Election System Changes, Mike Schiller : my letter to John Kerry

Dear Senator Kerry,

I recieved your email asking for people to call Dennis Hastert and
Bill Frist about voting rights and the need for changes regarding the
way elections are conducted, and applaud your efforts to advocate
this important issue.

I intend to call and write Senators once I have drawn up a proposal
for actual legislation to address these issues. It won’t be
immediate, but I will certainly be promoting the proposal to my email
list as well as calling congress to ask Senators to review it and
consider introducing legislation along the lines of the
reccomendations I plan to make.

I cannot simply call asking Senators to support "reform" in general.
I need to make specific suggestions so that whoever I call or write
to knows exactly what it is I support. I beleive all citizens who
wish to voice their view should consider doing something similar.

When people call and say they support a general position, it almost
implies that any legislation bearing a title which appears to be
related to that issue would be okay with them- but what should matter
more is the language of the legislation and the potential long term
effects of that language. The title of the bill should be regarded as
irrelevant. What is imporant is, what does the bill change? What are
the potential effects? What does the legislation accomplish?

If you agree with that philosophy, I hope that you may consider
asking supporters to call with specific reccomendations, rather than
just calling in support of "reform". What this election proved is
that passage of a bill called "reform" is not necessarily helpful,
and in some cases, may do more harm than good. We need to know what
reforms are to be proposed, or propose reforms of our own, before we
can voice support for it.

I felt a need to write to you now, simply because I must wait until
I’ve finished assessing all the information, and written an essay
with specific suggestions, before I can call congress as a citizen in
support for something.

If there were a bill called "election reform" it may be helpful or
harmful- and I’d rather know that I did not participate in a
generalized effort to support something so vague, before specific
reccomendations and solutions had been proposed.

So yes, I think most people will support a bill if the bill’s
language actually accomplishes the goals which people wish to see
accomplished, but before people can determine that, something has to
be written, and both lawmakers and the public will need time to asses
the bill’s effects, which would then enable them to decide if it is
an adequate and helpful legislative solution.

Sincerely,
Mike Schiller