On September 21, the Wisconsin Green Party filed this amicus in Americans for Citizen Voting PAC v Wolfe, e.d., 2:26cv-786. This is the lawsuit over Wisconsin’s new ban on out-of-state circulators. The Green Party amicus argues that the court should strike down the restriction.
Vomit.
Our of state circulatory are an abomination. The whole idea of people witnessing and notarizing legal documents for people they don’t personally know is wrong.
The witness and notary should sign with an attorney present, checking the petitioning voters documents , identity, eligibility, and full understanding of the petition, if possible in front of a judge with state election officials and attorneys for any challenges all present so the verification of each signature or voice attestation is not a multi step process.
At the very least, it should take place inside the county courthouse, preferably in a court hearing.
L4T is only correct here so long as the current idiotic system of government printed ballots persists. Hopefully that won’t be long.
Given current trends which are only accelerating, a distinct majority, likely a super majority, of voting age people under the age of 50 will be functionally or entirely illiterate by mid century. By the turn of the century, literacy will most likely be at European medieval levels at best.
Additionally, and probably, hopefully by then all elections will take place within much more local areas with single precinct voting.
The present trend of people moving around frequently, particularly long distances, should most likely by then be pretty much over, as communication and automated manufacturing will almost certainly evolve to basically eliminate all incentives for people and goods to ever travel or move any significant distance.
So, highly localized areas can then effectively self govern with stable populations and leadership well known to each other and all electors.
Ballots and especially ballot qualifying will then logically be both unnecessary and highly suboptimal.
For a small group of folks who know each other and each other’s families well, more so in business, social, religious, charitable, and other contexts outside of political government , open on the record in person voting by group makes more sense. I’d suggest once per year.
The winning group would replace or swap out officeholders at will, so there would be no special elections or other such nonsense, and elections would be about ideas or group cohesion, not the charm, looks, often fake promises, incumbency or non incumbency, personal scandals, wealth, connections, popularity, etc of individuals.
On the record voting would encourage accountability for all forms of political power, including voting power, through generally mild social consequences.
Group voting and on the record voting make the vote counting transparent, simple, and impossible to cheat, particularly with video record both during and after the fact.
It would also make a lot of sense to limit political power to only a very simple set of laws which would be extremely difficult to change – all against mala in se crimes (actual crimes with actual victims, not mala prohibitum crimes – consensual acts among adults which are only illegal because politicians have defined them as such on a whim ).
Everything else being better handled outside of political government, politics would be a very peripheral part of people’s lives. Since elections would be very low consequence, mild social sanctions would be all that would result from voting in ways other folks don’t like.
Generally, people who vote differently would remain good friends regardless. Their non political, long standing, multifaceted ties would be far more important to them than which group they end up standing with in any particular year’s election.
There would be no particular need or benefit for the vast majority of people to vote at all – only those interested and prepared to serve in law enforcement, which would double as on the spot adjudication, sentencing, and punishment of offenders.
Simplifying that process, since criminals typically have a short time horizon and high risk tolerance.
That would make crime exceedingly rare, thus removing almost all need for such law enforcement.
It would most likely not even have to be a full time job, or even paying job at all, for anyone – more of a neighborhood watch type of hobby.
But in the meantime, I agree that a system of gathering signatures from strangers is illogical.
The signatures are in theory supposed to represent candidates or parties demonstrating sufficient support to qualify for an official printed ballot and not have such ballots confuse low information voters with impractical options that have no practical chance of winning.
In reality, the signatures do no such thing, since most people signing end up not being supporters of whatever candidates or parties or even ballot measures are employing signature harvesters.
That’s especially true when migrant and or seasonal signature harvesters are employed, creating high incentives for them to produce results at any risk or cost and use shady tactics – high pressure, browbeating repetition, implicit threats, flirting, pathetic begging, deception, outright fraud and forgery, etc – to obtain those results, given that they are traveling and paying for short term living arrangements, high travel and food costs, etc, specifically for that reason.
The people who end up being migrant signature hustlers are then most likely to be those who aren’t adverse to such tactics, more capable at them than the vast majority of folks, unscrupulous, desperate enough to have no better employment options at that moment, not tied as the vast majority of people are to particular places by multiple factors such as family, social, long term living and employment, and other such costs and responsibilities.
Generally, and unscrupulous, devious, young, male, childless and or irresponsible, often without a wife or long term partner or unfaithful to one if there is one, etc. Often people with bad habits such as patronizing prostitution, pornography, random sexual hookups, heavy alcohol use, narcotics, gambling, compulsive shopping, etc, which make them unfit for most jobs and desperate enough to want to hustle in such manner.
The carnie, traveling scammer, crooked traveling salesman., dishonest traveling preacher etc type, but even worse, as they tend to be incapable even of those pursuits – folks who are too lazy or physically unfit to even make it as other types of migrant harvesters, as in produce.
Unfortunately, the reality and incentives are such that unless parties, candidates, ballot measures etc resort to that , they do not gather sufficient numbers of signatures. Given the financial costs and unpleasant nature of such dealings, campaigns would do it in any other way they can if they could do so and succeed, but they generally can’t, particularly reliably.
The bottom line is that the process as it exists in practice circumvents the intent of the laws, would more logically be replaced by fees (given that practically, the signatures end up not demonstrating much besides financial capabilities, and have nothing but negative consequences for everyone involved in any way in the signature harvesting, processing, and verification process in any and all ways otherwise, (including the general public that frequents public spaces and those open to the public for any reason, as well as homeowners and residents who answer their doors and thus find themselves targeted for harassment and deception).
The best thing would be to eliminate such an illogical, counterproductive process and resulting industry entirely, therefore redirecting all resources involved to more socially and economically useful pursuits – that is, literally anything else.