[EM] Voting Requirements

[Raph Frank]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Dan Bishop <danbishop04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Raph Frank wrote:
>> I agree with you on 4 (Criminal Record).  If criminals are having an
>> effect on the voting system, then you have to [sic] many people in prison.
>
> No, it simply means that your elections are /that/ close. If,
> hypothetically, an election with nearly 6 million voters came down to nearly
> 537 votes, it would be absurd to argue that that should require the prison
> population to be brought down to 536 or less.

What I meant was something along the lines of "If you have to worry
about criminals changing election results, then you have to many
people in prison".  Even 1% in prison isn't going to move the median
by much.

The idea should be to have the eligibility rules as simple as possible.

Another weakness is citizenship rules.  It is possible to
quasi-gerrymander via the immigration rules.