Electioneering

[Shrimpbox]

While there are many astute posts here some of this becomes theoretical navel gazing. There are too many assumptions that will never be true.

That the people voting in the democracy will be well educated and conscientious about making decisions. Our educational system will see that that will not happen. There are either no civic and history classes or ones so slanted that the impressionable don't stand a chance. Just one look at Jay Lenos man on the street interviews is enough to make one feel you should have to pass a test to be able to vote.

That elections will be fair and not fraudulent. Let's just take the last one although by no means are repubs not capable of corruption too. Obama lied repeatedly to the American people, used the power of his office to suppress opposition illegally, overstepped his constitutional bounds, and failed to have his administration and his appointees adhere to the laws of this country. So if someone, anyone, gets into office under false pretenses you want us to give him six years instead of four to wreak havoc on our country. Or let's say an unscrupulous candidate uses the NSA to find out and leak damaging private info about a opponent and this info does not come out til after,the election? You are actually allowing for a more imperial presidency experience than we have now with six year terms, no thank you.

Put more of the election process in the hands of computers. That's rich. So some hackers call nullify the will of the people. And what if that isn't discovered til after the election? And of course we can trust the govt to create foolproof web sites. Anyone ever heard of Target?

Finally, when this country was founded the press was given the freedom to speak truth to power, any power. Today's press has abdicated their responsibility to be fair and objective and to keep the electorate informed and has instead become a propaganda organ of the state. If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, citizens are now going to have to do more homework on their own to ferret out the truth ( here's to ya message boards) and quite frankly citizens today while they might have the tools to do this with are not taught how to think their way through problems, but are rather told what to think. This does not bode well for democracy and efforts to transfer more responsibility to democratic processes.

To improve the system we need mandatory history and civic education. No American should graduate from high school without a thorough understanding and present knowledge of our system. Secondly we need election laws that are as severe as those that protect life. Lastly we need a cultural seismic shift toward making our civic consciousness as important as our electronic consciousness.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Well I wasn't invited. But I will respond anyway.

All your points in all your areas require Constitutional amendments. What that means is unless you convince enough Representatives and Senators to recommend each of the specific Amendments and then get 37 States to agree to them you would end up with a mish mash, assuming any were ever even created at all, of your ideas.

And they all drastically change the procedures, term periods, election system and numerous other functions.

Reality is that you will never get the Congress to agree to any of these proposals and if somehow they were created as amendments then it is unlikely you would get 37 States to agree to all of them.

Sounds good, might even make sense, though I disagree with most of it. Reality is you will never see this even brought up in Congress.

Edit.... increasing the number of representatives does not require an amendment, Taking the control of their districts away from the States does.

[MENTION=5176]RetiredGySgt[/MENTION] -

You were only not invited because I do not know you yet. I also said in the OP that that mention list was just a partial list.

Yes, I am acutely aware that these sweeping changes would require at the least a constitutional amendment, and more likely than not, a constitutional convention.


BTW, your edit is correct. As a matter of fact, in 2008, House Republicans were pushing very hard to add an new representative for the state of Utah, were it to not get over the population marker in 2010 in order to jump to four CDS.

The OP is more than just going-dreaming. These are a lot of ideas I threw out and I also said many times over that this is not the only way, but rather, A way.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to hear from you again.

 

[Statistikhengst]

While there are many astute posts here some of this becomes theoretical navel gazing. There are too many assumptions that will never be true.

That the people voting in the democracy will be well educated and conscientious about making decisions. Our educational system will see that that will not happen. There are either no civic and history classes or ones so slanted that the impressionable don't stand a chance. Just one look at Jay Lenos man on the street interviews is enough to make one feel you should have to pass a test to be able to vote.

That elections will be fair and not fraudulent. Let's just take the last one although by no means are repubs not capable of corruption too. Obama lied repeatedly to the American people, used the power of his office to suppress opposition illegally, overstepped his constitutional bounds, and failed to have his administration and his appointees adhere to the laws of this country. So if someone, anyone, gets into office under false pretenses you want us to give him six years instead of four to wreak havoc on our country. Or let's say an unscrupulous candidate uses the NSA to find out and leak damaging private info about a opponent and this info does not come out til after,the election? You are actually allowing for a more imperial presidency experience than we have now with six year terms, no thank you.

Put more of the election process in the hands of computers. That's rich. So some hackers call nullify the will of the people. And what if that isn't discovered til after the election? And of course we can trust the govt to create foolproof web sites. Anyone ever heard of Target?

Finally, when this country was founded the press was given the freedom to speak truth to power, any power. Today's press has abdicated their responsibility to be fair and objective and to keep the electorate informed and has instead become a propaganda organ of the state. If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, citizens are now going to have to do more homework on their own to ferret out the truth ( here's to ya message boards) and quite frankly citizens today while they might have the tools to do this with are not taught how to think their way through problems, but are rather told what to think. This does not bode well for democracy and efforts to transfer more responsibility to democratic processes.

To improve the system we need mandatory history and civic education. No American should graduate from high school without a thorough understanding and present knowledge of our system. Secondly we need election laws that are as severe as those that protect life. Lastly we need a cultural seismic shift toward making our civic consciousness as important as our electronic consciousness.

The bolded: your opinion, which you are more than welcome to, but there is no evidence from you that even 1/10 of it is so. But that's ok, that is not what this thread is about. However, I will submit to you that it is not in our power to divine the reasons for why the voters voted. That is their choice and their right.

Obama won in 2012 with 51.01% of the NPV to Governor Romney's 47.15%, a +3.86% margin, larger than Bush's re-election margin in 2004, larger than Carter's 1976 win, larger than Nixon's 1968 win, larger than Kennedy's 1960. In fact, 2012, in not even in the list of the 10 closest races in our history.

In the electoral college, Obama won fair and square, 332-206. Even if you were to give every state that Obama won with less than a +5 margin (FL, VA, OH), Obama still would have won, 272-265.

A win is a win is a win is a win.

The second bolded: and yet, President Obama received far more negative press in 2012 than all of the GOP candidates, and every single on of them received more postive press. Looks like that state-run organ didn't run as well as you thought.

I never said that computers should run elections. I said that a super computer should do the redistricting, based on three and only three very specific parameters. It's all in the OP.


The third bolded: what exactly do you mean?


Finally, you missed the entire point of the OP. It was about identifying an obvious structural flaw in our nation's method of electioneering (for the reasons clearly give in the OP) and suggestions as to how to fix them.

 

[BlackSand]

I couldn't determine whether you're suggesting it's the POLITICIANS that are corrupted or that the SYSTEM ITSELF is corrupted.

The implications and solutions would vastly depending on which of them would be the case.

And I agree, just want to pinpoint which is the corrupted.

@MarcALT ... I have waited to see if anyone would address your question and concerns.
Personally ... I think the system is not near as corrupt as the people who abuse it ... And as you mentioned, the necessary adjustments would vary if we moved from treating symptoms to eliminating the root cause of the problems.

I haven't tackled it further because I didn't want to distract from the progress Stat was making at discussing the ideas he worked hard on and posted up.
I think that as long as we are stuck on trying to build a better mousetrap ... We don't get any further towards re-establishing the idea of personal responsibility and a reason to actually trust the electorate.

Again ... Not to take too much away from what Stat has provided ... I don't think we are in a better position now to select a path to take as a nation with the same respect towards enduring freedom and unlimited opportunity.
The Founders were not in total agreement ... And there were obvious issues they chose not to address in a forward manner ... But with the understanding that those issues were not paramount in establishing the Federal Government.
They put together what they thought would work and still protect their rights ... The fact it has carried us this far without more abuse is really amazing to me.

.

 

[Statistikhengst]

I couldn't determine whether you're suggesting it's the POLITICIANS that are corrupted or that the SYSTEM ITSELF is corrupted.

The implications and solutions would vastly depending on which of them would be the case.

And I agree, just want to pinpoint which is the corrupted.

@MarcALT ... I have waited to see if anyone would address your question and concerns.
Personally ... I think the system is not near as corrupt as the people who abuse it ... And as you mentioned, the necessary adjustments would vary if we moved from treating symptoms to eliminating the root cause of the problems.

I haven't tackled it further because I didn't want to distract from the progress Stat was making at discussing the ideas he worked hard on and posted up.
I think that as long as we are stuck on trying to build a better mousetrap ... We don't get any further towards re-establishing the idea of personal responsibility and a reason to actually trust the electorate.

Again ... Not to take too much away from what Stat has provided ... I don't think we are in a better position now to select a path to take as a nation with the same respect towards enduring freedom and unlimited opportunity.
The Founders were not in total agreement ... And there were obvious issues they chose not to address in a forward manner ... But with the understanding that those issues were not paramount in establishing the Federal Government.
They put together what they thought would work and still protect their rights ... The fact it has carried us this far without more abuse is really amazing to me.

