So I had a really lovely political discussion with Steve last night (somone please place that boy in a government position with a little power; he's damn near brilliant and actually seems to care about this country, two things I find our current administration to sorely lack). Anyway, hopefully he'll post a nice summary of his various discussions with Sudiptya and I over on his LJ. Meanwhile, I just wanted to "talk" through an idea about voting. Because much as I hate to admit it, Mark's sticker "Voting doesn't work" seems to be more and more accurate to me these days. So there's the classic struggle between simply trying to get as many people as possible to vote (truly representative government) versus desiring informed voters. So what if in the year or two preceding an election one or two giant polling companies (say, Gallup and some other of your choice) determine the issues that are most important to the general public. Pick a number, the top 5, 10, 20 items, whatever. Then each candidate can create a brief summary of his or her position on these issues. Obviously vastly oversimplified, since so many of these issues can't be reduced to a binary response of yay or nay, but a decent starting point. Say that for the primaries each candidate is only allowed a page and a half, then once the field is narrowed, they can expand to 2 or 3 pages. When people go to vote, they are handed the summary sheets, and asked to sign the bottom of the last sheet stating that they have read all the information. One doesn't get a ballot until returning the signed sheets. Sure, it makes voting just a tad more time consuming, and it would be trivial to sign the sheets without reading them, but let's hope that at least some portion of the people cared enough to show up to vote, so they'll care enough to spend 5 more minutes brushing up on the candidates. Obviously, this information will be biased since it's created by the candidates themselves, but it will all be biased in a similar way. Also, I can't imagine that everyone would be able to agree on some sort of "independent party" to collect the info. So I realize there are plenty of wholes to poke in this idea, but is it, as my boss likes to say, highly imperfect yet useful? Or does it create more problems than it solves?