How can elections be improved

We can emulate the Canadians, and the Australians and the British! Real Estate Technology Cars Columns. Print Share fb Share Tweet Email. So, here are eight ways we can clean things up! Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. But one thing is clear: Trump and his voters have upended the American political system in spectacular fashion.

Marshall: What will we tell our children? My daughter doesn't understand how adults elected someone like Donald Trump. The voting platforms should use confirmation screens so that voters can confirm their choices and paper receipts to insure against fraud and hacking. These mistakes matter for the ultimate outcomes because voters with low socioeconomic status are much more likely to make mistakes, leading to a systematic voteshare disadvantage for candidates who attract lower-income or less-educated voters.

We found that voting mistakes were most prevalent for paper and punch card voting platforms, whereas touch screen technology minimized mistakes. Finally, I hope that the option to vote online will increase participation among younger voters. Edward H. Kaplan William N. Kelly Shue Professor of Finance. Jessica Helfand Lecturer in Design and Management. October 26, To really improve voting though, everyone should just vote for me. If we want to minimize both fraud and inadvertent errors, this is the fairest reliable way to do it.

Standard v ote-by-mail options in every state. This would end one kind of vote suppression, efforts to block legitimate ballots from being counted because they were not received by Election Day. In every state, ballots postmarked by Election Day should be counted. It should also be free to mail ballots, and the Postal Service should give them priority with tracking.

Voters should be able to confirm their identity if their mail-in ballot is challenged during the counting process. And given the problems with signature matching—people sign differently depending on the pen, time of day, coffee intake and many other factors—identities could be confirmed with a unique PIN that each voter enters on her or his mail ballot.

States need not send everyone mail ballots automatically, unless warranted by a national emergency, but all states should make it easy for registered voters to request a vote-by-mail ballot by phone, online or in person. Double-blind vote counting. Both voting machine results and mail ballots should always be counted twice , with any significant discrepancies between the counts examined in more detail. Poll watchers from the largest parties could inspect these results, observe proof-of-identity checks during in-person voting, and watch the opening and processing of mail-in and drop-box ballots.

An impartial judge should be available to rule quickly on ballots whose status remains disputed after an apparent voter is contacted for confirmation and given the chance to respond. More time to vote. At least one early, in-person voting day on a weekend should be available in every state, and Election Day itself should be a national holiday.

Equal access to voting by town and neighborhood. States should also make available enough voting booths and staff so that no one ever has to wait longer than one hour on Election Day. These rules can end the incentive to create long lines that can discourage voting in certain areas. States should make available enough voting booths and staff so that no one ever has to wait longer than one hour on Election Day. Restoration of voting rights for most ex-prisoners. No one should be deprived of the legal right to register to vote for more than five years after the completion of a sentence for low-level felonies, as defined by federal law.

Nor should payment of outstanding fines be required to register, as this is effectively an unconstitutional poll tax. Clearly understood ballots. Paper ballots and voting machine screens should be designed to ensure that it is clear how to vote for each candidate e.

A history of poorly conducted elections has, until recently, created profound scepticism amongst Nigerians about the utility of electoral democracy. However, the relative success of the and general elections has revived hope amongst Nigerians that their votes count. More needs to be done to keep that hope alive. From the s to the late s Nigerians struggled for democracy to replace authoritarian military rule.

The elections brought a return to civil rule and the advent of the Fourth Republic under President Obasanjo. Those elections were considered acceptable by the international community and tolerated by Nigerians, despite massive difficulties.

After decades of military rule, hopes that the new civilian government would lead to better governance overshadowed the flaws in the electoral process. However, civil rule did not automatically translate into good governance, and the people continued to face persistent unemployment, poverty, insecurity and reckless misrule. Nigerians had high hopes that the Fourth Republic, beginning in May , would usher in a liberal democratic era. Through the ballot box, rather than the bullet, Nigerians strived to confer legitimacy on elected public officials through re-election or to vote out those they viewed as having failed.

However, subsequent elections were still regarded as mere rituals whose outcome was predetermined often with the highest bidder buying the election. In some cases, it is widely believed that thugs and some members of the security agencies committed election fraud. The elections, unfortunately, were not much better than the elections, in terms of transparency and credibility.

Pre-electoral processes, such as party primaries were grossly undemocratic. To preempt a major crisis of legitimacy, he launched the Electoral Reform Committee which was mandated to make wide-ranging recommendations for electoral reform in Nigeria. This led to sweeping changes, including the appointment of a new INEC chairman and commissioners and paved the way for remarkable improvements in the and general elections.

One significant development in the elections was the increased use of technology, most significantly the deployment of biometrics — to identify, register and verify voters. This brought many benefits, including trustworthiness and reliability. Of course, there are challenges in using technology, which must be addressed. These include a lack of equipment manufacturers in Nigeria, and of locally produced products and services. For now, procurement must look abroad, with all the associated issues of vendor management, software licensing, equipment maintenance, repairs and spare parts replacement.

Another challenge is ensuring the secure electronic transmission of data. Whilst the right technology is available and can be made secure, adequate staff training is needed to provide the requisite competencies for technology use. The INEC grappled with these issues in the deployment of technology in the general elections but the benefits far outweighed the challenges, and we will continue to consolidate past gains.

