Why not have a "short" ballot and a "long" ballot?

On some ballots in the last election, there were as many as 19 Amendments, I have read. If every voter read all those Amendments, it is easy to see why the lines were 6 hours long. In some states, the ballot proposals bave become a political strategy for getting our "targeted" voters.

But, they can have the impact of intimidating less sophisticated voters. And there are those that say if they do not know what they are voting for, they should not vote at all. However, under those conditions, we would have a voting clique of about 5-10%.

So why not have two ballots? On one ballot, people that do not want to wait in long lines could get the "short" ballot and it would only have the names for teh individuals running for office with no Amendments. For example, President, Senate, Congress, and State House.

On the other ballot, the "long" ballot, people could choose to vote on every individual and every issue. Would this be an impossible solution to the long lines? Any other ideas?

but it would take a statewide vote on an amendment to do it.

In OH, there were lots of elections and lots of ballot measures. I had city, county, state, and national elections/measures to vote on. There was a big sign stating that there was a 5 minute limit for casting a ballot.


It may be that elections need to be split so that we only vote on national elections or only vote on state elections or only cote on local elections.

Like say you went to the polling place, and the first machine was
president, senate and house. (federal). Then you move to another
voting machine for state initiatives... and another for local
ones. The federal machine would be rather fast, and frankly the
feds should pay for their own box, the state theirs and the locals
their own box. This way, only local proven residents can visit the
local election machine... and this would devolve power for local
elections to local people.

Honestly, i think the simplest way would be to stagger the voting
dates that federal offices are on a separate day.

I recall picking judges and whatnot based on whether i liked the
way their names sounded, being sooo poorly informed about what i
was voting on in local offices.

For example, challengers to the incumbent dog catcher,
will want to 'roll the dice' with the largest and most uninformed
pool of voters, so they would oppose being split from the
'federal - big interest' contests.