Open Thread - 10-06-23 - Reformation
Submitted by JtC on Fri, 10/06/2023 - 8:14am
Some quick thoughts on governmental reformation.
Remove the money from politics.
- Overturn Citizens United.
- No more lobbyist.
- No more personal contributions.
- Campaigns run on Federal Campaign Funds. The same amount for all candidates.
- No foreign contributions.
- Reform the primaries.
- Debates should be open and required.
- No more Executive Actions. The Executive has grown too powerful.
- Mandate Congress to do its job as prescribed by the Constitution.
- Strict term limits for the House and the Senate.
- Term limits for the Supreme Court.
Primaries and Debates.
Reinstate the tripartite balance of power.
Term limits.
Age limits and yearly mental evaluations.
Revoke government propaganda.
Remove the incestuous connection between government and corporations (censorship).
This is an incomplete list, what would you add to it?
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
I miss the old days. There seems to be competing New World Orders at foot. The Old World Order wasn't perfect, but in my humble opinion, it was much better than that what's being thrust upon us now.
Keep on thinking free.
All good points
Would add a couple for consideration.
Mail-in ballots with receipt returned.
Single issue bills before congress with public input.
Military spending audits.
Popular vote tally - end electoral college.
Regulate political party rules.
Open elections to all registered parties.
thanks for the OT!
Great additions...
especially this one:
Give us a choice, and a voice.
Elections...
A couple points:
The Electoral College exists for some sound reasons - this is the United States, not the 'United State'. Are you proposing a switch to a unitary state like France, Japan, N. Korea?
FWIW - the voting population of just the four largest states exceeds that of the 22 least populous...
One worthwhile change - partially adopted by Maine and Nebraska - would be to end winner take all awarding of electors and award them proportionally instead. (ME and NE do it by congressional district) Every state would then be in play, and minor parties would be in the running for electors. Under such a system California, for example, would have awarded at least one elector each to the Libertarians and Greens in recent elections.
Switching to the above would not require action at the national level but could be done at the state level. As could introducing some form of proportional representation in state legislatures. I've never understood why minor parties have never (as far as I know) pushed for it.
And - going with the theme of things that used to work - in-person voting using paper ballots on Election Day (note the singular) with initial counting at the precinct level worked just fine in Oregon and most other places. Not impossible to cheat under such a system, but it produced quick and generally uncontested results - which the 'improved' systems very often do *not*.
That said, there shouldn't be undue obstacles for working people to vote - making Election Day a holiday and/or moving it to Saturday or Sunday would help in that regard. So would not having to wait for hours and hours to vote (see Maricopa Co. AZ)
You'd think election integrity would be something that transcends partisanship. However:
Right...
Clearly, the EC
was one of the most unfortunate items to come out of the constitutional convention of 1787. It was a compromise to placate the slave=holding southern states to encourage them to ratify the Con, it was a compromise in a context where no other country at that time had direct popular elections for the national leader, it was a default solution that prioritized the conservative/elitist and anti-populist mindset, and the EC was one of the very last items to be considered at the end of a long process where delegates were hot and tired (no a/c back then) and just wanted to get back home.
At the very best, the EC was a compromise solution suited for its time but not much later. It should be abolished but for the extreme difficulty of amending the Con, which process is another item to be added to the long list of reform proposals.
One proposal that seeks to avoid the amendment process while offering an alternative to the EC, or way around it, is the National Popular Vote Compact, which is still a few states short of being viable.j But because one major party has been very late in focusing attention on getting its people into state legislatures, and the other major party smartly has done the opposite, it will be difficult in the short term for the NPVC to be triggered. Nevertheless, it is one intriguing way to bypass the EC -- actually giving the winner of the national popular vote the electoral votes in all the states which have signed the Compact -- and restore some democracy to the presidential process. It is a crime that we allow losers of the popular vote -- sometimes losers by millions of votes -- to be declared the winner because of the sorely outdated Constitution.
As for some of the rest of the mess of our voting processes, we should have fed legislation making the right to vote for all offices an official right of the people; keep and encourage more early voting, encourage easier ways to register to vote, and generally, through strict and specific federal legislation, streamline the way we vote for federal candidates in the states.
So much to do, so much reform needed, and not surprisingly as we have placed too much undeserved faith in a flawed 230-yo document.
