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By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 3 of 4 page(s)

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We need to know where the would-be presidents stand, and why, on these great issues of the day. By and large, the questions in past debates have tended toward the already understood and the trivial.

SHORTER ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

The long, drawn-out primary schedule derives from a much earlier, pre-radio/TV, pre-internet era in American political history, when it was was necessary for candidates to travel widely by horse or train to get around the country, all of which took a long,long time.

There is no good reason to stretch out the primary and campaigning for more than a year and a half. Communication these days is so widespread and rapid that we simply don't need all that hop-scotching around the country for a year.

Why not emulate campaigns elsewhere in the world by drastically shortening the primaries to, say, two or three months -- perhaps in four regional primaries spread out over that period? And the actual campaigning time could
be confined to, say, three months.

MAJOR REFORM OF VOTING SYSTEM

To obviate all the technological glitches in the current fascination with touch-screen and op-scanner voting machines -- which are easily hackable and manipulatable -- why not go the Canadian and French route: paper ballots
counted by hand, with party observers in the rooms as the tabulating goes on? True, the TV networks might not be able to announce the full results by the evening of the elections -- although the counting goes surprisingly fast
-- but isn't it more important to get the totals right, free of suspicion of tampering, than to get a quick, potentially false report?

MORE NEW HAMPSHIRE ANOMALIES

My essay last week on America's deficient election system, "New Hampshire: U.S. Election System Still in SNAFU Mode," (
www.crisispapers.org/essays8w/snafu.htm ) yielded a number of trenchant comments from readers, especially about things that went wrong in the Granite State primary.

I had mentioned how odd it was that the 39%-36% Clinton-Obama vote totals never varied during the entire ballot-counting process, which hardly ever happens in politics. Several readers noted that essentially the same was true for John Edwards' total (17%) and for Ron Paul. It was as if the final vote percentages were somehow locked into place at the beginning.

I noted that in one town, Sutton, an entire family voted for Ron Paul but that Paul received no votes in that precinct's official tally. Now we get an even more outrageous anomaly: Kucinich had votes disappear after they'd been recorded!

A reader sent in screen shots from ABC's primary coverage. (
www.crisispapers.org/features/corres.htm#nh ) Here's what those screen shots showed me: At 8:52 p.m., with 23% of Democratic ballots counted in New Hampshire, Kucinich had 1789 votes, or 3% of the total. At 9:31 p.m., just a
little more than a half-hour later, with 43% of the ballots counted, Kucinich now had 1638 votes, or 2% of Democratic votes cast. One hundred and fifty-one votes had vanished! No wonder Kucinich was upset enough to pay for an official recount!

One can well imagine that the ongoing recount, whenever the final results are announced, will reveal even more such disaparities and anomalies, for other candidates as well. For some preliminary examples, go to Brad Friedman's bradblog.com, which is replete with them. For example, here ( www.bradblog.com/?p=5546), here ( www.bradblog.com/?p=5553), here (www.bradblog.com/?p=5568), and here ( www.bradblog.com/?p=5572).

In short, New Hampshire (and similar stories from other states across the country) demonstrate how untrustworthy and insecure our current voting procedures are -- and have been in state and national elections from at least 2000 on. November 2008 may turn out to be yet another electoral
disaster, with major technical glitches, human errors, deliberate manipulations of vote totals, etc.

Reform of the system should be mandatory before another botched or rigged election takes place in this country. We've been warned. #

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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