Both the Executive and Congress are in constant betrayal of the public trust because they represent less than 30% of the public. 70% of America did not vote for Obama, but to be fair to him, he is the same as Bush--irrelevant as long as we have a system owned by Wall Street.
We must demand of Obama and Congress, the latter as the price for not being recalled or defeated in 2010, an Electoral Reform Act along the following lines, drawing on Ralph Nader's lifetime of experience, as refined by Jim Turner and myself.
Phase I to be mandated for 2010 Election
Holiday Voting. Proposed, that to avoid undue hardship to the hardest workers in America, the working poor, national and state elections shall only be held over a week-end or on a holiday. If held on a Saturday, Orthodox Jews should have the option of voting in person on Sunday or by ballot in person the week prior, to be opened and counted on Election Day.
Honest Open Debates. Proposed, that to end the current monopoly of the debates by the bifurcated two-party alliance against independent and third parties, that the League of Women Voters be restored to their role as the managers of honest open debates, to include third, fourth, and fifth parties.
Expanded Debates. Proposed, that to end the charade of one individual being up to the task of managing America, that the debates be expanded to include a minimum of three Cabinet officials to be announced in advance, and generally to include the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State. Should the League of Women Voters desire, the Transpartisan Policy Institute would undertake the scheduling of substantive policy debates engaging all announced candidates for specific Cabinet positions, and shall provide, on the basis of open source intelligence from the Earth Intelligence Network, and budgetary costs and implications from the Public Budget Office, a range of viable policy options for debate and deliberation.
Instant Run-Off. Proposed, that to ensure the election of a winner elected by a majority, that the instant run-off concept be adopted for all national and state elections.
Phase II to be mandated for 2012 Election, with Districts Redrawn by November 2009
Full and Balanced Representation. Proposed, that to ascertain a properly representative balance in the House of Representatives for each state, and Open Registration be provided and that all parties having at least 10% of the voters registering a preference for their political philosophy, shall be eligible for assigned districts proportional to their number, and also to a proportional share of leadership positions in legislative bodies at all levels including the Congress of the United States of America.
Tightly-Drawn Districts. Proposed, that we end the corrupt practice of gerrymandering, replacing it with compact computer drawn districts similar to the kind used in Iowa.
Full Public Funding of Diverse Candidates. Proposed, to eliminate all federal financing of campaign, and all political action committees and structured bundled contributions to any candidate, that we institute a Campaign Contribution Tax Credit up to $100 per candidate up to ten candidates per individual in each election cycle to encourage broad based individual political campaign contributions.
No Legislation Without Consultation. Proposed, to eliminate special interest dominance of the legislative process, and to end the practice of passing legislation such as the Patriot Act without its actually being read, and to end all secret earmarks, that We all major legislation be published on line in Wiki format, with an easy to understand one-page summary, one week prior to its coming to a vote. This also includes a demand that all earmarks be listed no less than one week in advance of their being considered for a vote, and that all earmarks be publicly announced and offered for amendment to the voters in the relevant district at least one week prior to the passage of national legislation affecting them.
Comments (15)
There are way too many ideas here to vote on - contributor should break down into individual ideas. Thanks.
I like instant run-off voting.
I'm starting to like instant run-off voting.
Let private initiatives, blogging, and similar ideas handle the debates.
Are there any lessons learned for the computer drawn districts in Iowa? Have any other states tried this?
Full public funding of diverse candidates - this sounds like an outright legislative mess. Get rid of it.
Why post the legislation on a wiki instead of here? If its on a wiki, does that mean people can change the wording?
Too many ideas to vote on....
A wiki is specifically for collaborating and shaping the conversation - not voting on an existing proposal. Naturally, legislation can be posted to a wiki as information and cannot be revised willy-nilly. But voting can be used in a wiki to determine best options and discarding those that lose. A wiki replaces bad ideas with better ones and thus converges on solutions.
Take this OGD - this is not a wiki, it's a community message board that after time will get so cluttered that nobody can make sense of it. On message boards the discussions will go around in circles and get hijacked by the most active and adamant participants.
Totally agree with Micahel. There is a "buzz" going around the software and social collaborative communities about how low rent this is (others are more diplomatic) and the question is being asked with increasing frequency and intensity: was this a throw-away effort never really intended to mobilize the nation? I think it was, but it is also a good start in terms of FREE OBAMA (see the idea).
Nine people against electoral reform and someone systematically nullifying any votes for governance reform.....seems like there are some folks that like the mess we have just fine.
You are an abusive obsessive troll. Please go away.
The changes proposed here are too sweeping for a single initiative, and I disagree with, or would modify, at least half of them in some manner.
