Early Voting
Over at Althouse there’s a conversation about how many groups moved to the GOP this election cycle. People were talking about turnout, which seemed lower in most cases than the last election. It certainly was so in my precinct. It seemed good at the time I voted, but it was down considerably from 2008.
I commented there:
I think we ought to get rid of early voting altogether.
Early voting may have suppressed turnout on both sides. The media kept showing long lines at early voting locations and the media kept trying to guess who was “winning” the early vote.
This may have kept many people home on election day. They didn’t want to deal with long lines (and how many of them would actually be there? The media only reported on the long lines – they didn’t report on the many (I’m sure) locations without long lines. Just as we hear about plane crashes but not the successful landings that most make.
With the guesses as to who was “winning” the early vote, some people may have decided it was over already and didn’t go vote.
Steve Hayward has some thoughts at A Disquieting Thought on Powerline.
Althouse Asks:
Can we get a GOP with sound economics and a commitment to individual liberty?
I hope so. We need fiscal responsibility along with liberty. We need to drop “special” rights for anyone. We need to do away with affirmative action. We need to do away with legislating “health” such as Bloomberg is trying in NYC.
We need freedom to choose in everything – schools, health, everything.
Stop telling insurance companies what they must cover and allow people to buy insurance that covers what the person wants covered. My mother has no need to cover maternity or prostrate issues. Why should she be paying for coverage for those things?
Allow people in New Jersey to buy insurance from a company in North Dakota if they wish.
Divorce health insurance from employment. Allow us to purchase it like we do our auto, home, and life insurance. Let us bundle it with auto, home, and life if we wish.
Make health insurance actual insurance again, not the pre-paid health it is now. When I was a kid, we paid the doctor when we went (or had a payment plan). One had insurance for catastrophic and hospitalization. You know you’ll get sick – that’s something you plan for. The hospitalization is what you’re insuring against.
I should also be able to choose the level of deductible that I want. Government shouldn’t set deductible levels. If I would choose a $5,000 deductible for lower premium payments I shouldn’t be limited to a $2,500 deductible with a higher premium because the government doesn’t think I should (could) pay that much out of pocket.
Health Savings Accounts (and health reimbursement accounts) should be available to everyone without a use-it-or-lose-it aspect. If I don’t use all my health care savings in one year, I should be able to carry it over to the next. Maybe next year I’ll have more illnesses than I did this year.
Being able to save this way can allow one to have the money in the health account when it’s needed as one gets older.
All pensions need to be defined contribution rather than defined benefit. One has control over how much to contribute to retirement, one can’t know that there will be a certain amount available in 20 years…
