lady at the table, you would just swipe it through a card scanner like a credit or debit card. I don't know if you guys have this in your state but, in Michigan, you don't have to fill out your name, address, etc. when you buy a hunting or fishing license anymore. The license agent just swipes your ID through a card scanner, which is plugged into a computer terminal, which is directly connected to the DNR. Then the computer prints out your license and all you have to do is sign it. If, for some reason, you are not eligible to buy that particular license, the computer will refuse to issue it and tell you why. Doing something similar with voting wouldn't make it any harder to vote, it would make it easier. You could vote from the comfort of your own home and not have to stand in line to do it. In the event of a computer glitch, you would have to go see a real person to straighten it out, but you have to do that now anyway.
We've had to show a picture ID to vote in Michigan for a decade or more, and I've never heard of anyone having a problem with it. If you don't have a driver's license, you can get a state ID card for free from the same Secretary of State's Office that handles drivers licenses and voter registration. A few years ago they tried to add a line to the ballot application that asks you if you're a U.S, citizen, but the courts struck it down, saying it was an invasion of privacy. Huh? If you're not a U.S. citizen you're ineligible to vote anyway, and anybody who wanted to scam the system could just lie on the form. "Much ado about nothing"! - (Shakespeare?)
I agree that anybody who is too stupid to vote for a congressman would also be too stupid to vote directly for a bill to become law. Like I said before, you can't make the world idiot proof. The concept of direct democracy has nothing to do with people being stupid, it's all about making the system more efficient. We wouldn't have to scrap the Constitution, all we'd have to do is amend it, replace the part about Congress with a part about direct voting by the people. The good news is that we'd get rid of all those useless congressmen. The bad news is that it won't work anyway.
In a real world conversation the other day, I found out why direct democracy won't work. Instead of four or five hundred congressmen submitting bills for consideration, you'd have like 200 million people doing it. Some of these proposals would duplicate each other, and others would be so poorly worded that they would be misleading or down right incomprehensible. I said before that you would still need something like a board of canvassers to sort all those proposals out. What I hadn't considered was that the current boards of canvassers only have to do their jobs every two years when there's an election coming up. These new guys would have to work on it full time all the time, as there would be a lot more proposals to deal with. I don't know how many people it would take to do this job, but it's not unreasonable to believe that it would be more than the total number of congressmen we have today.
Maybe that's why we have a congress in the first place, to sort through all the wishes and wants of the people and try to make a cohesive program out of them. Maybe they could do a better job and maybe not. Many of the people don't even know what they want, and others keep changing their mind about it. Then there's the people who want pie in the sky, but they want it without a crust or filling. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
No comments:
Post a Comment