.

I concur with your, very strongly. More strongly than you can imagine. A part of this equation is voter apathy that goes beyond simply not voting. It also means voters who have no earthly reason for whom or why they are voting.

Now, Jim Crow sucked. That is my very mild-mannered way of saying that Jim Crow was as racist and bigoted as they come, and a cursory look at some of the horsediddle put out there by a state like Louisiana proves the point very quickly.

However, just as getting a driver's license requires passing a driver's test, having to pass a simple civics-proficiency test in order to get a voter ID is an idea I would be willing to look at.

I know that that seems to go against was most think the Left is thinking, but I think that neither side wants a dumb electorate. Right now, as it stands, voting is an inalienable right. Well, you have to be 18 and a non-felon and such. But making that statement, I am already pointing out that the right to vote already has some restrictions on it, either at the national or at the state level.

I do think that an average voter should be able to name:

-the current president and the two before him (or her)
-correctly state the number of Senators, number of Representatives and number of Supreme Court justices.
-should actually know what the word "levy" means in terms of taxes.

---for staters-----


I am not saying that they need to be Einsteins. But at least the most basic of knowledge from Civics 101 should be in the system....

What say you?



second bolded: yes

but even the moment the ink was drying on the Constitution, 10 amendments were being printed...

 

[BlackSand]

I concur with your, very strongly. More strongly than you can imagine. A part of this equation is voter apathy that goes beyond simply not voting. It also means voters who have no earthly reason for whom or why they are voting.

Now, Jim Crow sucked. That is my very mild-mannered way of saying that Jim Crow was as racist and bigoted as they come, and a cursory look at some of the horsediddle put out there by a state like Louisiana proves the point very quickly.

However, just as getting a driver's license requires passing a driver's test, having to pass a simple civics-proficiency test in order to get a voter ID is an idea I would be willing to look at.

I know that that seems to go against was most think the Left is thinking, but I think that neither side wants a dumb electorate. Right now, as it stands, voting is an inalienable right. Well, you have to be 18 and a non-felon and such. But making that statement, I am already pointing out that the right to vote already has some restrictions on it, either at the national or at the state level.

I do think that an average voter should be able to name:

-the current president and the two before him (or her)
-correctly state the number of Senators, number of Representatives and number of Supreme Court justices.
-should actually know what the word "levy" means in terms of taxes.

---for staters-----


I am not saying that they need to be Einsteins. But at least the most basic of knowledge from Civics 101 should be in the system....

What say you?



second bolded: yes

but even the moment the ink was drying on the Constitution, 10 amendments were being printed...

The ability to test voters has been struck down by the Supreme Court and abolished in the Voter Rights Act.
It was the actions of some states across the South that required the voter to pass a test ... That then required the test to be abolished.
Again ... Treating the symptoms and not eliminating the problem made the overall problem worse ... And established precedence and legislation that forbids what you suggest.

That is exactly what I mean about attempting to fix problems by treating symptoms ... And the more power we give to the government in attempts to fix what is not their problem ... The greater you risk opening up the door to more abuse and compounding the problem.
That is specifically why they added the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution ... They all limit the powers of the Federal Government and what we allow it to do.

You are still stuck on debating Left or Right ... Which is a prime example of why things are screwed up so bad.
There is a difference in what one side wants or the other ... And telling people they should be better stewards of our country and become more responsible for their decisions and actions.

There were a lot of things that the Founders agreed were a problem ... But none of the Federal Government's business to start with.

.

 

[Shrimpbox]

Stat I am somewhat disappointed in your response to my post

First, when I spoke about fraudulent elections, I was not talking about vote counting I was speaking to the fact that Obama lied repeatedly to the American people and therefore the basis of many of the votes he received was fraudulent. Therefore if we adopted your suggestion of 6 year terms for a president who was elected on false pretenses( whether dem or repub) we would have to suffer an extra two years of the snake. 6 year terms was part of your op.

While you may not have spoken of increased involvement of computers in your op many of the posters did.

Saying that Obama got more negative press than the Romney is the most dishonest and disappointing part of your post
Winning the Media Campaign 2012 | Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

Your last question is easily answered. As with too much white collar crime, punishment is not strong enough to be a deterrent. Same with violations of election laws. Make the punishment so severe people will think twice before engaging in fraud or vote fixing.

I am not into the ubiquitous and unproductive pissing contests on so many of these threads. I still commend you on the mammoth effort you have put into this thread and we will just agree to disagree. I think our present system while imperfect is still the best and that the problem is not with the constitution but the culture. We have gotten the government we deserved.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Stat I am somewhat disappointed in your response to my post

First, when I spoke about fraudulent elections, I was not talking about vote counting I was speaking to the fact that Obama lied repeatedly to the American people and therefore the basis of many of the votes he received was fraudulent. Therefore if we adopted your suggestion of 6 year terms for a president who was elected on false pretenses( whether dem or repub) we would have to suffer an extra two years of the snake. 6 year terms was part of your op.

While you may not have spoken of increased involvement of computers in your op many of the posters did.

Saying that Obama got more negative press than the Romney is the most dishonest and disappointing part of your post
Winning the Media Campaign 2012 | Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

Your last question is easily answered. As with too much white collar crime, punishment is not strong enough to be a deterrent. Same with violations of election laws. Make the punishment so severe people will think twice before engaging in fraud or vote fixing.

I am not into the ubiquitous and unproductive pissing contests on so many of these threads. I still commend you on the mammoth effort you have put into this thread and we will just agree to disagree. I think our present system while imperfect is still the best and that the problem is not with the constitution but the culture. We have gotten the government we deserved.

Sorry I disappointed. A lot of points you make are based on emotion. I generally do not go there. You claim that Obama stole the election by lying (or making false promises) to people, but there is no way for you get get into all 129 million + heads of those who voted in 2012 to see what the mitigating factor was in their decision and so, for me, the point is moot. I understand the point you are trying to make and I respect it, but I don't find it germaine to the ideas of the OP itself.

When you talk about punishment, are you hinting at the death penalty for voter fraud, what very little of it there is?

I am, however, thrilled that you stopped by more than once to give input. That is always a welcome thing.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Well I wasn't invited. But I will respond anyway.

All your points in all your areas require Constitutional amendments. What that means is unless you convince enough Representatives and Senators to recommend each of the specific Amendments and then get 37 States to agree to them you would end up with a mish mash, assuming any were ever even created at all, of your ideas.

And they all drastically change the procedures, term periods, election system and numerous other functions.

Reality is that you will never get the Congress to agree to any of these proposals and if somehow they were created as amendments then it is unlikely you would get 37 States to agree to all of them.

Sounds good, might even make sense, though I disagree with most of it. Reality is you will never see this even brought up in Congress.

Edit.... increasing the number of representatives does not require an amendment, Taking the control of their districts away from the States does.

I've been thinking the same sort of thing about this thread. However, I didn't want to be a party pooper for those that want to live in fantasy land. This is too big of a hunk of meat to chew on. It might be more realistic to consider small but doable reforms.

Fret not, boys... Every party at USMB has an open door and there's never a cover charge, no matter what list your on (or not).

​

 

[Statistikhengst]

Well I wasn't invited. But I will respond anyway.

All your points in all your areas require Constitutional amendments. What that means is unless you convince enough Representatives and Senators to recommend each of the specific Amendments and then get 37 States to agree to them you would end up with a mish mash, assuming any were ever even created at all, of your ideas.

And they all drastically change the procedures, term periods, election system and numerous other functions.

Reality is that you will never get the Congress to agree to any of these proposals and if somehow they were created as amendments then it is unlikely you would get 37 States to agree to all of them.

Sounds good, might even make sense, though I disagree with most of it. Reality is you will never see this even brought up in Congress.

Edit.... increasing the number of representatives does not require an amendment, Taking the control of their districts away from the States does.

I've been thinking the same sort of thing about this thread. However, I didn't want to be a party pooper for those that want to live in fantasy land. This is too big of a hunk of meat to chew on. It might be more realistic to consider small but doable reforms.

Fret not, boys... Every party at USMB has an open door and there's never a cover charge, no matter what list your on (or not).

​

 

[MarcATL]

I don't agree that making wholesale changes to the constitution is the right way to go. Neither do I think that this is the fault of the voter. Restricting access to the polls by elaborate ID measures answer a problem we do not have, namely voter fraud.

The problem as I see it is the money. Money spent on ads and campaigns. If contributions from individuals AND corporations was restricted to a three digit number, we could eliminate checkbook politics.

Perhaps it's the length of the campaign that makes the money so needed. If we had one national day for primaries, in May perhaps, and a national moratorium on campaigning until early August, long drawn out budgets for media buys would dry up and take the cash with them.

