James Fox

Historically our elections have been marred by reports of disorganized polling places, unavailable paper work and most often, the lack of information as to where the polling places were located. The greatest problem however, has been the incredible low turnout of registered voters. Voter apathy is rapidly turning out to be a major illness, and may eventually become a fatal illness that could kill our system of government as we know it.

I can completely understand and identify with the general population in feeling helpless and hopeless. However, if we don't try, we will never change anything.

As usual, I, the Hermit, have a simple solution to voter apathy, and...you know I'm just busting to tell you all about it. Huh? Well, this is how we go about getting almost everyone to vote on election day:

The hardest part is to get our elected representatives to create federal legislation to approve our Iniative -- An Iniative that will require the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) to mandate and administer a program that will finance the manufacture and distribution of an electronic box similar to the current "Web TV."

All media, radio, television, and newspapers, would carry the information that, on January 1, 2004, all television broadcasting by any carrier would become unavailable. There would be absolutely NO TV for anyone until they registered to vote at designated areas. Upon registration, they would be given a voter PIN number (Personal Identification Number), and they would be issued a box to interface with their phone line and their television set. For their $15 dollar registration fee they would have Internet access along with their normal television service. That's somewhere around $200 million times $15 to help pay for the boxes. Now here is the good part...

On each election day, the filter program would kick in and when they tried to watch TV after 8 a.m. in their area, the TV Web browser would take them directly to the polling website. they would have to enter their PIN number and then vote on each ballot form that appeared on the screen. When they completed the last form and the last form had been scanned for errors by the form program, and there were no other registered voters assigned to that box, they would be returned to normal programming.

If they didn't complete the voting process, their TV would be inoperative until the polls closed. At that time they would get the message on the screen that they had forfitted TV privilages, and they would need to bring in the box for reprogramming and the fee would be another $15. I think it just might work. Huh?

What do you think?