Voting American Idol Style

All the fun without the bad singing

by Sean Carter
05/01/04

With the Presidential election rapidly approaching, state officials across the country are urgently looking for a more reliable way to tally votes than by hand. After all, had the Supreme Court not stepped into the Florida election debacle in 2000, Gloria Estefan would be the President today. Of course, depending upon your taste in music, that might not have been so bad.

However, in an effort to prevent Eminem from becoming our next President, I have devised the perfect solution – voting American Idol style. In other words, Americans should be allowed to cast their votes for President this fall by phone.

The advantages of this system of voting would be almost as numerous as Rosie O’Donnell’s chins (I said, “almost”). And the biggest of these advantages would be to increase voter turnout. Less than half of all eligible voters actually exercise their right to have the Supreme Court decide the election. Why? There are two principle reasons for voter apathy.

The first reason is that many Americans are simply too lazy to get off their couches and vote. In fact, I’m one of these Americans. I haven’t voted in an election since 1988. However, in contrast, I voted 20 times last week in the American Idol competition/ (“Go George Huff!”) Why? Because I could vote from the comfort of my couch. And I’m not the only one with this mentality. In fact, each week, the American Idol contestants receive more votes than the candidates in all of the primary elections this year combined.

The second reason for voter apathy is that most people realize that their votes are about as meaningful as my brother-in-law’s promises to get a job. For instance, in my home state of California, the last Presidential election was decided by more than one million votes. Now, even using Enron accounting measures, my one vote wouldn’t have determined the outcome. American Idol style voting would change all of this because voters would be allowed to vote as many times as they wished for a particular candidate. After all, this is already what happens in cities like Chicago and St. Louis, where everyone votes more than once, even dead people. In fact, it’s rumored that if Nixon had gotten more of the Illinois “dead vote” in 1960, Kennedy might not have ever been elected President.

Telephone voting would just bring this situation out in the open. Besides, with multiple voting, a citizen can signify just how much she supports her candidate. After all, someone who is willing to spend all day hitting the redial button means business.

Perhaps, the biggest concern about telephone voting is that hackers will break into the system and rig the results. So? Would we prefer to have the election rigged by the President-elect’s brother instead?

The simple truth of the matter is that no voting system will be impervious to fraud. Our current system is riddled with it. However, telephone voting would greatly increase voter turnout by allowing greater access to the polls for those of us too lazy to go out and vote; provided, of course, that the election isn’t held on the same night as the American Idol finale. George Huff in 04!

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Sean is a practicing attorney who writes a weekly humor column on current legal events called "Lawpsided." Lawpsided pieces appear in a growing number of general circulation papers across the country, including The Los Angeles Times. Moreover, his musings on the law appear on nationally recognized websites, such as jewishworldreview.com, findlaw.com, newsmax.com and etherzone.com, and legal publications, such as The National Law Journal and The Los Angeles Daily Journal. Lastly, he is a regular contributor to national magazines like Razor and Tirade. If you would be interested in publishing this piece or seeing other samples of his work, please feel free to contact him by e-mail, by phone at (626) 786-2095, or through his website at:

www.lawpsided.com