I have to agree about the money spent on ads, sometimes a year or more in advance of an election. I would suggest some election financing reforms.
Only an individual may make a contribution. Individual = a single identifiable person, no other "entities" may make contributions. A contribution can only be made to the candidate running for office in the individual's geographic location. I.e.: If someone is running for mayor of Anchorage, AK, only residents of Anchorage, AK may make contributions. If someone is running for state senator, only verified residents of that state may make contributions, and so forth...
Advertising would be limited to a certain period prior to an election. 30 days, 60 days, something reasonable. (Personally, I'm already sick of the 2014 elections.)
Any candidate who starts ragging on what another candidate has done, rather than what they will do if elected, is penalized. Maybe pull all their advertising and "sanction" them for a period of time. (Again, I really don't care about some trumped up charge of animal abuse, or some similar bs. I want to know what the candidate's ideas are, what their plans include, what they will do for us.)

Just a few thoughts to toss out there...

This is why Citizen's United is absolutely THEE worse ruling in modern history.

Far RW judges run amok.

Have have paid, are paying, and will continue to pay for that dearly, until we're able to repeal that rancid ruling.

 

[Statistikhengst]

I don't agree that making wholesale changes to the constitution is the right way to go. Neither do I think that this is the fault of the voter. Restricting access to the polls by elaborate ID measures answer a problem we do not have, namely voter fraud.

The problem as I see it is the money. Money spent on ads and campaigns. If contributions from individuals AND corporations was restricted to a three digit number, we could eliminate checkbook politics.

Perhaps it's the length of the campaign that makes the money so needed. If we had one national day for primaries, in May perhaps, and a national moratorium on campaigning until early August, long drawn out budgets for media buys would dry up and take the cash with them.

I have to agree about the money spent on ads, sometimes a year or more in advance of an election. I would suggest some election financing reforms.
Only an individual may make a contribution. Individual = a single identifiable person, no other "entities" may make contributions. A contribution can only be made to the candidate running for office in the individual's geographic location. I.e.: If someone is running for mayor of Anchorage, AK, only residents of Anchorage, AK may make contributions. If someone is running for state senator, only verified residents of that state may make contributions, and so forth...
Advertising would be limited to a certain period prior to an election. 30 days, 60 days, something reasonable. (Personally, I'm already sick of the 2014 elections.)
Any candidate who starts ragging on what another candidate has done, rather than what they will do if elected, is penalized. Maybe pull all their advertising and "sanction" them for a period of time. (Again, I really don't care about some trumped up charge of animal abuse, or some similar bs. I want to know what the candidate's ideas are, what their plans include, what they will do for us.)

Just a few thoughts to toss out there...

This is why Citizen's United is absolutely THEE worse ruling in modern history.

Far RW judges run amok.

Have have paid, are paying, and will continue to pay for that dearly, until we're able to repeal that rancid ruling.

Yes. I concur.

 

[Knightfall]

As others have said, it's clear that you spent some serious time into putting this together, and I respect your work. It just so happens that I've been reading The Federalist Papers recently, so your post served as a wonderful opportunity to mentally contrast the reasoning of the Founders for their structure of the government with your proposals for altering the structure of the government and then taking the time to write my opinions on the matter. As a mental exercise, it worked out rather perfectly.

I wrote thoughts out as I went, and the process took many different sessions and on multiple devices. I tried to combine all my notes in a sensible way, but if I say something redundant or otherwise off, it's probably because of that.

Increasing the House Representatives

The Founders spoke about the issue of representation in depth, and if you haven't read the Federalist Papers recently, it might be worth rereading in regards to this and many other aspects of your proposal. Most of their comments on House Representations was covered in 55 and 56. To sum up their view, representation needs to strike a balance; on one hand, it needs to be populous enough to represent the diverse kinds of people in the United States, but it does not need to be so massive as to become a mob. In the Foundners view, the larger the body, the more prone it is to be illogical and rely on mere passion rather than reason, a quality that is easily observable even in small groups of people. Furthermore, they cautioned that large groups could often be steered with just a few impassioned speakers. That being said, they admitted that there is no real formula for dictating the perfect number. They used the states as the basis for their starting points, (the largest of which I believe had a few hundred delegates for the state legislature, but I could be wrong on that point) and from the federal representatives low starting point, they expected over the next fifty years or so that their numbers could reach a level of three or four hundred. We cannot know whether they envisioned the United States ever becoming as large as it currently is, but it's clear they left the structure open to be adjusted as needed.

To me, it does seem ridiculous to have such a disproportionate ratio between the representatives and the represented. I'd be willing to consider increasing the number, but I'm a bit cautious on the point.

Computer Readjusts Districts

On redrawing the borders for districts, I'm all for this in theory. Politicians have clearly gerrymandered the crap out of many districts. Some of the district outlines look like snakes drawn just right to incorporate all the desired political affiliates. The question is how to do we reset the districts. The idea of a computer sorting out the problem sounds good because the cold, hard calculations of a machine should not be swayed by any political considerations, but this advantage is called into question as soon as you recall that a computer is only as good as its programmer, and you've got to know that the political parties would be desperate to get an operative in on the project. I'm not sure how difficult such a project would be or what parameters would be needed to establish a system. It seems it should be doable by the processes you mentioned, and hopefully any abuses put into the programming by one side would be noticed and called out by the other, but I would not be surprised if, like one of the other posters in this thread mentioned, a little variation in the computing formula could make a world of difference in the final outcome. I'm down for being cautiously interested in this proposal as well.

Territories Have the Right to Vote.

Regarding giving territories a vote, I'm not very informed on the nature of territories.. It seems to me that our possession of them is a problem in and of itself since we, if I understand things correctly, have a people under our nation's control which have no voting representation in the government. I'm inclined to say they should become their own independent nation, but perhaps there are some major considerations which make that impossible. If anybody wants to fill me in on relevant facts regarding territories, I'm all ears. Regardless, this point comes down to the classic pairing of rights and responsibilities as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe a territory should have a right to vote unless it has all the qualifications and responsibilities of being a state.

Extension of Representative Terms and Term Limits

I'm curious why you felt the need to increase the Representative terms to three years. My best guess is this is to get them to spend less time campaigning and more time working, and in that, it might be successful, but Senators, even with six year terms, still campaign (and by campaigning, I mean fundraising since the two are so intertwined to be more or less the same thing) almost constantly, so I suspect the longer term will not effect the Representatives campaigning either.

On the other hand, extending the Representatives terms will keep them in their positions of power for longer without a reckoning with the voters or opportunity to change the guards. I would like to see things go the opposite way with the political establishment being broken up and having less time to be entrapped by the political elites and indebted to lobbies. The House was designed to be the more populist and mutable branch of the legislature. I say we keep them on their toes and be ready to replace them as soon as the political winds shift.

You support a term limit of ten years which I think is a step in the right direction, but I would prefer a limit set at three terms of two years. In theory, I'd really like to see them exchanged every term. The typical argument against this is that politicians needs some time in Washington to become accustomed to the climate and to learn the political games. To that I would respond that if someone trained and prepared for his career in office who has numerous aides to assist cannot decipher a particular piece of legislation in order to decide to either support or oppose it, then that particular piece of legislation is obviously too convoluted to deserve any consideration in the first place, and on the flip side, to continue to send people to Washington who are experts in playing elitist games with the law of the land and which propose legislation which is so complex as to constantly hide its actual meaning is not doing the country any favors. Still, I admit that some kind of consistency is needed from year to year, and to have the entire House start from scratch every two years would be a problem, so I'd settle for a term limit of three two-year terms. This would force the voters to keep fresh blood in office who would hopefully have less time to become accustomed to power and therefore corrupted. It would also have the benefit of forcing politicians to work in the real world (or something closer to it) rather than dwelling indefinitely in the gilded halls of Congress.

Tickets

I don't mind voting for candidates on a ticket with a vice-candidate on board.

Senate Adjustment

You're idea to make the Senate representation reflect the population of the States does not track with me at all. The Senate was always intended to be an equal representation of the states, and the fact that the ratio of large state to small state population has increased over time does nothing to change the fundamental foundation of the Senate nor the intent of its construction. If the Founding Fathers had been looking for proportionate representation in the upper house on Congress, the ten to one ratio would have certainly been enough incentive, and contrary to what you have said, the Founding Fathers very much foresaw the growth of the population. We would have to believe they were guilty of a very large oversight if they were somehow able to craft such a world altering document which took into account hundreds of precautions against tyranny and yet somehow failed to consider that states might grow at different rates.

I've always found the equality between the states in the Senate and the equality of the people in the House to be one of the most impressive of the Founder's accomplishments. Finding a way to ensure that the States still had significant power while allowing the people to directly shape the federal makeup was an inspired choice. I've become even more fascinated and impressed by the Founders construction of the Constitution as I've been reading through The Federalist Papers. People always talk about the division of powers between the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches and how ingenious that was, but I've grown to see that the Constitution was actually balancing six different groups, the Executive, Judicial, House, Senate, States and People. All six of these groups have their own interest, power and prerogative, and each is therefore inclined to keep others from rocking the boat too dramatically. The Senate was meant to be just one more check in this system.