Focus must be on the use of technology such as Permanent Voter Cards and smart card readers in the Nigerian electoral processes, which have contributed piecewise but significant advances. As the general elections illustrated, Nigeria has greatly improved the effectiveness of its electoral processes. From poorly conducted elections, sparking apathy and scepticism amongst the citizenry, we are now seeing the culmination of reform efforts towards better managed elections, with renewed hope amongst the citizenry that every vote counts in electing their leaders.

It remains to be seen whether better elections will translate into good democratic governance, but the prospects are bright. When votes count, politicians have no choice but to sit up and listen to the voters. They ignore the voters at their own electoral peril. The general elections also showed the benefits of technology for enhancing election management. Use of technology brings challenges but these are surmountable. Fear of potential problems should in no way diminish the need for improved and increased use of technology in elections.

We need to forge a strong alliance for the consolidation and expansion of the use of technology. This would result in a Nigerian electoral process with greater transparency and effectiveness in delivering free, fair, credible and peaceful elections bringing huge benefits to citizens. Latin America began its democratic transition during the s — part of what Samuel Huntington called The Third Wave of Democratization. They were very complex and diverse political processes.

Political changes were brought about by the triumph of guerrilla wars, as in Nicaragua; or the signing of peace agreements that ended civil wars, as in El Salvador. Military rules fell and party systems that had worked before dictatorship periods were reinstated, as in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay; or a new party system was created, as in Brazil.

There was also the slow transformation of a hegemonic party system into a plural and competitive one, as in Mexico. Latin American democracies have been consolidated for more than 25 years, but like other democracies in the world, they face major problems and challenges. Serious economic and social inequality persists and has led to a high level of dissatisfaction with democracy and an increase in the voices that propose authoritarian government as a solution.

The degree of democratic dissatisfaction is not homogeneous; in addition, the heterogeneity of the continent is exacerbated by different situations in different countries. Despite this diversity, Latin American nations all face the common challenge of strengthening democracy.

That Commission postulated: "For elections to embody democracy, further development and promote security, they must be conducted with integrity. In Latin America, we have made huge strides in the formation of professional and impartial electoral bodies.

Other democracies, new and old, should look to them as models. This system started in the s and has produced a significant increase in voter confidence, mainly due to the speed with which results are arrived at and disseminated in the most populous country in Latin America — in the elections the results were known within 2 hours. The Brazilian electronic voting has also helped to enfranchise the inhabitants of remote and inaccessible regions. Despite not having electronic voting, Mexico is another good example of how technology can be successfully used to conduct elections.

To take two examples, the electoral roll and the Program of Preliminary Election Results, Programa de Resultados Electorales Preparatorios PREP have been successful, thanks to the advanced technology applied in both cases. In the early s voter registration using biometric information was introduced.

The electoral roll is a database of more than eighty million georeferenced citizens and their biometric information, including their pictures. By law, Mexicans must vote in polling stations located very close to their homes. The electoral authority issues a voter card linked to the polling station, which includes the photograph of the voter. That document is already the primary means of identification.

Voter lists at each polling station include printed photographs of voters, so that, in addition to identification by name, photo verification can also be used. Mexico must move towards biometric identification of voters, as already happens in Venezuela and many other countries in order to further improve elections. Through the PREP system, results from each polling station are published on the internet in just 24 hours. This is made possible by the use of technology for secure data transmission and the ability to securely publish big data on the internet.

The data is preliminary, since, by law, computations of results must be performed manually. In order to introduce electronic voting in Mexico, a reform of the electoral law would be required. If that were to happen and electronic voting was fully implemented, final results would be available within a few hours after voting stations are closed, as is the case in Brazil. It is possible to organize elections with integrity in Mexico and Latin America with the use of developed electoral technology.

The use of such technology will ensure the credibility and transparency of elections, helping citizens to have more trust in the results. That will be an important contribution to the development of democracy in the Americas. We are now 16 years into the 21st century. While major elections will be held in dozens of countries this year — including of course the U.

They will not able to participate in elections in a free and independent manner because election officials will continue to use methods that are centuries old. Historically, study after study has identified the disabled and out-of-country voters as among the most consistently disfranchised groups in democratic nations.

The movement of people from one country to another, often to flee violence and death, has accelerated in recent decades. Their voices are often not heard because they cannot participate in elections held in their own country. This is occurring as aging populations of baby boomers, particularly in Western democracies, are placing greater demands on governments. Election officials are tasked with finding innovative methods to make the voting process less cumbersome and more accessible.

Aging and disabled voters are often place-bound, and cannot even get to polling stations. They have difficulty using complex voting devices and systems, including paper ballots, especially when the fonts are often so small that only strong eyeglasses or a magnifier will allow voters to see their ballot choices.

Similarly, external voters — voters who are permanently or temporarily outside their home country — face all kind of obstacles in exercising their voting rights. Too many are expected to travel thousands of miles and spend a significant amount of money to have the opportunity to cast a ballot.

Technological advances have helped to make life easier for everyone, including for disabled voters and voters away from home. In our mobile phone connected world, except in non-democratic authoritarian nations, people can easily converse, text, pay bills, tweet, email, and use social media to make their opinions known using their own abilities.

With such technology, one would think that it would be easy for these same voters to make their voice and vote count in their own country. Unfortunately, election authorities have been much too slow to adopt and adapt to new technologies that can better serve disabled and overseas voters. It is time to bring these advances into the voting process and take serious steps to empower these historically disenfranchised voters. It should be noted that many countries have made great strides in attempting to make voting easier, introducing such methods as early voting, online voter registration and establishing Vote Centers.