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Peter - the idea is great, the execution of it would not work however.

Your three strikes rule would lend itself to a bias to vote more often out of fear that others are and you would get a strike.

I would ask why the writers are still involved at all?

The Hall is not directly related or run by MLB as I understand it.

Good.

Find a way to police your own election process.

Maybe we don't need to know the count?

What if the announcement just said, Henderson and Rice get elected!

You wouldn't have to know by how many votes, does it matter anyway? Officially, is Rice a lesser hall of famer than Henderson? Nope. Equals.

Would you need to know that Dawson was at 60 whatever percent this year?

People would obviously poll voters to estimate where they landed.

If you tell someone who you voted for you lose your vote :)

Look at what a lousy job the Veteran's Committee is doing at electing neglected old timers to the Hall. Writers seem to do a pretty good job in comparison.

Given that obvious Hall candidates tainted by steroids (like McGwire) will be neglected in the next few years, "good guy" alternatives might get a shot. Why not elect guys like Blyleven and Mattingly?

BL- you have identified the weakness in my argument, but I don't think it matters. If you set the strike threshold high enough, why would voters feel that pressure? Instead, they wouldn't be able to use their personal agendas against a candidate. (Or they could, but suffer a penalty for doing so)

I am not a fan of reporting the votes without adding numbers because I think accountability is the thing that is missing in this whole process.

what about the other way around?

If you vote for someone and they have less than xx% of the votes, you get a strike for trying to get a non-worthy candidate in...paying back a favor for those seats the player used to leave for you ...

Peter, I agree the system is broken, but I'm not sure a demerit system would work. In theory it is great, but just how do you set a target % and what if a writer has a legit argument, etc.

ESPNradio this AM discussed this same issue. Mike Schmidt wrote in agreeing that the system was flawed.

I've read quotes from writers who said they didn't vote for a specific player b/c they felt he was a lock and therefore would use his vote to try and garner support for another player. The Corky guy that didn't vote for Rickey Henderson said that I think. Is that a fair reason? Perhaps, but if a guy is an HOFer in your opinion, you have to vote for him in my opinion.

Andy

I think you have to set the threshold high enough to eliminate that problem. Maybe it is 90%. Maybe it is a combination of the voting percentage and the time on the ballot. It is just insane that these writers leave off obvious candidates because of petty jealousies and arguments.

And BL, I am all for it, but maybe you set it for single-digit candidates? (ie- the two guys who voted for Jay Bell this year) I just wouldn't want to discourage anyone from voting for a legitimate candidate.

nice blog on boston.com about the voting process and writers (if you have issue with pasting it in here then maybe you can provide a link to it)

here it is:

A vote for sanity
Email|Link|Comments (6) Posted by Eric Wilbur, Boston.com Staff January 13, 2009 08:49 AM
First off, congratulations to Jim Rice for making it to the Baseball Hall of Fame, a journey finally complete after years of debate, hand-wringing, and campaigning on behalf of the Red Sox.

Also, thank you to the baseball writers for finally completing a 15-year stretch in which they cheapened the voting process to the point where fans can have little faith in their decisions on the whole going forward.

That’s not to say that Rice isn’t a Hall of Famer. I certainly will take issue with those that claim Rice’s induction makes Cooperstown the Hall of “Very Good.” You know the arguments as to why he does or doesn’t belong, so we won’t rehash them here for the 1,909,876,768th time. But it makes no sense to me – zero – how a guy can make up 46.6 percent of the vote despite not having picked up a bat for 20 years.

Yes, yes, the steroid era helped voters re-think their positions, but please. If that were the overwhelming factor in Rice getting elected, shouldn’t he have been inducted one, two, even three years earlier? My favorite was in 2006 when Bruce Sutter made it into the Hall in his 13th year on the ballot, a development that, at the time, prompted some writers to claim, “That makes it look good for Rice down the road.”

Down the road? What, were they expecting one more run at a batting crown?

Rice looks no better – or worse – today than he did in his first year on the ballot, way back in 1995. He dominated his era, a factor that many writers apparently were blind to until 2009. For a group that maintains how “serious” they take this privilege, many writers have managed to make fans dubious about their thought process. That includes the whole, “Babe Ruth wasn’t unanimous, so nobody else should be” nonsense, a group that might have included Corky Simpson, a retired Tucson Citizen columnist who “forgot” to vote for Rickey Henderson.

Simpson did, however, remember to vote for Tommy John and Matt Williams. Matt Williams. He’s even objective enough to call him, “Matty.” How cute.

After listing his 10 choices, Simpson did “remember” to at least mention Henderson: “Others honored with nomination this year and who may well be voted into the Hall of Fame, include Harold Baines, Jay Bell, David Cone, Ron Gant, Mark Grace, Rickey Henderson, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Jesse Orosco, Dave Parker, Dan Plesac, Lee smith [sic], Greg Vaughn and Mo Vaughn.”

So, the man had Henderson lumped in with Dan Plesac, Jay Bell, and Mo and Greg Vaughn. These are your Hall of Fame voters.

Now, not everyone votes as carelessly, of course. Locally, we can claim to have some pretty dedicated writers who perhaps take the job even more seriously than is really necessary. But no matter how much they treat it as if he or she is determining the fate of who controls the Gaza Strip with one vote, we at least can be assured there’s no flippancy.

That's not the case elsewhere, where too many retired writers maintain their lifetime vote, even if they watch the game these days as much as they do "The Hills." Think about it, 28 writers didn’t vote for a player who is the all-time base-stealer, and scored more runs than anyone else in the game’s history. Makes sense.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark calls it “embarrassing,” and he’s not alone in the simmering boil that some writers are beginning to show for their clueless colleagues.

Stark writes:

You all need to think long and hard about why you're even participating in these elections. If you're not voting for Rickey Henderson, you've been watching the wrong sport.
Seriously, by what standard is this man NOT a Hall of Famer?

He scored more runs than any player in the history of baseball.

Do we even need to list ANY other qualifications?

That answer is no.

Well, Hank Aaron hit more home runs than any player in the history of baseball for a time, and he wasn’t unanimous either. As Larry Stone points out in the Seattle Times today, Greg Maddux won’t be unanimous in five years, despite the word “steroids” never being associated with him over his brilliant, slam-dunk Hall of Fame career. It’s gotten to the point where we shouldn't be surprised over the ignorance of some of the game’s esteemed journalists.

Or is it agenda?

But just think, now that the whole Rice affair is over, we only have another decade-plus to continually hear why Mark McGwire doesn’t deserve to make it. Which can only mean he’ll be at Cooperstown for his induction in 2021. It's called "re-examining the facts," don't you know?