Furthermore, the high standard which the Senate needs to pass legislation is no accident. The Founding Fathers did not want laws to be changed easily. If a law was to be passed, then it needed to have a high degree of support, and if it did not, then the two houses and the executive would have to try and compromise. This is how it was intended. The Founding Fathers realized that there could be some harm done by setting a high standard for laws to be passed, but there was a much greater risk to be seen in laws being passed to freely. I think our current situation shows this to be true. Out of the problems our nations face today, I'd say nine out of ten stem from bad laws rather than a lack of laws. Furthermore, the Founding Fathers also spoke specifically that the Senate was suppose to be safeguard against flip flopping laws in order to add stability to the government. If congress frequently reversed it's decisions, this would lead to discontent and instability domestically and abroad.

As previously mentioned, the original disparity between the states would have been sufficient motivation for the Founding Fathers to have based Senate representation on a scale if that was their wish, but since the Founding Fathers were clearly against the idea, you would have to either establish that the situation in the nation has changed over time as to necessitate that the states should become less powerful or you would have to establish that the Founding Fathers were originally wrong in their idea of equality between the States in the Senate for your idea of changing the Senate structure is to be considered. No one could argue with a straight face that State power has increased since the days of the Founding Fathers; by all accounts, it has diminished, so the only way that you could reasonably make the case against the ending of State equality in the Senate is to show that the Founding Fathers were wrong in their original construction of the Constitution.

The Federalist Papers 62 and 63 make these points in what is no doubt a much more eloquent manner than what I am doing.

On a tangent, the recently employed nuclear option does away with much of the difficulty of getting things passed in the Senate, correct? I realize this does not negate your concerns since there still is an imbalance if you want representation based on population, but I'd like to take this moment to ask for clarification on this issue from anybody knowledgeable. I've heard partisans from both side say the nuclear option is legal, and I've looked into it briefly, and I can't see how it makes any sense. Can someone shed some light on it for me?

Term Extensions and Term Limits on the Senate

As much as I feel the suggestion to make the Senate more proportionate to population is a bad one, I can at least understand the motives, but I'm rather in the dark as to why you want to change the Senate elections from their current two-year rotation cycle. With term limits, it seems you are trying to remove all established bulwarks of power to keep the legislative dinosaurs who have been in the Senate forever, Reid and McCain for instance, from having control of the Senate, and I can see how the term limits would help with this, but I don't see any benefit of having officers elected at once. It would seem only to create a slightly more difficult adjustment period every six years as half the Senators would be new, and quite frankly, I don't that dramatic of a change in the Senate. I would be willing to see House Representatives dropped from office more quickly since they are supposed to be the more mutable and populous branch, but the Senators were designed to be the more stable of representatives in the two houses of Congress. The reason they were given longer terms was so that they could add consistency to the government and curb the House's more changeable nature. The Founding Fathers made it pretty clear, again in the Federalist Papers, that a longer term vision was needed to carry out long term legislative goals, and that guidance would come from the Senate. This is especially necessary in regards to foreign relations where the Senate has a specific role to advise and consent on treaties. The Senators were supposed to be the secondary face, after the President, of the Union which presented a specific policy towards other nations. In the scheme of international relations, six years is a very short time for a massive change of demeanor of a foreign nation. Can you imagine the shock to say, the Middle East if we went from a Senate full of doves to a Senate full of hawks overnight as half the Senate changed. A two-year change could also alter in the same amount of time, but it's more incremental nature would offer the much needed stability to all interested parties. No, I'm definitely not for getting rid of the staggered election of Senators, but I would be for term limits you mentioned. Two terms of six-years would seem to strike the right balance between making the Senate stable yet curbing entrenched power.

Senate Ticket

Again, I'm fine with making Senate races a ticket instead of individual matter.

National Senators

The idea of National Senators also befuddled me since I can't possibly see the interest in it. The legacy of the Bush and Clinton families are already smacking too much of an oligarchy for my tastes. Why would we want to expand this trend? It's not as if former Presidents would be less likely to engage in partisanship. On the contrary, the effects of saying, "What do you think about President Obama's stance on the withdraw from Iraq, President Bush?" would be likely to enflame partisanship to an incalculable amount. We already have had trouble with Americans saying, "That's not my President," with the last two Presidents. How much worse would it be when you see the last President you liked still holding major sway over the affairs of the nation and opposing the current administration? I have no doubt this would lead to a severe lack of national unity. Furthermore, most Americans have little respect for former Presidents' abilities by the time they leave office. I think Clinton and Reagan are the only Presidents in the last thirty years who stepped down to the mass public regret. In the case of Reagan, he has become nearly a God-like figure to the right who never falter to make supplications in his name every election year, and this is an unhelpful precedent in my view which is not worth encouraging. I guess you could make the case for Clinton being one of the two experienced President whose insight the American people would enjoy, but he can give advice from the sidelines. I don't see any reason to alter the Constitution in order to create a system that will add even more prestige and long lasting power to the Presidential elite who already hold a huge amount of power both during their term and after it nor can I see how this policy change would accomplish any of your goals.

The Vice-Presidents would appear to bring nothing to the table since their offices are nearly meaningless in practical terms. They are "useful" for playing politics occasionally, but Senators, in general, do not lack skill in the art of political shenanigans.

All of this overlooks one of the most basic objection that can be made on this point. These would be lifetime appointments to the legislature which would be subject to no revision by the citizens. All other legislators are subject to reelection. Why should the people be deprived of the right to vote here since the legislators are supposed to be the reflect the will of the people and the states? The only position anywhere in the Federal government which has lifetime appointments is the Supreme Court, and judges get that honor, in part, because they have the least amount of power and can, if doing their job properly, cannot harm the rights of citizens in any way.

Finally to this point, National Senators could already easily exist. If the former Presidents and Vice-Presidents wanted to continue serving as Senators and the citizens wanted to see them serve in this capacity, then the Presidents and Vice-Presidents could run and the people could elect them. To my knowledge, there is nothing stopping them.

Extending Presidential Term to Six Years

Though extending the Presidential term to six years would obviously decrease campaigning time, it would have an even greater negative effect of decreasing the ability of the people to replace an errant President. Less campaigning in exchange for less chance to control the Executive is a bad trade in my book. I'm not sure the basic fundamentals assumptions that underlie the attempt to get the President to stay off the trail are even true. It assumes that a lack of official campaigning will keep a President more engaged in the affairs in the Executive, but President Obama has been operating in a constant state of quasi-campaigning by spending a large amount of his time making speeches and touring the country. This is his right, and it is somewhat in keeping with his Constitutional right to propose legislation and the associated privilege of pushing for his agenda with his bully pulpit, but in actually looking at the responsibilities of President, this is only a very small part of his designated role. To be fair to President Obama, he can do a good job of fulfilling his role while in this mode because of the interconnected nature of the world these days and the fact that executive officers of the various executive departments pretty much do the day to day work without him, and the President's only real role is in making sure they do theirs. All this to say that it would be ideal if the Chief Executive of the United States would spend more time in the Oval Office to give his job his full attention, but it's not a huge deal if he runs the nation while on the road. There is time for both. Furthermore, the lack of open campaigning does not match the loss of an opportunity to remove from office a poorly performing President.

Repealing the Natural Born Citizen Provision of the Constitution

In a nation as vast as the United States, there is no reason we cannot find a qualified natural born citizen to hold the nation's highest office, so I don't see any reason to appeal this aspect of the Constitution. On the other hand, there are reasons to oppose a foreign born American citizen from holding the highest office in the land. Even the best intentioned naturalized citizen would be bound to have divided loyalties when looking at world affairs, and though it may be less likely now than it was in the 1780's, it is still not out of the question that a foreign born citizen with evil intent might take office. It's certainly plausible that such a person with a suave persona could get elected considering the American Idol aspect of today's political scene.

Presidential Flip-Ticket

You mention the Presidential flip-ticket idea as if it is new, but is there anything preventing that from happening now? I don't know that I have a problem with it necessarily, but it does remind me of Putin's stepping down from the Presidency to run things through a surrogate between 08 and 12.

Regulating State Elections

There is absolutely no reason for the federal to mandate the state election processes for governors. It's does not concern the federal government at all.

National Senator Votes and Electronic Votes for President

With the ex-president and ex-vice president votes, the right of the citizens to vote is subverted. The extra electronic votes does the same thing. going to the popular vote is about the third time you've made provisions for the system to be based more on the popular vote. If it is still possible for the popular vote to lose under this system, then I am certain the extra electoral college votes on the side of the popular election would not stop people from complaining and would in fact likely throw fuel on the fire by allowing people to say that the new system still doesn't go far enough. Once you took one step towards making it closer to a purely popularity based vote, it would be hard to objectively argue a stopping point since the scale is arbitrarily designed. I understand it is still based on population, but why not give ten votes to the largest states instead of six? Once the equality of the states in the Senate is abolished, it's all arbitrary.

