vote.org

News

NEWS!

• 8/4/10 San Francisco Declaration on Direct Democracy issued. It's GREAT!
• 7/31/10-8/4/10 3rd Annual International Conference on Direct Democracy in San Francisco
  
  Posted in:

  • Researches & Reports

  Actions:

  • Read more

Equal protection clause protects gays

The Supreme Court upheld the Colorado Courts' ruling that the "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means that all groups can lobby for laws favorable to them, and that Colorado's Amendment Two (passed by citizen initiative) unfairly prohibits laws favorable to gays.

Thus the Constitution protects minorities from the "Tyranny of the majority", whether a majority of citizens or representatives. Amendment Two had been nullified by court injunction since soon after it passed.

Text of Supreme Court ruling

Government Pork and Logrolling

Pork, or pork-barrel legislation, is wasteful spending made famous by the Pentagon with their $700 toilet seats, $600 hammers, etc. As long as taxpayers don't find out, politicians in this way cultivate support from the beneficiaries of this generosity.

Logrolling is when 2 representatives or parties trade votes for each other's pork.

C. Malte Lewan's "candidate thesis" [90K] about direct democracy in Germany (and Europe in general) makes the point that in areas with more direct democracy, government waste is less, and the economy is healthier.

BOULDER'S 1993 VOTING BY PHONE BALLOT ISSUE

In 1992 we passed a petition to put to the voters the question: "Shall the Boulder City Charter be amended to require that voters be allowed to vote by telephone in all municipal elections...?"

In Boulder municipal elections are held on odd-numbered years, and for these elections, initiative petitions are required to have the valid signatures of 5% of the registered voters. Because we passed our petition during '92, city code required 10% of registered voters. We obtained about 9%.

In 1993 the City Council put us on the ballot, technically as their own referendum, rather than force us to pass a new 5% petition.

VOTING BY PHONE IS FAR

Information is lighter and travels better than people, cars, voting machines, ballot boxes, ballots, judges, ledgers, and the card-counters and computers that now count most of our votes. The phone system that carries information is free for local calls.

Every years millions of trees become ballots to be counted and tossed or recycled. Millions of gallons of gas are burnt to get to the polls.

Phone voting is as efficient as the Internet and World Wide Web, but lets you vote from any phone in the world- in case you don't have your laptop, modem and local access.

VOTING BY PHONE IS EASY!

No more driving, parking and waiting in line. Vote from any phone in the world: It could easily be made a free call using an 800 number.

Currently, people don't know how long voting will take them: they might only wait minutes, or they could wait 2 hours in line, as happened in many New Mexican precincts in November, 1992. Even here in well-funded Boulder, the then-Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, Dennis Nock timed his 1992 wait at 51 minutes, and saw people give up and leave. Some Colorado counties ran out of ballots.

People will be mailed a sample ballot to prepare so that when they get on the phone, they just key in all their prepared votes at once.

SECURITY AND PRIVACY

by Evan Ravitz, director, Voting by Phone Foundation

First, it must be understood that presently, most votes in the U.S. are counted by computers using programs which are proprietary secrets, so that none of us, including election officials, can verify that the programs do what they should and nothing else. Testing of the program is of course allowed, but there are many ways these secret programs could be devised to test out perfectly, but cheat in the actual votecounting. Our proposal for confirming everyone's vote makes such cheating much more difficult. See below. The programs ("source code") should also be publicly owned and open to inspection by anyone.

VOTING ON THE INTERNET

Internet voting will be fine for those who use the net. The systems we are aware of:

Boulder's own Votelink

Marilyn Davis' eVote

Lorrie Faith Cranor's Sensus

Voting by phone has been ready for 21 years for the other 150 million or so registered US voters. And, if you're off traveling at election time and don't have your laptop, modem, and access, you can pick up any phone in the world and vote.

No More Secondhand God

Here's some of what Buckminster Fuller wrote in his book NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD, pages 10-17, in 1940:

"In the great quasi "democracies," so far as the general scheming of things is concerned the individual no longer exists...as citizen man is expressed only as a party machine in the "body" politic, and his government expresses a mean low average statistic "man." Any social action, if at all, is weeks, months, and years laggard to the thinking frontier of the individual..."

"Many people believe Democracy obsolete. They are wrong... I will explain. That is, I will if it's Democracy you really wish to save, and not some trick you have been getting away with behind its kindly broad young back..."

Voters in Mexico

The Mayan Indian rebels in Chiapas Mexico have conducted all their affairs by "la consulta" or vote of the people. Juan Ojeda, 25-yr assistant to the Nobel-nominated Bishop Ruiz, visited Denver in July. He told us that some 500,000 participate regularly in the consultas, deciding local affairs and each step of the negotiations with the government. He says that everyone including children participate! Now the idea is spreading:

(from La Jornada, april 16, 1996)

Political Parties Agree on Electoral Reforms

After four and a half months of negotiations, political parties agreed on a "first stage" of electoral reform on April 15. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Workers Party (PT) announced that they had reached agreement on 79 reforms, which will entail 28 constitutional amendments. Eleven of the reforms refer to the Federal District's electoral process.