Yup, I thought it was about time for another political debate. Trouble is, I'm having difficulty finding someone who disagrees. My extremely conservative father and my extremely liberal aunt both like the idea. There's got to be dissenters somewhere, or the change would already have been made.

A lot of things about the US election process suck. I think a great way to eliminate almost all possibility of cheating is to add a "None of the above" option for every contest. If "None of the above" wins the election, then we hold a new one, and none of the candidates from the first can be in it. I've heard that some European countries work it this way, but I haven't heard any specifically named.

A few years ago here, there was a ballot measure that would have changed the method of counting votes so that all non-votes would count as No votes. It was defeated, and I'm very glad it was. We'd never pass another bill, even though the state had an 83% turnout in the last election. That measure, I think, went way overboard in trying to fix the above problem.

I think it's almost a given that popular opinion will force counties to get rid of punch card ballots eventually.

And this last is just food for thought: in some places, like Brazil, voting is mandatory. People receive fines for not voting! Some people here say they don't vote because they don't like any of the candidates. Perhaps by combining this step with the first, we could create a much more satisfactory practice.

gab"Form an opinion or else!--Brazilian gov't."by