Confidence Vote

The idea of doing a confidence vote in he fifth year only makes things worse.

For starters, you suggest that a failing confidence vote would encourage unpopular Presidents to drop out, but I suggest that it would never dissuade anybody from running for reelection. Administrations already know if they have a good chance of winning a year out because of polling. Making it a nationally mandated poll will not change the President's hopes that he will be able to turn around a negative spread. In addition, this would just move the campaign season in advance of the confidence vote. Sure, campaigning at this point would be illegal, but it would not stop the quasi campaigning of talking heads, the technically non-endorsing political ads, backroom deals for those in the media or able to influence the media, the President and his party's constant aggrandizement of his accomplishment and the corresponding push back from the opposing party and the constant attention of the administration to the deadline. You might not have official campaigning groups, (though to ban them would be another abridgement of freedom of speech) but in essence you would have just moved the election cycle up a year, and if the Confidence vote failed, you would have basically doubled the time spent in active campaigning.

Confidence Vote Keeps All Senators and Governors in Office

Making senators and governors contingent on the Presidential election is a completely confounding proposal. Sure, it would cut down on campaigning, but it would do so at the expense of the fundamental right of citizens to vote on their representatives, and that's hardly a worthy trade. It's also ridiculous to act as if support for one aspect of government should serve as an indication of happiness with the entirety of government. This is such a self-evident principle that it should need no further remark, but I'll entertain one just for fun. You might love President Obama but hate your abortion blocking governor, and support for the former should never be taken as approval for the latter. Also, it would seem to me that this would likely cause an alliance among the President, Senate and governorships. Whereas we now have at least some confidence that one group will object when another group starts to exceed its rightful authority, the possibility of a senator, President or governor solidifying his or her position by keeping quiet would be a strong incentive to let abuses slide for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.

Longer Terms and Flip-Ticket Potential Will Increase Attention to Presidential Elections

You suggest that the longer terms and flip-ticket potential will encourage people to pay better attention to the people on the ticket, but people who fail to take seriously the election of the most powerful person in the country for a four-year term have already shown themselves to be woefully irresponsible voters and will be no more moved to grow a sense of civic responsibility by a six-year term. The possibility of a Vice President flip flop is even more irrelevant. As things are now, a Vice President could become the President at any moment. Under your proposal, the Vice President would still have to run for office to get the seat in the Oval Office. If the politically uniformed don't pay attention now, thy won't pay attention under the proposed system.

Judicial Appointments by Popular Vote

The judicial appointments are supposed to be apolitical appointments and are not be voted on.

The idea behind the judiciary is simple. The court is supposed to rule whether something is legal or not. Politics in the legislature and executive play major roles because it determines what laws are made and how laws are implemented. The judiciary should not be concerned in what should be but simply what is. It has nothing to do with the popular opinion or what the people want. If the people want to change the law or its execution, they can vote to fill up the other two branches with people who will affect those changes, but the judiciary is above that.

It should also be noted that this just creates another election through which votes can be bought and corruption can be seeded. Making judges elected position will just set up the typical Republican/Democrat rivalries that we always see with every other election. This creates another circus, and ensures, at best, that judges will be elected into office because of their loyalty to the public whims and not their loyalist to the law. At worst, someone with agenda could easily win hearts by tickling peoples ears.

The Supreme Court Judges Should Be Expanded to Fifteen

The judiciary's job is very simple in purpose if not implementation. As it is only needed to say what is, there should be a simple black and white in each case, but since laws will inevitably clash and the intent is sometimes obscured, there is room for interpretation. For this reason, the Founders established five different judges to fill the seat to give a chance for the majority of understanding of the law to prevail and to make corruption of the vote a bit more difficult. Since an objective interpretation of the law is not dependent on your location in the country or your specific interests as an individual or state, there need be no mass representation from across the nation as there is with the House and Senate. I saw we go back to the original five Supreme Court judges as there would still be had FDR and his Congress not subverted the original intent of the system.

Alternate Supreme Court Justices

I do like the idea of alternates. I'd be willing to consider this further.

Lifetime Appointment of Judges

I see no reason that the lifetime appointment of judges should be ended.

Judges were meant to be long term offices to add stability to the government. By keeping the Supreme Court stable, you decreased the possibility of frequent law reinterpreting which would disrupt the firmness of the government. Long term appointment also decreases loyalty to a certain group or individual If they were elected by a specific group, then they were likely to continue being loyal to that group for long periods. Under the life-time appointments, the person most directly involved with your appointment, the President, would be gone within, at the very most, eight years. If the Supreme Court became an elective issue, the political parties would be the strongest agent in getting a judge appointed, and that ever-present obligation would never diminish. The duration of the judiciary appointments was also a psychological rebuff against the advances of the executive and legislative on the jurisdiction of the judiciary. Since the judiciary is the weakest of the branches, the Founding Fathers felt it would be advantageous to increase their stature by giving them a limitless duration in office...presuming good behavior.

The Process of Popularly Electing Judges

The process for voting for judges also makes no sense to me. At first glance, it would appear to be a nerfing of the powers of the political elites to appoint judges, but in reality, it is just the opposite. Currently, the power to appoint and confirm judges is rightfully in the hands of the executive and legislature respectively. As things are, the President and the Senate vet one candidate at a time in a public manner that gives citizens plenty of time to get aquainted with the appointees. By speaking out in general and calling their senators specifically, citizens can currently have a significant effect on the approval of judicial nominees.

In your scenario, no greater power is truly going to the citizens. Though they are able to vote, the list of possible candidates has already been selected for them, so in reality, the political elites are still calling the shots. In essence, the vetting process is done by the same people. The critical difference is that rather than being able to look at one candidate at a time, the citizen would have to choose between sixty. What a laughably oppressive and daunting task. We can't get most Americans to pay attention to the President's statements and history which are much more easily understood and infinitely more promulgated than the cases and lives of any judge. How can you possibly expect the citizens to vote intelligently between sixty people at once? To learn the details of the history of each of these people would require each citizen to drop their day to day lives and spend countless hours researching judges. Even as someone more familiar with politics that a significant portion of American citizens, I cannot imagine how I could accomplish the task without ending my day to day concerns.Of course, it's a trivial exploration of the proposal anyway because a thorough investigation of the candidates would never actually happen by citizens in this scenario. In reality, people, daunted at the prospect of such a vote, would be moved by talking heads, campaign ads, and political affiliations because it would be impossible to actually get to know that many candidates, and of course, the confusion and inability of the voter to understand the issues gives the special interest, political parties and various other political elites the exact opportunity they need to shape the nation.

And again it must be asked, for what purpose are all these changes made? It is not as if the current system of choosing Supreme Court Judges has led to any scandals. I would argue that the alteration of understanding of how the Constitution functions has led to Supreme Court Justices making poor decisions, but nobody can say that the citizens never had a chance to know and, through their Senators, affect the appointment of Supreme Court Justices.

Primaries Should Be Held at Times Appointed by the Federal Government

Primaries are held by non-governmental organizations, and the United States government has no purview over how political parties conduct their affairs nor should the federal government ever have control over the internal operation of political parties for this would be a precedent which could easily lead to an end game power play for whatever political party currently in power if they could manage the operations of the opposing parties.

Dividing primaries up by region does sound nice just for the fact that the current arrangement seems so random, but they are private operations free to operate as their organizers prefer, and more importantly to the discussion, the reforms you suggest on this point make no difference. What does it matter if a party does not know which areas to target until closer to Election Day? This just means that a greater amount of money will be spent in a shorter amount of time. What does it matter if money is spent on a few states instead of one state at a time? This might make things more hectic, but it does not diminish the role of he parties and special interest groups.

Fundraising Times Should be Carefully Controlled

As a principle, I believe people should be free to give to whatever party they choose at whatever time they choose, and I don't see any justification for limiting someone's freedom in this way, but assuming candidates are only allowed to raise money in August, what difference would it make? Currently, politicians schmooze with the elite in exchange for cash. Presumably, there are implied or implicit promises to serve the donators cause at these moments. If fund raising were delayed until the last minute, then all the deals and schmoozing would be done up front and the money would be given later. If this would make any difference at all, I can only imagine it would be negligible.

Furthermore, it wouldn't stop the donors from going to the Pacs which would already be collecting money year round. Nor would it stop people from giving money to parties which frequently give massive amounts of cash to their politicians. If anything, the inability to raise money as an individual would just empower these groups be making the individual candidates more dependent on these systems, and without the advantages of a big party, third party candidates would be pushed even more to the side.