One kind of important point
That you aren't addressing is that - as I alluded to in my reply to QMS - the basis for all of this is a number of states uniting and ceding elements of their authority to a national government (and reserving other powers to themselves or their citizens) - NOT of a unitarian state. And small population states had and continue to have sound reservations about the sort of domination by large ones that things like National Popular Vote would likely result in.
A unitary government was never proposed and would never have flown - the Constitution itself was hardly well-received in many quarters, anyway, there was very healthy skepticism toward it.
Source
Indeed, the argument can be made that the Constitutional Convention (which deliberated in secret and was only called so after the fact) amounted to a coup against the existing Confederation - see Ferdinand Lundberg's 'Cracks in the Constitution' (Sorry to link to Amazon, but most reviews are there - $25.00 for Kindle edition of a 1980 book!? Outrageous.)
In any case...
The Electoral College was a fairly logical extension of the Great Compromise - which attempted to resolve the issue of whether representation was to be based on population or by each state having an equal vote. That controversy was not primarily between slave and non-slave states but between large and small ones.
The compromise passed by only a single vote - had it not passed, the Constitution would likely have failed altogether.
To repeat what I asked QMS - are you proposing a switch from a federal system to a unitary one?
The 'United State' has a nicer ring to it somehow?
Also, if the executive is to be decided on the basis of national popular vote then what about the legislature? Do you also want to do away with the disproportionate (as based on population) power of small states in the Senate as well?
The blanket application of 'one man, one vote' (which, admittedly sounds great) to state legislatures has been a disaster for rural areas - allowing the Blue metropolises to dominate vast swaths of hinterlands which urban elites mostly view with contempt when they can be bothered to consider them at all.
Consider the California State Senate, for example. Just two senate districts (1 and 4) cover all or part of twenty counties - whereas LA county alone includes all or part of 16 senate districts. How just is that? Is it desirable that that be applied to the US as a whole?
https://www.senate.ca.gov/sites/senate.ca.gov/files/2023-24_senate_count...
I don't find
the federalism vs unitary argument very persuasive. There would still be substantial federalism in our system with the enactment of the National Popular Vote Compact; it only tweaks at federalism. Historical, traditional and originalist arguments fall away also when we consider that the sainted Founders provided in the founding document a means by which the system could be tweaked in any aspect, thus they acknowledged that it was possible that federalism notions could be diluted at any point in the future if the people, through their representatives, so choose.
The NPVC would lead to more democratic and less absurd outcomes -- the winner of the national popular vote gets to take the WH instead of a candidate winning who loses the overall vote by millions. It would likely lead to more campaigning in more states in the general as heavily populated states would, for once, finally see candidates campaign in those areas. The important principle of one person one vote would be more fully realized as a vote in a heavily populated state would count as much as the vote in a sparsely populated rural state, while currently in the badly outdated EC system the sparsely populated states enjoy disproportionate advantage. Likely the more democratic and easily understood NPVC would lead to greater interest in voting and participation in our electoral system, esp among the young, as everyone would feel that their votes would be relevant.
A major problem with the congressional district alternative (ME, NE) would be who draws the districts and how? It would just uncover another set of problems -- gerrymandering -- that need reforming. I'm not aware of better reform alternatives than the NPVC.
Inconsistent...
I don't get, and don't see you addressing, that if, as you contend, the outcome for the executive branch should be decided by a straight up national popular vote then why not the legislative branch as well? Should the Senate by done away with? Should California get sixty senators while Wyoming stays at two?
The strict application of the 'one man, one vote' rule to state governments - due to the Supreme Court's 1964 decision in Reynolds v. Sims has reinforced the domination of big metropolitan areas over rural areas and small towns, fueled bad policy and resentment - the warning/prediction of Illinois Sen. Everett Dirkson has been well and truly borne out:
"[T]he forces of our national life are not brought to bear on public questions solely in proportion to the weight of numbers. If they were, the 6 million citizens of the Chicago area would hold sway in the Illinois Legislature without consideration of the problems of their 4 million fellows who are scattered in 100 other counties. Under the Court's new decree, California could be dominated by Los Angeles and San Francisco; Michigan by Detroit."
Which is essentially how it has turned out. Extending that to the federal level (would it even still *be* federal?) doesn't seem like a positive move.
This rural-urban divide needs to be somehow addressed for the stability of the country.
Consider this: Oregon (extreme) gun control Measure 114 (2022).
