This process examines folds and fibers in the ballots, as well as ink markings, and was sparked by unproven allegations that thousands of paper ballots were printed in Asia and smuggled into Maricopa County, according to other audit observers. But, it does not mean that all ballots have been counted as there are still many ballots to process before the election results are certified, including mail ballots, provisional ballots, conditional voter registration ballots, damaged ballots that need to be duplicated, and other ballots that may need more review. Post-Election Audit audits. Post-Election Audit audits check that voting systems properly counted ballots. There is the middle in America but they’re not producing the candidates because the primaries are so closed that it gets locked down, and so it’s only those who are the hardline activists that are ultimately voting in the primaries and therefore voting those who are more aligned to their views, that are not predisposed to building compromise or consensus that are nominated and therefore, that is the choice for Election Audit many in the general election. SNOWE: Today there are very few of what you would call centrist, moderate candidates on either side of the political aisle.
San Francisco put in ranked-choice voting a few years ago, and they had the most polite mayor’s campaign that you ever saw, because if you’re hoping to get somebody’s second or third choice vote, if you know you’re not going to get their first, you’re not going to say anything bad about them in the campaign, because you drive those voters away. Because that’s where you get the more hardline ideologues who are going to be participating as well as the outside groups that weigh in with millions of dollars and that will work to defeat these candidates. If you get 60 percent of the vote you not only represent 100 percent of people, but no one even cares about the election, because you’re going to win easily And we’re left with elections that leave most people stuck in sort of lopsided one-party districts. So whoever gets 51 percent of the vote represents 100 percent of people. So ranked-choice voting simply means that you get multiple choices, you can weight your choices, and the candidate that the most people like – and usually the one that’s the most reasonable – becomes the next mayor, the next president, the next senator.
And I think that makes voters happy, it makes politicians behave better, and it’s something that’s coming slowly to the United States and where we have it, it works well. And that’s the problem; you no longer have the middle in politics. Because that’s how it was in Snowe’s early years in Washington. This is particularly true if jaiL time was attached to corrupt Election Audit officials. And the bigger fear today among elected officials is facing a primary. Open primaries already exist in 11 states, while a few more, including California, have what’s called a “top-two primary.” That lets voters choose any candidate they want in a single open primary and then the two top vote-getters advance to the general election, even if they’re both from the same party. SNOWE: A closed primary. Among her proposed solutions: getting rid of gerrymandering through independent, nonpartisan districting; limiting the power of political action committees; and requiring a five-day workweek in Congress, which would, as she writes, “provide additional time to address the critical issues, while also fostering more opportunities for senators and reps to interact socially with each other in Washington.” But if there’s one idea that Snowe would personally like to kill off, it would be …
ROB RICHIE: I’d like to get rid of winner-take-all elections to elect congress, state legislatures, and city councils. That is, if there’s ten candidates in a race, you get one vote. Some research shows that moderate candidates don’t do any better in an open primary; others argue the change in California has already led to more competitive elections and a more functional state legislature. There’s a system called ranked-choice voting, where you don’t get just your vote for the top choice that you have, you also get to vote on all the other choices. And you get to rank them. DEAN: If I could do a single thing in American politics, it would be to get rid of the single-vote for your favorite candidate. HOWARD DEAN: We need to change the way we currently vote. Howard Dean is the former governor of Vermont, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former presidential candidate. About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. Consider these numbers. In 1958, the American National Election Study found that 73 percent of Americans said they trusted the government either most of the time or just about always.