Attending the honors program at SUNY Albany, John Gunnell had us read a series of books relating to the discipline of political science. Disenchanted Realists was about the angst held by members of the discipline and the divergent view of the roles of that same discipline towards the public in general. 
Ultimately I find this stuff for more interesting then some of the internal rifts in the Liberty movement. We'll get to that stuff after the election. Until then it seems so obvious what the simple immediate solution might be. Hang on to your hats this maybe a long one . . .
Our Democracy's ills include a system of poor and brilliant choices at the outset of the Constitution's creation that has reduced us to what seems a whimisical cosmic fate. This isn't the post about a digital plebiscite - coming soon though - It's about taking back the control constantly foisted on us. 
While activists and other electoral mavens my have good reason to reproach Diebold and other potentially nefarias molesters of Democracy, the open source community and the Australians ( the people who brought you the original secret ballot) have essentially done an end run on this particular problem. Without going into the gory details about open source, encryption etc., it does seem possible to make such a system operable and secure for a one day event. Here's an event on day in September about such things.
A lot of people advocate this or that type of system or ballot. The problem of course is that it implicitly supports government control of said ballot. Imagine a scenario where the voter simply walked into a polling place and wrote down the choice of their candidate. Individuals simply voted for other individuals. This was the case prior to 1880, then the government started printing official ballots (see above piece about the Australian/secret ballot). Parties had started to print their own ballots for people. Some parties were more equal then others. That tumultuous period of Industrial revolution, labor and immigrant unrest and monetary unease is for another day. It was also the period liability law could get reward from the burgeoning railroad reality. Anarchists weren't the only problem.
Soon after, artificial constrictions started manifesting themselves and subsequently become part of the stare decisis fodder that was inherited from the cranky English system based on protections of a feudal system. I'll skip the Barrington Moore version here. Basically people no longer has considerable latitude in choice when they placed their own ballot in the box. The bottom line is that it wouldn't be such a strain on the systems if people printed or wrote their own ballot and had the community oraganize to count them. You could print off the ballot on a home printer with a son or grand daughter and go vote and then help count those votes. Idyllic. A fair tally would always include the intent of the voter, by virtue of the box with their hand signed ballot in it. Perhaps the choice from secret ballot could be a highwater point for actual electoral reform.
You could even keep the official ballot regime for those more comfortable with letting others decide for you. Considering the general difference in literacy rates over a hundred years ago little logical objection should be tolerated from doomsdayers and naysayers. People would have to think about their decisions however, th latter crowd always wins that argument. The tally might even take a day or two keeping the hungry media at bay for the purpose of an honest vote, so be it. I think few would harbor any real fear that tinfoil hat and vanity candidates would miracuously rule the day. Money, media and party machines in that order, would. All that stuff would remain fair play if you will. It would.
I had the opportunity to work a little with one of the country's top ballot access experts in the country, Richard Winger of Ballot Access News. Richard's work has helped the plight of one of the most disenfranchised segments of society, the third party voter. I'll reserve a future piece about the psychology, logistics and money required to obtain signatures. Most of the court cases about ballot access involve the aspect of political parties. If one qualifies, attaining ballot access is fairly easy as a party. The individual however, if he or she decides to run, is trapped to the idea of negotiating the ballot as if they were a party. Just as curious an idea as a corporation being a person. The real disenchanting part about this is how few media types or scholars are even concerned about such things. They either depend on the system for their own well being or are subject to horse race mentality of any chosen race. Even the Disenchanted Realist stayed far fome this most unjust aspect of the system. 
Court decisions often revolve around aspects of confusion and chaos when justifying the draconian system of ballot access. For some reason it's constitutional to keep an individual at bay in terms of elections. Witness NY law. An independent candidate for a congressional district needs the implicit support/permission of 1% of the voting total for that seat or 3500 signatures. Granted they can be from any party, but they cannot be from somebody who has already signed another. A main party candidate need only get 1250 signatures in order to be eligible for a primary. Presumably 10 or a thousand people could attempt such signature gathering in the alotted 6 week period from mid-June to mid-July. The independent candidate has to collect after that period (the hottest skankiest time of the year). Theoretically if 4 parties each had one thousand participants in the process and required 1250 signatures each, they would require 5 million signatures. By pure logic not everybody could run or participate as they saw fit, based on this standard. The independent could thus be completely left out of the process if the ballot access parties suddenly had a spontaneous civic virus of virtue spread amongst them. None of the legal genius' seem capable of presenting this logical, let alone constitutional argument.
Certainly those numbers are excagerated but they expose a serious flaw in legal thinking. An effort to provide a real market solution based on needs of the electorate would not go this route. Practically speaking you only see half a dozen people even consider taking up such a challenge. Is that based on the current barriers or simply a lack of will ? A free and open system could determine that very quickly. The media already presumes a favorite based on prestige or money, sometimes both. In England and Canada a filing fee is all that is required from a candidate for office, there's been no run on established parties as a result of this. No confusion. The main parties presidential primaries often involve numbers approaching a dozen. As I always say the Arnold that won the governor's office in California wasn't the one on the TV show Different Strokes.
Thus we see citizens that could take one day a year to determine, perhaps even with good conscience, what elective offices must be filled, presumably for our mutual benefit. Are all the kids in the back row asleep yet ? While petitioning up near Schroon Lake this summer I heard a piece on public radio about the new handicapped voter system that cost about 60 grand per. It seems like a lot of trouble could be saved in just this instance in terms of a simple paper ballot. Professional petitioners might be put out of work. The Board of Elections could actually cease to exist, after all why do they spend all the rent and heat the rest of the year ? As some even in my own party conceed optical scanners may be better then black boxes, but the content control is the same. By taking the control away, people could influence and persuade each other of their own designs and ideologies, rather then rely on monied interests, defacto regimes and impassive courts. Perhaps I'm too much a realist or just disenchanted. Feel free to chime in, I'm on blogging vacation for a while. Just had to get one last big one in.