Over half of Oregon counties rejected the measure by 70% or more - approaching 90% 'no' in a couple counties. It was approved in six counties but with a substantial majority in just two. But those being the two most populous, the measure passed (by about .5%).
(Driving distance from Portland, Multnomah Co. (74% Yes) to Lakeview, Lake Co. (87% No): 348 miles)
https://www.usatoday.com/elections/results/race/2022-11-08-ballot_initia...
Then there's this, of course:
2020 Presidential Results by County
FWIW - agree that awarding electors by CD is imperfect. To use the California example, proportional award would have given Greens and Libertarians at least one elector in recent elections. Going by CD they would have had none...
Your first
para is a bit unclear, as we already vote directly for our legislative reps who rep only their cong'l district, not the country as a whole as with the president. The inconsistency you decry is really just with the EC being interposed between the voters and the presidency, the only office I'm aware of where voters only vote indirectly for the elected office.
As to the senate, the Con originally provided only indirect elections via the state legislatures, but happily this federalism aspect was changed with the 17th Am allowing for direct election by the people. A welcome reform since 1913. Only a few cranky RW originalists want to go back to the pre-1913 situation.
And yes I believe all absurd outcomes, such as at present, with 700k population states like WY and VT getting as many senators as huge CA (39m) and NY (20m), need to be reformed. As it stands just wrt the senate, obviously the smaller pop states wield undue influence in our system and usually not for the better as most of them are Red conservative states which prefer either the status quo of congressional gridlock or to go back to a mythical time they perceive as great.
I strongly doubt the above senate reform will ever happen in my lifetime, short of a constitutional convention or civil war. I go back and forth about whether either of the latter would be a good idea.
Enjoyed the discussion. Must move on now.
I cannot agree with ending the electoral college,
though it could certainly be reformed. I do not want presidents elected by the citizens of a handful of large cities. Gives me nightmares to think who such presidents would appoint to Interior, Agriculture, EPA. etc. The USA is not Singapore. It is a country of continental dimensions, not a city state.
Mary Bennett
Ballot initiatives should be made
a simpler process.
Polling should be held to a higher standard, as opposed to supporting the pollster's desired outcome.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Polls are great...
for instructing lazy people how to vote, especially push polls. Polls are also great for calling elections early which inhibits late voters from even bothering to cast a vote at all.
System reset
Resets are great...
for the resettors.
Imagine spending into bankruptcy like a drunken sailor and then implementing a reset to take everything for yourself from the hard working sailors. That's a good gig if you can get it.
A normal individual would consider a reset as change for the better, but we're not dealing with normal people, are we?
How pompous to consider oneself so astute so as to remake the world in your own image. We've had a few of those throughout history, what's that term again for that characterization?
Delusions of grandeur?
Abolish the Federal Reserve n/t
Yes...
it was a big mistake allowing a private cabal of bankers to control the nation's monetary policy.
Creating money out of thin air, fractional reserve banking, and controlling boom and busts with interest rates are some of the tools the Fed has used that has brought us to this point in time.
Abolish super delegates n/t
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Shush...
you'll give Hillary a sad.
Good morning JtC et. y'all. All good points and good goals,
but tricky to implement and, by and large, unlikely to happen. No reason not to dream on, inform, discuss and promote, all the same.
There is a possible conflict between outlawing lobbyists and the first amendment. A possible better fix is to legislate a stricter, tightened-up definition of bribery, one with rebuttable presumptions of guilt for a very large swath of activities and behaviors.
Primaries and debates ideas need to be somehow integrated with multiparty thinking; how to facilitate multiparty elections and multiple parties, and who pays for the debates. A national multiparty "debate" with something like 40 or 50 candidates would rapidly degrade into silliness, but if you do single party debates, as is currently done, independents get squeezed out. I don't, btw have any proposed solutions.
Age limits and term limits make sense, but mental evaluations less so. The problem is the nearly guaranteed politicalization of the evaluator and it's likely capture by idealogues, charlatans and the like.
Important Digression: October 6 is National Mad Hatter's Day. Both the operation and hypothetical reformation of our form of government seem wildly appropriate on this day. It is times like this that I simply assume the foetal position and hum the old patriotic standards like:
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Lots of air...
is taken up diagnosing the problems and too little discussion of solutions. I have been guilty of that myself. This is a partial compendium of my thoughts on said solutions.