There's also the tiny issue that any attempt to regulate what people can say to promote themselves or their candidates is a violation of freedom of speech and I would hope that it would be dismissed for that reason.

Voter ID

Unless there is some big problem that I've missed, voter ID is a great proposal. I personally find it embarrassing that we don't already have it. It doesn't need to be a brand new system; use of driver's licenses or any other state or federally provided picture ID would work just as well.

Automatic Voter Registration

I don't see the advantage of automatic voter registration. That seems to be based on the presumption that the country would be better off if everybody voted which is a presumption I hardily reject. If someone is too stupid or too lazy to register to vote, then we gain nothing by adding them to the political masses which are already uninformed as a whole. Those who are already so disinterested in politics that they would not take the initiative to register are likely to be swayed by the first argument they hear which makes them exactly the kind of pawns which the special interests groups and parties can easily manipulate through campaign ads. The only counter I can imagine for these points is the hope that people will become more engaged citizens simply by being given easier access to their voting rights. Though I'll admit this might encourage a few to become more honorable citizens, I liken it to giving somebody who had no interest or training with firearms a shotgun in the hopes that they will become an avid and responsible defender of gun rights. It could help in some situations, but it's more likely to cause trouble with someone who has no idea how to use it and has shown no previous interest in learning more. Some might find that too extreme a comparison, but I'd argue that the only difference between the two scenarios is in the amount of time that the likely devastating effect would take place.

Voting Stations

It does seem like voting stations should be easy to figure out. I'm not sure what the difficulty is in that situation. It seems so simple a problem, if it truly is a problem, that the only explanation for it is voter suppression or massive government incompetence. I'd need more info before taking an informed stance.

Electors Must Vote As Citizens Choose

I have to say that I never understood the Founding Fathers reasoning for selecting separate electors for the presidential election. It seems to me that either a direct election or an election by the legislature would be a better route. Once we went to, more or less, a direct vote system, the use of electors has become completely superfluous with the added disadvantage that electors could theoretically go their own way and disrupt the generally accepted process. As long as citizens vote for president, I say we just cut out the middle man. If anybody can explain to me either the advantages of electors in the original system, current system or the new proposal in this regard, I'd like to hear them.

Various Other Election Rules

I don't understand why exiting polls needs to be mandated or regulated, and the same goes with the announcement of winners. Also, restricting what the media can say on these manners is a clear violation of freedom of the press.

The automatic recount for federal elections seems reasonable. The federal government has no business regulating stage elections though.

I have no problem with the rules on final canvasses of political elections.

Conclusions:

1. Most of your suggestions complicate the government rather than simplify the current system. Making Senators based on population but not completely? More complicated. Making citizens have to vote for Supreme Court Justices? More complicated. Adding permanent National Senators? More complicated. Passing at least a half dozen rules on what private organizations can say and when? More complicated. Ideally, the government operations and compliance to the law should be easier to understand rather than more complicated.

2. Elections are one of the few things that get the Average Joe to pay attention to politics. For this reason, among the many others I mentioned, longer terms should generally be avoided.

3. Cramming campaigns into a shorter amount of time does not necessarily decrease the amount of money given nor does it decrease the effects of PAC's and parties. If people can only give in a small window of time, that does not necessitate that the giving will be less, and since private givers are banned from giving until August yet PACs and parties are free to give since January, that will increase their power. Also, fundraising through these organizations can go on constantly for the general PACs and Party funds, and those funds will just be transferred as needed to the politician as soon as it is allowed, so again, this empowers the Pacs and Parties.

4. If you want a more populace control of government, go for it. A few of your points seemed interested in making things more directly tied to the votes of the people, yet for some reason, you do not just say that you want the Senate and the Presidency decided by a popular vote. In the case of both issues, you either believe the states should have an equal representation in the Senate, or you don't. If you believe the legislative branch should be a compromise between the popular vote and the equality of states, then that is what you already have in the houses of the Legislature. If you are doing anything other than equality or based on population for those Senate seats/votes, then you are making an arbitrary rule which is hard to justify as either inferior or superior to any other non-even and non-population based measure of the Senate seats/votes, and with the addition of National and Electronic Senator votes, the difference between the popular vote and the electoral vote which was already small in most cases must be miniscule at this point, so why not just commit?

Not that I'm with you on it. I think the equality of the states is an excellent and integral part of the Constitution, and I think the higher bar set in the Senate is an excellent precaution against making the government too mutable for its own good.

5. Many laws do not equate to good laws. A lot of your work seems focused on unclogging the legislature, but the multiplication of laws equals the division of liberties. There should be laws passed, of course, but laws, especially on the federal level, should be an establishment or perfection of tried and true principles rather than a constant experiment to see if every problem can be solved by government intervention, and for all the complaints of a immovable legislature, I experienced not one inconvenience due to a lack of legislation this year and experience quite a few significant problems due to the law.

To expand on the topic more eloquently, I'll turn to the Federalist Papers #73 with regard to the higher standard of approval needed for the Senate.

"It may perhaps be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments. They will consider every institution calculated to restrain the excess of law-making, and to keep things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period, as much more likely to do good than harm; because it is favorable to greater stability in the system of legislation. The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones."


6. Politicians can be corrupted while in office not just when running for office. Out of all the strange assumptions you seem to make in the plan, this seems to be the biggest. Many of your suggestions attempt to fix the problem of PAC and political corruption by making elections less frequent, but corruption can come at any time. As mentioned a couple of times already, promises can be made while in a position that will not see financial compensation until the next election cycle. More than this, promises can be made during the tenure of office that might be rewarded when outside of office in a completely untraceable way. Dirt on politicians can also be used to blackmail someone to do something you wish by Parties or PACs or private individuals. Even this does not go far enough because politicians frequently act in corrupt ways without any external influence. Countless politicians have been shown to approve policies or spending for projects which give them a direct or indirect benefit without the need of any external force bribing them. Politicians have slanted policy in the favor of friends with no discernible motivation except favoritism. Sometimes spite is the source of the corruption as can be seen in Christie who had infinitely more to lose than to gain by punishing someone who he wished had endorsed him.

The point is this, power corrupts. Can donation money be used to corrupt? Sure, but it is but one route to corruption, and regulating political donations just throws up a wall of red tape that only the political elites have the skill to navigate. Joe Blow who truly believes in John McCain's primary campaign might not be able to figure out how to get all his intended donations to the candidate, but the People for the Buying of Politicians Society will certainly find a way to route the funds.

7. In many cases, it seems like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is no doubt that the system has problems, but rather than try to restore it to it's former state, you seem inclined to chop down and begin fresh. I have little respect in tradition for the sake of tradition, but in the Constitution, we have a document that revolutionized the way the world worked and (hopefully) rewrote the rules for how man would evermore interact with government. Under the Constitution, Americans have experienced more freedom than they have every previously experienced in the history of mankind. With that in mind, let's give it some props and try not to throw out every article just because we have an idea we think might work better. That's not to say that it shouldn't be changed. It has already been changed...sometimes for the better. When we change it, we should be extremely mindful of why it was constructed the way it was, and we should make sure to prune away no part of it unless it is proven fundamentally corrupt, broken on a conceptual level.

An example where I feel you did some baby chucking is with the judiciary. The judiciary is supposed to be impartial in it's interpretation of the law. Clearly, that is no longer how the court or at least most of the officers of the court operate, yet rather than urge a pursuance of a more apolitical court, you seek to make the court an elected office which would only ensure that it becomes more political. That seems to me a fine example of sending the child flying through the air admidst great amounts of moisture.

8. The need to campaign for election is practically non-existent. I mentioned this in a separate post, but it's worth reconsidering. In the modern age, we can find all the information we need to elect a politician without ever leaving our computers. 95% of the nonsense leading up to election is completely frivolous and capable of swaying only the very stupid who have either no political knowledge or no political values. Everybody who is a thinking person and takes the time to do their civic duty could easily choose a representative without the need for a single film to be filmed, a single pin to be pinned or a single poster to be posted. All the hoopla is done for the dumb vote.

9. It's the overreach of the federal government that entices the corrupting influences. The entire attempt to control campaigning, which in one way or another will almost always result in an attempt to control free speech, is a classic example of trying to solve the wrong problem. The vast majority of lobbies and political interests involve the passing or opposing of laws that were never put under the purview of the federal government in the first place, but since the federal government is constantly making laws about what sort of products you can and can't buy, who gets this tax break and who gets that tax break, who gets this exemption and who gets that exemption, private interests can profit greatly by getting involved. If the federal legislature and executive were to focus exclusively on passing laws they are actually legally allowed to pass, the lobbies and political parties would have significantly less to gain or lose from the process. What would be left for their interests? An occasional interstate trade dispute might draw some interest. Foreign treaties would frequently affect some groups though infinitely less than our own internal laws do already. Taxes might be an issue, but if the only federal programs active were the ones that were constitutionall allowed, taxes would be a much smaller concern.

