When cities incorporate now they have 4 different kinds of governmental structure to choose from, strong mayor/weak city council, weak mayor/strong city council, etc... It might be time to add a 5th. Politicians these days are elected more on the basis of cash, charisma, and cronyism than on their ability to solve the problems at hand. We should take away those factors so everyone who wanted to run for office would do so on a level playing field. Here's how this form of government would work.
There would be two voting periods, a primary and a runoff.
In the primary, anyone who wanted to run for an office would submit a list of 5 problems and their solutions to those problems to the elections commission, which would then print them on a ballot without naming names. (The problems could be anything the candidate thought was important.) Voters would vote for the whichever set of problems and solutions they thought were best.
In the runoff election, the top 5 winners from the primary would be revealed and allowed to campaign for office. Making their identities public at this stage would let people consider the past histories and sanity of the candidates in their decision-making process. Whoever won the runoff election would then not only have the chance to implement his or her own solutions, they'd also have all those other problems and solutions from the election to use as a resource for making their community even better
Comments (3)
Longshot, please, please get some education. Our country is NOT a Democracy. Or at least it's not supposed to be one. What ever happened to "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the REPUBLIC. . . ?
Without knowing it, you're killing the country you say you love. You've been duped like almost everyone else.
Don, I'm well aware that our country is not a real democracy. In point of fact it's a Federated Republic. As far as "what ever happened to 'I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the REPUBLIC..." goes you should devote more time to your own education. If the same question had been posed to our founding fathers their answer would be - What the hell are you talking about? They would have never heard of the pledge and would have been totally against it. During their lives each state was considered a country unto itself. That was the case up until the Civil War. General Lee refused to serve as the leader of the Union forces on the grounds that he could never attack his own country, meaning Virginia. After the Civil War perceptions changed and the One Nation concept of our country came into being. This led in part to the creation of the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892.
1st Sidebar - The words "under God" were unofficially added in 1942 and officially added in 1948.
2nd Sidebar - The original placement of one's hand while saying the pledge wasn't over the heart, it was an outstretched arm with the palm facing upward. Shortly thereafter it was changed to the palm facing downward. This looked way too much like the Nazi salute when World War II came around so FDR changed it to hand over heart.
Hi Long,
If you knew, why did you intentionally mislead? AND you twist what the 'forefathers would have said about the pledge,' because that wasn't my point until you made it one, Jefferson made very clear, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." Your otherwise potentially good idea might be worth something. As a Constitutionalist, I rejected your idea out of hand because of your title. I didn't need to read any further.
But I think my education of fifty years this year concerning this matter is clear enough that if you knew it was a Republic WHY did you introduce the subject of "a more democratic democracy?" The only way to define your subject is by what Jefferson said of it.
I'm not being unfriendly about this, because one of the ideas I submitted was very badly rejected, just like this one, but exactly the same language in a differently stated subject has been highly rated. Your idea could have merit if you'd find a different title for it. Try it. Just abandon this one and start a new one like, "A Level Playing Field for All Politicians!" Something like that.
I'll vote up for that one! :-)