Sorry, hit reply instead of reply all. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > the most significant election cost, which is often >neglected, is voter time at the voting booth and waiting to get > there. This cost is enormous, it dwarfs, in fact, in value, what is > normally spent on campaigning.
How true. Assuming it takes a voter 1 hour to vote including travel time then it works out at say $20 per voter. Including petrol costs, it could be higher and also it may take longer than an hour total. That would be at least $3 billion if the number of voters in the US was 150 million. What about a system which pays voters to vote. Paying from general taxation would be a little unfair to those who can't vote. It could be something like: Each citizen is registered at a polling booth. A compensation amount is selected and is index linked, say $50 (paid only once if more than one vote is held at the same time). Each citizen who votes gets paid the compensation. The total payment is then divided by the total number of citizens who are eligible to vote and they are sent a bill. If the turnout was 75%, each voter would have to pay $37.50 no matter if they voted or not. If a citizen voted, they get $50 and pay $37.50 giving $12.50 profit If a citizen doesn't vote, they pay $37.50. There could even be a rule that the compensation must be increased if voter turnout drops below 75% and should be high enough so that voting always creates a net profit for the voter. In fact, including all costs in the breakdown would be informative to the voters. Something like: $37.50 - voter compensation $1.87 - polling booths $2.13 - ballot printing $3.07 - counting $1.24 - re-counts $0.75 - miscellaneous Apparently, it costs about $10 per voter to run an election, taken from the first site to appear on google. A second benefit is that it would help keep the voting rolls current. If someone doesn't pay, they can be assumed to have moved or something. It also creates an incentive to want to register as voters make a profit for voting. ___________________________________________________ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
