Voting and Elections

With the next presidential election happening this November, I decided it would be a perfect time to discuss voting and elections in America and what I believe could be an alternative solution to our current system.

To start let me try to establish a baseline with everyone, I am under the belief that no election is 100% accurate. This was brought to everyone’s attention in a big way during the 2020 election but election interference and other levers of manipulation have been used in the past. But I really question election integrity as a whole because I think we would be naive to think that there is 0 fuckery taking place. So now that we have hopefully found common ground, what could be the solution?

As of now, the electronic ballot systems are owned and operated by Dominion voting systems or mail-in ballots. However, both of these have enormous holes in the system that are perfect for bad actors to take advantage of. 1) who knows what goes on behind the scenes at a company? Between potential money flowing in from outside sources to management manipulating their systems, there is a huge lack of transparency. There is a documentary called “Hacking Democracy” that goes into great detail about the flaws that electronic voting systems have. 2) in regards to mail-in ballots the 2020 election showed that mail-in voting allows for a large gray area again ripe with the opportunity to manipulate results by those who count.

My solution to this would be to create software that requires multiple methods of verification, government-issued ID, Social Security, tax returns, etc. And allows you to vote through the software. I believe having this as an option would increase the number of votes cast by younger generations and allow for full transparency. It would also mean that the verification you must provide to vote qualifies you as a US citizen who is over 18. I know some people would think that a SaaS application for something as important as this would be the perfect battleground for hackers, however with the level of sophistication in cybersecurity available today I think you could make it as secure or more secure than banks and other platforms that require sensitive information. Also, it could be on the blockchain, meaning there would be a ledger of all activity (in this case votes submitted) that could be audited for any malicious activity. I also realize that creating an online government ID could be used as an invasion of privacy potentially, but it is no different than your Social Security number. If anything I believe it would clean up and streamline the process significantly.  I will create a separate post about what a potential government software could do and its benefits as I see it.

Now I will talk about something that will be seen as a more controversial opinion on how I believe voting should take place. It is insane that each person’s vote is weighed the same. I think it is possible to hold the belief that we are all equal in theory, however, it is objectively true that everyone is different and I think these differences should be taken into consideration when determining something as consequential as to how our government is run and who controls it. I think there should be criteria met to be able to make your vote truly equal 1. For instance, I think that someone who pays taxes should have a preferential vote against someone who doesn’t. Some people would claim that this isn’t a fair method and that may be true but I am giving an example. I just don’t think that people who are burdens on the tax system should have the same weight as net contributors to the system. This is a big reason why I believe past generations have left mine and subsequent generations holding the bag so to speak.
An example would be social security. Simply, social security is an unsustainable model that I have already accepted will not exist or make no impact on my financial well-being upon retirement. But if a politician were to say they plan on cutting social security the odds of them winning are 0% primarily due to people who currently receive or are about to receive social security. Therefore no change can be made to a system that by all measures will fail.

I believe that if the people voting were contributors to the system then the system would be better especially if the incentives are there. I also think that transparency in elections is pivotal in making people believe in democracy again and thus making them want to contribute. As I see it now the lack of transparency is why many people don’t care enough to go vote. It’s also what makes people hate paying taxes and for the people who can, avoid paying taxes as much as possible. When such a large % of your income is being taken for taxes however everything in our country has gotten worse it makes you feel like you are just being robbed. Take California for instance where on top of federal income tax you pay 13% state income tax. I can guarantee most residents of California would not mind paying that 13% if it was a utopia, complete with great infrastructure, no homeless problem, no crime, great public resources, etc. However, it is not, there are parts of California that more closely resemble a 3rd world country than that of what I think an American city should be. All of this I believe is a result of voting. When you have people voting that are burdens on the system they will almost always vote in a way to increase their burden on the system. An example would be someone on welfare will almost 100% of the time vote for someone who will enable them to keep receiving welfare or increase their welfare benefits. And when these people’s vote is equal weight to the people who contribute to the system but receive nothing from it, you have built an unsustainable model destined for collapse.