To put it metaphorically, you have a lot of bears trying to get the food left outside the dumpster. Instead of trying to deter the bears, put the food in the dumpster and the allure to the bears will significantly decrease.

10. The solution to these problems is the attention and knowledge of the voter.

Freedom of speech is not bad. Lobbies that try to promote a certain cause to politicians are not necessarily bad. Political parties that band together along common values and for a common goal are not even bad. However, politicians that will rely on lying free speech are bad, lobbies that try to manipulate rather than present information are bad, and political parties that put their own power over the good of the nation are bad, yet all of these can be kept in check by a voter who actually has a brain.

If you know what you believe, you know what the laws are and you know what specific politicians do, then there is no need to try to disassemble freedom of speech to fix the problem. The voter will fix the problem. That's not to say that we will always agree or come to the same conclusions, but at least we'll be on the same page, and we wont be easily fooled by politicians who promise one thing and deliver another.

I do not think you can wave a wand or pass a law to make people more informed; it's something you have to inspire in them on a one to one basis, but it seems to me that finding ways, as private individuals working alone or separately, to encourage citizens to stay informed is an infinitely better discussion than how we can shield citizens from hearing certain kinds of freedom of speech we may find unhelpful.

 

[Statistikhengst]

As others have said, it's clear that you spent some serious time into putting this together, and I respect your work. It just so happens that I've been reading The Federalist Papers recently, so your post served as a wonderful opportunity to mentally contrast the reasoning of the Founders for their structure of the government with your proposals for altering the structure of the government and then taking the time to write my opinions on the matter. As a mental exercise, it worked out rather perfectly.

I wrote thoughts out as I went, and the process took many different sessions and on multiple devices. I tried to combine all my notes in a sensible way, but if I say something redundant or otherwise off, it's probably because of that.

Increasing the House Representatives

The Founders spoke about the issue of representation in depth, and if you haven't read the Federalist Papers recently, it might be worth rereading in regards to this and many other aspects of your proposal. Most of their comments on House Representations was covered in 55 and 56. To sum up their view, representation needs to strike a balance; on one hand, it needs to be populous enough to represent the diverse kinds of people in the United States, but it does not need to be so massive as to become a mob. In the Foundners view, the larger the body, the more prone it is to be illogical and rely on mere passion rather than reason, a quality that is easily observable even in small groups of people. Furthermore, they cautioned that large groups could often be steered with just a few impassioned speakers. That being said, they admitted that there is no real formula for dictating the perfect number. They used the states as the basis for their starting points, (the largest of which I believe had a few hundred delegates for the state legislature, but I could be wrong on that point) and from the federal representatives low starting point, they expected over the next fifty years or so that their numbers could reach a level of three or four hundred. We cannot know whether they envisioned the United States ever becoming as large as it currently is, but it's clear they left the structure open to be adjusted as needed.

To me, it does seem ridiculous to have such a disproportionate ratio between the representatives and the represented. I'd be willing to consider increasing the number, but I'm a bit cautious on the point.

Computer Readjusts Districts

On redrawing the borders for districts, I'm all for this in theory. Politicians have clearly gerrymandered the crap out of many districts. Some of the district outlines look like snakes drawn just right to incorporate all the desired political affiliates. The question is how to do we reset the districts. The idea of a computer sorting out the problem sounds good because the cold, hard calculations of a machine should not be swayed by any political considerations, but this advantage is called into question as soon as you recall that a computer is only as good as its programmer, and you've got to know that the political parties would be desperate to get an operative in on the project. I'm not sure how difficult such a project would be or what parameters would be needed to establish a system. It seems it should be doable by the processes you mentioned, and hopefully any abuses put into the programming by one side would be noticed and called out by the other, but I would not be surprised if, like one of the other posters in this thread mentioned, a little variation in the computing formula could make a world of difference in the final outcome. I'm down for being cautiously interested in this proposal as well.

Territories Have the Right to Vote.

Regarding giving territories a vote, I'm not very informed on the nature of territories.. It seems to me that our possession of them is a problem in and of itself since we, if I understand things correctly, have a people under our nation's control which have no voting representation in the government. I'm inclined to say they should become their own independent nation, but perhaps there are some major considerations which make that impossible. If anybody wants to fill me in on relevant facts regarding territories, I'm all ears. Regardless, this point comes down to the classic pairing of rights and responsibilities as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe a territory should have a right to vote unless it has all the qualifications and responsibilities of being a state.

Extension of Representative Terms and Term Limits

I'm curious why you felt the need to increase the Representative terms to three years. My best guess is this is to get them to spend less time campaigning and more time working, and in that, it might be successful, but Senators, even with six year terms, still campaign (and by campaigning, I mean fundraising since the two are so intertwined to be more or less the same thing) almost constantly, so I suspect the longer term will not effect the Representatives campaigning either.

On the other hand, extending the Representatives terms will keep them in their positions of power for longer without a reckoning with the voters or opportunity to change the guards. I would like to see things go the opposite way with the political establishment being broken up and having less time to be entrapped by the political elites and indebted to lobbies. The House was designed to be the more populist and mutable branch of the legislature. I say we keep them on their toes and be ready to replace them as soon as the political winds shift.

You support a term limit of ten years which I think is a step in the right direction, but I would prefer a limit set at three terms of two years. In theory, I'd really like to see them exchanged every term. The typical argument against this is that politicians needs some time in Washington to become accustomed to the climate and to learn the political games. To that I would respond that if someone trained and prepared for his career in office who has numerous aides to assist cannot decipher a particular piece of legislation in order to decide to either support or oppose it, then that particular piece of legislation is obviously too convoluted to deserve any consideration in the first place, and on the flip side, to continue to send people to Washington who are experts in playing elitist games with the law of the land and which propose legislation which is so complex as to constantly hide its actual meaning is not doing the country any favors. Still, I admit that some kind of consistency is needed from year to year, and to have the entire House start from scratch every two years would be a problem, so I'd settle for a term limit of three two-year terms. This would force the voters to keep fresh blood in office who would hopefully have less time to become accustomed to power and therefore corrupted. It would also have the benefit of forcing politicians to work in the real world (or something closer to it) rather than dwelling indefinitely in the gilded halls of Congress.

Tickets

I don't mind voting for candidates on a ticket with a vice-candidate on board.

Senate Adjustment

You're idea to make the Senate representation reflect the population of the States does not track with me at all. The Senate was always intended to be an equal representation of the states, and the fact that the ratio of large state to small state population has increased over time does nothing to change the fundamental foundation of the Senate nor the intent of its construction. If the Founding Fathers had been looking for proportionate representation in the upper house on Congress, the ten to one ratio would have certainly been enough incentive, and contrary to what you have said, the Founding Fathers very much foresaw the growth of the population. We would have to believe they were guilty of a very large oversight if they were somehow able to craft such a world altering document which took into account hundreds of precautions against tyranny and yet somehow failed to consider that states might grow at different rates.

I've always found the equality between the states in the Senate and the equality of the people in the House to be one of the most impressive of the Founder's accomplishments. Finding a way to ensure that the States still had significant power while allowing the people to directly shape the federal makeup was an inspired choice. I've become even more fascinated and impressed by the Founders construction of the Constitution as I've been reading through The Federalist Papers. People always talk about the division of powers between the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches and how ingenious that was, but I've grown to see that the Constitution was actually balancing six different groups, the Executive, Judicial, House, Senate, States and People. All six of these groups have their own interest, power and prerogative, and each is therefore inclined to keep others from rocking the boat too dramatically. The Senate was meant to be just one more check in this system.

Furthermore, the high standard which the Senate needs to pass legislation is no accident. The Founding Fathers did not want laws to be changed easily. If a law was to be passed, then it needed to have a high degree of support, and if it did not, then the two houses and the executive would have to try and compromise. This is how it was intended. The Founding Fathers realized that there could be some harm done by setting a high standard for laws to be passed, but there was a much greater risk to be seen in laws being passed to freely. I think our current situation shows this to be true. Out of the problems our nations face today, I'd say nine out of ten stem from bad laws rather than a lack of laws. Furthermore, the Founding Fathers also spoke specifically that the Senate was suppose to be safeguard against flip flopping laws in order to add stability to the government. If congress frequently reversed it's decisions, this would lead to discontent and instability domestically and abroad.

As previously mentioned, the original disparity between the states would have been sufficient motivation for the Founding Fathers to have based Senate representation on a scale if that was their wish, but since the Founding Fathers were clearly against the idea, you would have to either establish that the situation in the nation has changed over time as to necessitate that the states should become less powerful or you would have to establish that the Founding Fathers were originally wrong in their idea of equality between the States in the Senate for your idea of changing the Senate structure is to be considered. No one could argue with a straight face that State power has increased since the days of the Founding Fathers; by all accounts, it has diminished, so the only way that you could reasonably make the case against the ending of State equality in the Senate is to show that the Founding Fathers were wrong in their original construction of the Constitution.

