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by Jeph Johnson

I have some ideas how to make voting more exciting. It will get more people to vote and make their votes count.

First of all have mail in ballots with postage paid. This will eliminate "polls closing on the East coast" influencing West coast voters. Once your ballot is counted you get a small monetary reimbursement mailed back to you, rather than voter penalties for not voting.

Another idea would be to treat candidates like ballot measures. Give everyone ten votes and allow everyone to vote "yes" or "no" for the candidates. This would essentially eliminate the need for primaries. Each candidate would receive a number which was the total number of "yes" votes minus the total number of "no" votes. People who are lackadaisical about politics can just check off "yes" to everyone except the people who scare the shit out of them. People who are passionate about politics could check off "no" to everyone except the person they approve!

We could go even further and allow people to put all ten votes on one person or spread it around a bit like 7 "yes" votes to Bernie, 2 "no" votes for Trump and 1 "no" vote for Hillary.

I know this would complicate the election process beyond anyone's comprehension, but it would virtually eliminate polls as an indicator of elections and since "no" votes could be cast, someone's name recognition could actually be detrimental to their candidacy. Heck, if Bernie wasn't running I'd probably put all ten of my votes on Trump as a "no".

I'd like to know, if this was the way we voted and you have ten votes to cast how would you cast them? I'm all in for Bernie with all ten of my votes "yes" but in other years it would be different. Being able to vote yes AND no would also be a good indicator how fed up the electorate was if more "no" votes were cast overall.