Word: balloting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Popular elections in the late 19th century--a period well known for its political machines and corruption--faced an unusual problem. A large number of eligible voters were illiterate; they simply could not read the ballots. Corrupt party members often attempted to exploit this illiteracy by disguising their ballot to look like the other party's ballot. For example, Democrats would print ballots with pictures of Abraham Lincoln, so those unsuspecting and illiterate might suppose that they were voting Republican...
Elections in Cambridge are conducted under a unique proportional representation system, which allows citizens to rank their choice of candidates, and then redistributes votes to the next candidate marked on the ballot once candidates reach a quota of approximately 10 percent of the ballots cast...
Weicker, who as an independent served as Connecticut's governor from 1990 to 1994, called for reforming campaign finance and ballot access laws to facilitate independent campaigns and to encourage "free enterprise" in government. "I can't think of anything more American," he said...
...When Wilson named Fuller his campaign chairman in June, Gorton, who has a penchant for Far East spirituality, went off to Thailand in a huff. But he returned to do battle. Soon Fuller found himself up against Gorton's vision: to squeeze Wilson's name onto the Dole-controlled ballot in the high-visibility New York primary, even at the price of $750,000 in signature gathering plus legal costs. Gorton won that debate. Then came the one over Iowa. Fuller said, "You can't run a media campaign elsewhere if you're not in Iowa beforehand." Gorton disagreed...
Some change in this area may be warranted. Perhaps current laws could be relaxed so that third party candidates, if they have a certain amount of support or can make it onto the ballot in a certain number of states, would be eligible to receive such funds. The current system's privileging of the existing two parties, the result of historical accident, has no strong justification...