Political rivals launch separate images of voting laws. Slogans and flyers from either party tell us the importance of stopping the election crimes their rival has in store for us. I see worse:  I see the trouble brewed when parties are the deciders in charge of their own elections. Conflict of interest dictates what comes.

Even so, I respect the powers set forth in the Constitution. Various interest groups promote tweaking the Constitution on voting to “cure” its “evils.” I come from a different school. I shudder to think of all we stand to lose if rival interest groups start tweaking the Constitution. Beware of “‘Fix-it’ In The Constitution” mailers that crisscross the Nation. The same rivals that steer the gridlock in Congress tell us they know best how to “fix” the Constitution. I say our best hope is to explore technical pathways that could assist in “doing” politics.

The lesson that rival parties teach us is that the process of voter registration can be made more accessible or more secure, but we don’t need both to be better. This polemic lets the rival parties maintain voting rules as a scary campaign issue. Each rival labels the other as the sinister “destroyer of democracy.” Each rival party overlooks its own big fat conflict of interest.

Contrast that political habit with the agility in technical work. The Wright brothers went to Kitty Hawk in December of 1903 and flew their airplane 852 feet at an altitude safely close to the ground. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew his plane 3,600 miles from New York to Paris. In 1969, the first man walked on the moon. That’s a lot of progress on many fronts.

Race cars were made faster and safer. Computers got faster, smaller, cheaper, and more capable. Politics today is sluggish by comparison.

Improved voting systems for all concerned are in the works. But both rivals prefer to keep the political spotlight on voting crimes to keep the public unaware of nearby systems thinking. (As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering). Congressman, how do geographers tie to gerrymandering?

I do not suggest that science should replace politics. That too would erode democracy. I do suggest that politics is enamored of its constant campaign style to its own detriment, and ours.

Voting problems are unique among society’s thorny problems. Working answers await, but neither in the U.S. Constitution nor in the political process. So we cannot look for thorough answers via the U.S. Supreme Court nor courts at any level, nor by voting in elections. A wealth of up-to-date technical tools completes the story.

Capable answers await in a new branch of science.  Election science has sprouted to fill the void. The science was slow to develop through the 1900s. Election science picked up steam in December of 2000, with the pesky woes of hanging chads in Bush v. Gore.

One technical project dating from the Bush v. Gore era is the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP).

Today, members of the VTP work on many parts of the system, such as:

• Examining ways to make the process of voter registration more secure and more accessible
• Developing better voting systems standards and testing practices
• Studying and developing novel and improved post-election auditing procedures
• Evaluating methods of voter authentication, and their effects on the election process
  Improving voting technologies

Learn more at https://www.vote.caltech.edu/, as one example in the field. Imagine campaign ads teaching a smidgen of Election Science, and less Epstein lore. The substantive stories we visit are the dimensions of democracy.