A modest proposal to improve Election Day

I think Election Day would be enhanced if, in addition to getting the current ballot, voters also were provided every ballot they've cast in their lives and given the chance for do-overs.

This would have no practical effect, of course. Sorry, Minnesotans, there's no undoing your election of Jesse Ventura. And Larry "Wide Stance" Craig forever will be burned into the collective civic conscience of Idahoans. Ditto for South Carolinians and Mark "Walkin' the Appalachian Trail" Sanford; North Carolinians and John "There are Two Americas and I'm Gettin' Laid in Both" Edwards; and Illinoisans and Rod Blagojevich (and just about every other governor they've elected there). Democrats are stuck with their choices of Dukakis in 1988 and Kerry in 2004. And there's no removing the stain of Nixon. Or James Buchanan, for that matter.

Still, it would be cathartic to revisit and fix those votes you've come to regret, perhaps because your own politics and perspective have matured over the years, or because the candidate you helped elect turned out to be such a disaster in office, or maybe the one you didn't vote for turned out to be so terrific once elected (a shorter list, to be sure).

I'd like a do-over on the first presidential vote I cast. It was 1980, a simpler time -- Saddam Hussein was our friend, a tea party was a tea party and the Soviet Union had just sown the seeds of its ultimate dissolution by somehow getting sucked into a quagmire of war in Afghanistan. I was a wide-eyed college kid, faced with a bleak choice between the failed Jimmy Carter and doddering, dangerous Ronald Reagan (he was considered a right-winger back then, kids, but likely would be way too squishy for today's GOP, what with all his time in Hollywood). So, I voted for independent John Anderson, though he had no chance to win. I was Making A Statement, you see. I now understand that was irresponsible. I threw away the first vote I ever cast. If I had it to do over again, I'd take my duty much more seriously, probably write in Mickey Mouse's name instead.

The other vote I regret was a ballot issue -- Amendment 84 in 1988, or maybe Amendment 88 in '84. I got confused and turned every which away by all the "herewiths," "whereases," "it shall bes" and "what-fers," and I'm pretty sure I ended up casting a vote against puppies, orphans and apple pie.

No doubt, other voters have realized years later that they don't like Ike after all, or have decided that in their heart, they now know that Barry Goldwater WAS, in fact, right. Who knows, there still may be a voter or two who regrets that youthful dalliance with Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party.

What I'm suggesting is a chance for voters to expiate those voting sins of the past, to make more room in their consciences for the soon-to-be-rued votes of today and the future.