When Americans go to the polls next month, some will vote by pulling a lever, while others will ink in a bubble or touch a screen. Some will breeze through in minutes, while others wait in line for hours. Voters may be asked for ID, depending where they live; they might find the polling place has run out of pens. You can think of all this variety as local flavor. You can also think of it as a crisis waiting to detonate, as it did in 2000, when the election turned in part on Florida’s strange “hanging chads.”
Election reformers tend to shudder at the patchwork inconsistency with which the United States approaches its national elections, and they regard the process as a woefully disorganized mess. Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken takes a different view. When she looks at all the ways in which Americans vote, she sees a national conversation about how best to hold an election—one that shouldn’t be squelched, but harnessed to improve voting for everyone.
Comments
I think she may be on to something here. Why are certain towns in Massachusetts "dry" towns? That's the way those citizens in the majority want it. Interesting.
Sounds like chaos to me. The is a system in place where a law is debated and voted on by representatives of the people. Does anyone believe a country can run with everyone making up their own laws as they go? You'll be law-abiding in one area and arrested when you drive down the road. Does this make any sense at all?
If Ms. Gerken really proposes Federalist alternatives to central planning, how long before she is rejected out of hand by liberals, who view diktats from Washington D.C. and Beacon Hill as essential tools for the correction of mankind's many flaws?