SECTION III: ELECTIONS

A. Voting

1. Every U.S. citizen shall have the right to vote. Citizens who are in prison will not lose their right to vote but may temporarily lose access to voting.

2. Voting shall be mandatory. Every U.S. Citizen has an obligation to vote. A U.S. citizen who does not vote in an election shall be fined $25. Funds collected from such fines shall be applied towards campaign financing.

3. To increase voter turnout, Election Day in any county, state, or federal election shall be a holiday.

4. The Electoral College shall be eliminated to give the proper one-person, one-vote representation for presidential elections.

5. Exit polling shall be mandated in every election with an automatic recount if there is a two-percent discrepancy from official results. Exit poll results shall be withheld until all polling stations are closed.

6. U.S. citizens shall be allowed to monitor elections. Citizens shall be given access to election records, including but not limited to the right to view ballot counting. Access to records must be made in a timely manner, before elections are certified and shall be free to the public. (partial credit: BlackBoxVoting.org.)

7. Identification shall not be required for an election. Equal and nondiscriminatory access to voting shall be assured for all voters.

8. Voting shall be private. There shall be no chance that others will ascertain how a citizen has voted. Bar codes on mail-in ballots shall be prohibited because they may expose a citizen's voting choices to polling officials or others.

9. No person or entity shall be allowed to interfere with, stop, or intimidate a registered voter from casting a ballot. Anyone found guilty of intimidating voters, interfering with an election, or tampering with votes shall be sentenced to a minimum of 5 years in prison.

10. A national party, the members of which are convicted of tampering with elections, intimidating voters, or obstructing voting, shall lose all the votes in the county of occurrence. If tampering occurs statewide, the party will be forbidden from soliciting votes in the state in the next similar election.

11. The President, Vice President, and every appointee of the President, including Supreme Court Justices, shall be immediately removed from their positions if it is found the President, Vice President, or members of their party committed fraud in the election of the President.

12. All ballots for city, county, state, or federal elections must be preserved and available for recount for a period of five years.

13. Private companies shall not manage or operate elections, vote counts, or election information. (An alternative: If election information is handled by a private company, the company shall be subject to the same Freedom of Information Act requirements of public agencies and to citizen oversight and monitoring of election records and ballot counting. Such a private company shall be prohibited from doing business in the United States if it is found that an officer, director, employee, or representative of the company is convicted of vote tampering.)

14. The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission shall be eliminated.

15. City, county, state, and federal elections shall incorporate an Instant Runoff Election system if one candidate does not get more than 50 percent of the vote. (credit: fairvote)

16. Voters shall be allowed to express their dissatisfaction with a slate of candidates or choices. "None of the Above" shall appear on ballots that do not require a simple "Yes" or "No" vote. These votes shall be tallied. (Credit: Joel S. Hirschhorn)

B. Campaigns

1. Financing for elections for the President and Vice President shall come from the U.S. treasury. Financing for U.S. Congressional campaigns shall come from the treasury of the state in which the candidate resides. States, counties, and cities shall mandate public financing for those running for elected office. Public monies shall be divided equally among all qualified candidates. Qualified candidates may come from any party with more than 100,000 voting members across the United States, not just from the Democratic or Republican parties.

2. Money or support shall not be allowed to be contributed to any political campaign. Political action committees, corporations, Section 527 organizations, and lobbyists - absent a ban on lobbying - shall be banned from giving money, seed money, soft money, gifts, or in-kind contributions to a qualified candidate or campaign on an election issue and also shall be banned from supporting or working on behalf of or against a qualified candidate. U.S. citizens may make a maximum contribution of $50 in seed money to a candidate or to a campaign for an election issue.

3. A qualified candidate for President must collect 100,000 signatures to run for office. A qualified candidate for any other office is a citizen who can raise a to-be-determined threshold amount of seed money or signatures on a petition.

4. Television and radio stations shall give free and equal campaign air time to all qualified candidates.

5. The nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates, controlled by the Democrats and Republicans, shall be replaced. The federal government shall establish a commission on debates comprised of all qualified parties. Qualified parties are those that have more than 100,000 voting members in the United States.