Some would say that
briberylobbying is a matter of semantics. I'm not sure if that would come under the purview of the First Amendment or not, although The Constitution does have something to say about bribery. Semantics indeed.I agree about primaries and debates, but like you I have no solution other than the present system needs tweaking.
I posit that one on one debates, with only two candidates rapidly devolve into silliness. Case in point: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
You mean much like the status quo?
Mad Hatter's day is apropos for this mad, mad world we live in.
Thanks for weighing in, mi hermano.
Make elections paid for by
Federal Elections funds, and lobbyists will cease to exist. And bribery, and the free speech issue, and corporations that can't buy politicians openly will risk felony bribery charges, or just might start competing fairly in the marketplace.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Real time experiments can provide some insight.
Calif has a "top-two" or "jungle" primary, and I think that the jury is still out. Single party voters miss the chance to play strategy games among the choices for their party because outsiders are also on the ballot and could get one of the top two if the strategists are too tricky. I see no real problem with that. In some areas it can make the regular election for key positions pretty much moot which might depress turnout, though I haven't seen any real data on that. What I see as a bigger problem is the volumes of slick and deceptive ads cranked out by professional PR and propaganda firms, which goes back to money and would happen regardless of the type of primary. It definitely increases the opportunities for independent candidates.
Oakland has been dabbling with ranked choice which can reach bizzare results in the face of tag-team coalitions where the final winner could very well be disliked by a large majority of the electorate and/or be somebody who would've lost in a head-to head runoff with any of the other leaders.
I prefer top two to ranked choice, which seems to have been created solely, or at least primarily to avoid the cost of a run-off but means, in the end, that nobody necessarily gets to vote yay or nay on the final winner.
All in all, I side with whoever it was who declared the formation of political parties on these shores to be a blindingly terrible thing. If, however, one tried to outlaw them one would just wind up with sekret cabals and endless charges that whoever won anything was really secretly part of some sort of secret party.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
About debates,
the first thing needed is to exclude the mainstream media. Maybe have them put on and financed by election officials, with that same media required to provide free airtime, AS A CONDITION of being allowed to broadcast on OUR airwaves.
Mary Bennett
Petitions
On a related topic, a few months ago, I was asked to sign a petition at a store's parking lot. You would not believe how complicated they have made it. The man had to send me a text on my phone with a link which connected me to the county's website to prove that I was registered to vote. Then he had to take a picture of me and compare my picture and signature on my driver's license. How many people are not going to want to go through all of this to sign a petition? It's as if they are discouraging people from placing amendments on the ballot. Not sure how other states are doing this. I'm in Florida and these idiots have already passed 60% approval. Why people want to limit their rights I don't understand.
The petition was for recreational marijuana, and it did get enough preliminary signatures to go to the Supreme Court in November and if it passes the state's challenges, then it should be on the ballot next year.
This state is not as restrictive.
X number of signatures are required ( a percentage of registered voters ),
say 5000 for it to be considered as a valid referendum. The state then
checks signers against registration datum and vets accordingly. It is a
much more straightforward approach. Petitioners normally try to get 10%
or more signatures than required to allow for the vetting process. But, we
are a very small state compared to Florida.
Jtc, I like your list,
but I doubt your proposals could work without requiring media to supply free airtime to all candidates who meet certain reasonable qualifications, e.g., appropriate age, verifiable American citizenship, no felony convictions, making financial records public, etc. We have been gaslighted to forget that those airwaves Belong To Us, not to MSNBC or Fox or any corporate entity.
Agree about upper age requirement. Even the venerable Catholic Church won't allow cardinals 80yrs of age and older to sit in conclave. I do think term limits is a gimmick.
Absolutely agree on paper voting only. I don't object to early voting. The conservatives who gripe about it would like us to forget how Republicans gamed the absentee voting process for years. Also agree on general election day being a holiday and we also need to cut down on the number of voting days. Yes, petition organizers, that does mean that your wonderful proposal would have to face all voters in a general election. Maybe some of you should learn how to appeal to voters outside your own demographics.
Mary Bennett
Changes I'd like to see
First and foremost, get the money out.
Make voting regulations for federal office the same in all 50 states.
Length of term should be the same for congress, senate, and pres. Having a different length of term for each serves no useful purpose.
No campaigning until 6 months before the election.
Make election day a holiday.
Undue the gerrymandering the dem/rep's have done to exclude third party's from the electoral process.
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.