I would recommend a more incremental set of isolated changes. The probability of implementing a handful of isolated changes is substantially larger than the probability of getting this behemoth passed. Many of the points discussed above are already present as standalone ideas with high vote counts.
Voting down due to infeasibility and partial ideological conflict.
Thank you for your comment. I would love to hear about what changes you would make.
The origin of the list is as follows:
Roughly five of the idea from Ralph Nader's book Crashing the Party, the other three developed with Jim Turner (Naderide #2, now a global health legal champion), and I put together the list in two stages.
The point is to restore the one man - one vote rule, to restore the ability of all parties to play instead of the two parties that monopolize power, corrupt their own members (party discipline trumping constituency needs), and actually implement the Constition (Article 1, balance of power not foot soldiers for the president).
You can reach me direct at oss.net you know what goes here cox.net.
- I disagree that the low turnout in the vote is relevant to his mandate. This is a republic, not a democracy.
Phase 1:
- I agree with holiday voting.
- I have no opinion on the honest open debate issue, as I know nothing about the League of Women Voters and the way in which current debates are structured.
- I agree with expanded debates, though it seems to me that the debate process itself is fundamentally flawed: we are not naturally rational creatures. We will be swayed by presentation, appearance and the like, no matter how hard we try to fight it. Some will be swayed substantially more than others.
- My mind is not yet made up on what the best voting system would be. Instant runoff would be an improvement in some ways, but may also fragment the parties too much (see below.)
Phase 2:
- I don't necessarily agree with full and balanced representation. We need look no further than the gridlocked government of Israel to understand how too many representative blocks rapidly becomes a hinderance instead of a bonus. I believe part of our strength as a nation lies in the ability of the current majority party to actually get something done. ("do something, even if it's wrong, but don't just sit there")
I do believe there should be cutoff levels below which parties are no longer considered eligible. The posted specification does not appear to have any such cutoffs, or I am reading it wrong.
- I agree with districting reform in general. A computer drawn map is one option, but I think a better structural reform for this would be a constitutional amendment stating that districting powers must be held by the judicial branch.
- I have no opinion on the full public funding of diverse candidates beyond a statements that 'this is harder than it looks' and 'this looks likely to have the same level of abuse as the current system'. Politicians, and political entities, are EXCEPTIONALLY good at finding ways to use things.
- Legislation without consultation: this contains far too many ideas for a single paragraph. Eliminating special interest groups has other problems. Public reading and posting of legislation is detailed in multiple other ideas. Earmarks and pork are only earmarks and pork when someone finds them and labels them as such; there is no magic button you can push to define something as pork in isolation of the legislation it is attached to.
- I would think it very rare that local voters affected by a local earmark would ever vote to change it other than to increase its size. This seems to me a fairly meaningless addition that is not required.
Great contribution, thank you. No argument--it makes me so very sad to see Independents blocked from all the public debates at the state and national levels. The Republicans and Democrats conspired to displace the League of Women Voters with the Presidential Debate Commission, and the League lost its integrity in allowing that to happen. They should have raised holy hell and stuck with their core value of asking questions not provided in advance, and including third and forth party cnadidates as warranted.
Resist the Borg.....everyone knew Cheney was part of the Borg, I see a lot of little lightbulbs going on across America as folks figure out that no matter how good a person Obama might be, no president can be effective on behalf of We the People without a fundamental change in the system.
IRV is a well intended election reform that does not meet its promise.
IRV is not "as easy as 1-2-3",
it actually hurts third parties.
Implementation of IRV corresponds with drastic drop in voter turnout in San Francisco's mayoral contests;
IRV consistantly suffers from majority failure and
several states' fiscal analysis show that IRV creates new and high costs in elections.
IRV increases reliance on more complex technology, making audits and recounts more prohibitive, further eroding election transparency.
IRV does not help racial minorities and may even impede them IRV may negatively impact the disabled.
see http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/
JMC:
1. First, we should state that no voting system is perfect or even pareto optimal. All involve trade-offs so we must discuss the trade-offs in question.
2. What is the objective? Is it to find a social choice that the majority can accept and creates a stable political order? Or is it to favor multiple parties?
3. Is our objective to help racial minorities or to create a cohesive society?
4. Technology is not a barrier to a better voting system.
5. Cost is a matter of priorities.
6. The majority failure you cite is a function of either strategic voting or low turnout - neither of which violate the desired objectives of the voting system to arrive at a single choice acceptable to all.
Re: your weblink. I'm not convinced IRV is not a positive reform for our voting system.
Helpful comment. Obama, like Bush, is the Borg. He is busy perpetuated the policies of Bush, including more power to the Federal Reserve that is neither Federal nor a Reserve, but instead the Central Banking authority. visit www.freeobama.org for a starting perspective. Free online annotated bibliography (and book that called it in October 2008) at www.oss.net/PIG.