Methods of Voting Madness

Below is a video explaining how New Yorker voters use the mechanical lever voting machines on Election Day.  New York was the last state to use these machines.  The city of New York, however, is going back to the mechanical lever voting machine for their upcoming Mayoral elections.

Even though mechanical lever voting machines are no longer in use, you will see from this Procon.org study, however, that not all state voting systems are the same.  Those systems include Electronic Voting Machines (DRE), hand-counted paper ballots, paper ballots with optical scan, and punch cards.

Do you believe that all states should have one method to follow?  Should the selection of voting method be made by the states or by the federal government?Which voting system do you prefer?

States’ Rights Today

The Anti-Federalists of the pre-Civil War era staked their claim to the idea of “states’ rights“.  This means that the powers expressly reserved to the states are for the states and the states alone.  Anti-Federalists or decentralists base their arguments around the 10th Amendment.  Some have referred to this amendment as the “States’ Rights Amendment”.  The decentralist belief is that the state and local governments are closer to the people.

Name an issue that you see being handled by the federal government.  Then explain why you believe that issue would be served by state and local government.  (You can also look at from this point of view:  name an issue being handled by the federal government, but you believe it would not be handled very well by the states or local governments.)