On The Issues

 IN DEPTH:

Elections in Pennsylvania are ripe for reform, and in several directions: From how and where people vote, to how candidates are chosen and funded, from how voting districts are defined, and more. Here are the most important initiatives we must immediately implement followed by my personal wish list.

How to Vote

Without a doubt, the most troubling aspect of elections today is the ubiquitous use of no-excuse mail-in ballots. In 2024 over one quarter of all votes used mail-in ballots. However, not only are they NOT authorized under the Pennsylvania Constitution’s strict rules for absentee ballots, they are the easiest way to cheat in an election. What’s to stop a nefarious player from submitting dozens or even hundreds of ballots? Nothing, especially when the chain of custody is broken right from the start. Who filled it in? Who mailed it out? There’s no way of telling. Nightmare stories abound about lost or altered ballots, not to mention all-too-infrequent arrests. The problems with mail-in ballots are very real.

To restore the integrity of our elections, we must return to good old-fashioned in-person voting on Election Day itself. Nothing is more secure than voting in person at your local polling place alongside neighbors you know, and who know you.

Once we return to in-person voting, the next most-important—and most-obvious—step is to require ID for voting. IDs are needed for virtually every other item in everyone’s walk of life, from opening a bank account, to boarding a flight, to renting a car, and even for something patently silly, like requiring senior citizens to produce ID for buying beer or wine. Requiring an ID to vote is a no-brainer, as is limiting voters to be United States citizens only.

Between producing an ID to vote and citizens voting in person, these two initiatives alone can prevent the overwhelming majority of all cases of voter fraud. And requiring that all votes be cast on Election Day dramatically reduces the chances for fraud, especially where mail-in and absentee ballots are concerned.

How to Campaign

There are literally dozens of other ways we can improve our elections, starting with how campaigns are conducted. The most important reform, and one of the easiest, is to ban out of state contributions to candidates and PACs. Pennsylvania already prohibits corporate contributions—thereby negating the controversial Citizens United decision—making for an easy step to banning out of state contributions. Did you know that more than half of the contributions to the incumbent Josh Shapiro’s campaign come from out-of-state contributors and PACs? Why should outsiders place their thumbs on the scale of Pennsylvania’s elections? The answer is they shouldn’t.

While this prohibition would help ensure that candidates have Pennsylvania’s interests at heart, instituting term limits would make sure politicians don’t get too comfortable holding the reins of power. Our constitution already limits the governor to eight years; the same limit should apply at the very least to all state senators, state representatives, judges, and any position greater than county-level. A constant inflow of new blood will foster new ideas and discourage the same old same old.

How to Tally Votes

One hidden problem with elections is our method of counting votes. Elections in Pennsylvania use the Plurality method of voting, where the person with the highest vote count wins. It’s also universally recognized as the worst way to tally an election. Too often voters are forced to choose the lesser of several evils, thereby being forced to select a candidate they do not want. Rather than Plurality voting, we should use Approve-Approve-Disapprove voting. The beauty of AADV is that it not only captures your LIKES, it also captures your DISLIKES.

With AADV, you can choose your favorite candidate, your second-favorite candidate, and the candidate you disapprove of. For every vote for your favorite or second-favorite candidate, they get a plus one on their score. For every disapproval vote, that candidate gets a minus one. Total up all the plus-ones and minus-ones, and the candidate with the highest score wins. And if a score turns negative, that candidate is disqualified.

Bottom line: With AADV there is no longer any need to vote for the lesser of two evils. With AADV you get to vote AGAINST the evil. For more-scholarly details on the history and operation of AADV, click here.

As an aside, Ranked Choice Voting has the same flaw as Plurality voting: There is no way to measure your DISLIKES. In a typical two-candidate election, RCV is meaningless. And in an election with only one candidate, RCV fails miserably. But with AADV, given enough disapprovals it is possible that EVERY candidate loses. Even better, you can write in your disapproval of candidates who don’t appear on the ballot.

How to Define Districts

In addition to how people vote and how candidates campaign, there is a structural issue in Pennsylvania that helps to cement one-party rule: Gerrymandering.

It’s an old story about how politicians define squiggly boundaries that favor their party’s candidates. But fortunately there’s an easy solution to prevent such shenanigans. It’s called Precinct-Preserving Splitline (PPS) districting. The way it works is to define districts by drawing the shortest line possible across the map such that each district holds an equal number of voters, then repeat that process until the right-sized district is formed. The districting is performed mathematically, so it completely eliminates any sort of political favoritism. With PPS districting, gerrymandering will become a relic of the past.

For a detailed discussion of how Precinct-Preserving Splitline districting would work, click here.

How to Reform Elections Across the Board

In addition to reforming how people vote, how campaigns are conducted, and how districts are defined, there are at least a dozen initiatives we could take to improve our elections even further. A prioritized summary of the most important ones are listed below. But if you’d like to see any of them reach the light of day, the only way to ensure it would ever happen is to vote Libertarian.

In decreasing priority, the reforms include:
1. Use voter-verifiable paper ballots only.
2. Make all political parties equal via the Political Party Equality Act.
3. End automatic voter registration
4. Ban easily-hackable electronic voting machines.
5. Defund the primaries and let the two old parties pay for their own candidate selection process.
6. Establish a recall process for elected officials.
7. Clean up the voter rolls by re-registering everyone over the course of four years.
8. Enact tougher sentencing guidelines for election violators
9. Prohibit schools from being used as polling places.