When the Democrats come back into power, if Trump/GOP don't utterly subvert American democracy, one of their first steps should be to protect American democracy from threats both foreign and domestic. We could call it a new Voter Rights Act because that is the heart of it, but whatever sells is fine with me. The key ingredients:
- Proper investigation of what happened in all races, not just Presidential, in terms of foreign interference.
- Require for federal elections that machines have protections against hacking and produce paper results that can be verified and that produce a receipt for voters showing how they voted so that they know that their votes will be counted appropriately.
- Require all presidential candidates to submit federal tax returns for the previous 20 years (apparently the norms are not sufficient).
- Restore voting rights for felons. Given how justice is unequally distributed, depriving felons of voting rights is voter suppression.
- Move federal election days to Saturdays (I am not a fan of mandatory votes--freedom means not having to vote, and mandatory vote is unlikely to pass anyway).
- Require that all precincts in a state have the same hours/facilities as the ones with the best access (most favored nation logic applied to local voting rules).
- Require that any new law that affects voting have no worse than a neutral effect on the franchise--that is, any new law will make it easier to vote, not harder. That any effort to impose voter id requirements is accompanied by policies/funding that make it easier for potential voters to get such id.
- Work on constitutional amendment to require non-partisan, expert-advised panels to decide how to draw electoral districts within states (I think that is what it will take--and unlikely to pass so Dems should vow to work at the state level on this and the rest of this stuff).
- Constitutional amendment effort to reverse Citizen United and allow for reasonable regulation of campaign finance. Ok, promise and work on it--tis very tough.
- Enforce existing laws to prevent voter intimidation (Alabama reminds us of this).
I am probably forgetting stuff since I am addled by days of driving up and down and now across. What else should be included?
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