The Federalist Papers 62 and 63 make these points in what is no doubt a much more eloquent manner than what I am doing.

On a tangent, the recently employed nuclear option does away with much of the difficulty of getting things passed in the Senate, correct? I realize this does not negate your concerns since there still is an imbalance if you want representation based on population, but I'd like to take this moment to ask for clarification on this issue from anybody knowledgeable. I've heard partisans from both side say the nuclear option is legal, and I've looked into it briefly, and I can't see how it makes any sense. Can someone shed some light on it for me?

Term Extensions and Term Limits on the Senate

As much as I feel the suggestion to make the Senate more proportionate to population is a bad one, I can at least understand the motives, but I'm rather in the dark as to why you want to change the Senate elections from their current two-year rotation cycle. With term limits, it seems you are trying to remove all established bulwarks of power to keep the legislative dinosaurs who have been in the Senate forever, Reid and McCain for instance, from having control of the Senate, and I can see how the term limits would help with this, but I don't see any benefit of having officers elected at once. It would seem only to create a slightly more difficult adjustment period every six years as half the Senators would be new, and quite frankly, I don't that dramatic of a change in the Senate. I would be willing to see House Representatives dropped from office more quickly since they are supposed to be the more mutable and populous branch, but the Senators were designed to be the more stable of representatives in the two houses of Congress. The reason they were given longer terms was so that they could add consistency to the government and curb the House's more changeable nature. The Founding Fathers made it pretty clear, again in the Federalist Papers, that a longer term vision was needed to carry out long term legislative goals, and that guidance would come from the Senate. This is especially necessary in regards to foreign relations where the Senate has a specific role to advise and consent on treaties. The Senators were supposed to be the secondary face, after the President, of the Union which presented a specific policy towards other nations. In the scheme of international relations, six years is a very short time for a massive change of demeanor of a foreign nation. Can you imagine the shock to say, the Middle East if we went from a Senate full of doves to a Senate full of hawks overnight as half the Senate changed. A two-year change could also alter in the same amount of time, but it's more incremental nature would offer the much needed stability to all interested parties. No, I'm definitely not for getting rid of the staggered election of Senators, but I would be for term limits you mentioned. Two terms of six-years would seem to strike the right balance between making the Senate stable yet curbing entrenched power.

Senate Ticket

Again, I'm fine with making Senate races a ticket instead of individual matter.

National Senators

The idea of National Senators also befuddled me since I can't possibly see the interest in it. The legacy of the Bush and Clinton families are already smacking too much of an oligarchy for my tastes. Why would we want to expand this trend? It's not as if former Presidents would be less likely to engage in partisanship. On the contrary, the effects of saying, "What do you think about President Obama's stance on the withdraw from Iraq, President Bush?" would be likely to enflame partisanship to an incalculable amount. We already have had trouble with Americans saying, "That's not my President," with the last two Presidents. How much worse would it be when you see the last President you liked still holding major sway over the affairs of the nation and opposing the current administration? I have no doubt this would lead to a severe lack of national unity. Furthermore, most Americans have little respect for former Presidents' abilities by the time they leave office. I think Clinton and Reagan are the only Presidents in the last thirty years who stepped down to the mass public regret. In the case of Reagan, he has become nearly a God-like figure to the right who never falter to make supplications in his name every election year, and this is an unhelpful precedent in my view which is not worth encouraging. I guess you could make the case for Clinton being one of the two experienced President whose insight the American people would enjoy, but he can give advice from the sidelines. I don't see any reason to alter the Constitution in order to create a system that will add even more prestige and long lasting power to the Presidential elite who already hold a huge amount of power both during their term and after it nor can I see how this policy change would accomplish any of your goals.

The Vice-Presidents would appear to bring nothing to the table since their offices are nearly meaningless in practical terms. They are "useful" for playing politics occasionally, but Senators, in general, do not lack skill in the art of political shenanigans.

All of this overlooks one of the most basic objection that can be made on this point. These would be lifetime appointments to the legislature which would be subject to no revision by the citizens. All other legislators are subject to reelection. Why should the people be deprived of the right to vote here since the legislators are supposed to be the reflect the will of the people and the states? The only position anywhere in the Federal government which has lifetime appointments is the Supreme Court, and judges get that honor, in part, because they have the least amount of power and can, if doing their job properly, cannot harm the rights of citizens in any way.

Finally to this point, National Senators could already easily exist. If the former Presidents and Vice-Presidents wanted to continue serving as Senators and the citizens wanted to see them serve in this capacity, then the Presidents and Vice-Presidents could run and the people could elect them. To my knowledge, there is nothing stopping them.

Extending Presidential Term to Six Years

Though extending the Presidential term to six years would obviously decrease campaigning time, it would have an even greater negative effect of decreasing the ability of the people to replace an errant President. Less campaigning in exchange for less chance to control the Executive is a bad trade in my book. I'm not sure the basic fundamentals assumptions that underlie the attempt to get the President to stay off the trail are even true. It assumes that a lack of official campaigning will keep a President more engaged in the affairs in the Executive, but President Obama has been operating in a constant state of quasi-campaigning by spending a large amount of his time making speeches and touring the country. This is his right, and it is somewhat in keeping with his Constitutional right to propose legislation and the associated privilege of pushing for his agenda with his bully pulpit, but in actually looking at the responsibilities of President, this is only a very small part of his designated role. To be fair to President Obama, he can do a good job of fulfilling his role while in this mode because of the interconnected nature of the world these days and the fact that executive officers of the various executive departments pretty much do the day to day work without him, and the President's only real role is in making sure they do theirs. All this to say that it would be ideal if the Chief Executive of the United States would spend more time in the Oval Office to give his job his full attention, but it's not a huge deal if he runs the nation while on the road. There is time for both. Furthermore, the lack of open campaigning does not match the loss of an opportunity to remove from office a poorly performing President.

Repealing the Natural Born Citizen Provision of the Constitution

In a nation as vast as the United States, there is no reason we cannot find a qualified natural born citizen to hold the nation's highest office, so I don't see any reason to appeal this aspect of the Constitution. On the other hand, there are reasons to oppose a foreign born American citizen from holding the highest office in the land. Even the best intentioned naturalized citizen would be bound to have divided loyalties when looking at world affairs, and though it may be less likely now than it was in the 1780's, it is still not out of the question that a foreign born citizen with evil intent might take office. It's certainly plausible that such a person with a suave persona could get elected considering the American Idol aspect of today's political scene.

Presidential Flip-Ticket

You mention the Presidential flip-ticket idea as if it is new, but is there anything preventing that from happening now? I don't know that I have a problem with it necessarily, but it does remind me of Putin's stepping down from the Presidency to run things through a surrogate between 08 and 12.

Regulating State Elections

There is absolutely no reason for the federal to mandate the state election processes for governors. It's does not concern the federal government at all.

National Senator Votes and Electronic Votes for President

With the ex-president and ex-vice president votes, the right of the citizens to vote is subverted. The extra electronic votes does the same thing. going to the popular vote is about the third time you've made provisions for the system to be based more on the popular vote. If it is still possible for the popular vote to lose under this system, then I am certain the extra electoral college votes on the side of the popular election would not stop people from complaining and would in fact likely throw fuel on the fire by allowing people to say that the new system still doesn't go far enough. Once you took one step towards making it closer to a purely popularity based vote, it would be hard to objectively argue a stopping point since the scale is arbitrarily designed. I understand it is still based on population, but why not give ten votes to the largest states instead of six? Once the equality of the states in the Senate is abolished, it's all arbitrary.

Confidence Vote

The idea of doing a confidence vote in he fifth year only makes things worse.

For starters, you suggest that a failing confidence vote would encourage unpopular Presidents to drop out, but I suggest that it would never dissuade anybody from running for reelection. Administrations already know if they have a good chance of winning a year out because of polling. Making it a nationally mandated poll will not change the President's hopes that he will be able to turn around a negative spread. In addition, this would just move the campaign season in advance of the confidence vote. Sure, campaigning at this point would be illegal, but it would not stop the quasi campaigning of talking heads, the technically non-endorsing political ads, backroom deals for those in the media or able to influence the media, the President and his party's constant aggrandizement of his accomplishment and the corresponding push back from the opposing party and the constant attention of the administration to the deadline. You might not have official campaigning groups, (though to ban them would be another abridgement of freedom of speech) but in essence you would have just moved the election cycle up a year, and if the Confidence vote failed, you would have basically doubled the time spent in active campaigning.

Confidence Vote Keeps All Senators and Governors in Office

Making senators and governors contingent on the Presidential election is a completely confounding proposal. Sure, it would cut down on campaigning, but it would do so at the expense of the fundamental right of citizens to vote on their representatives, and that's hardly a worthy trade. It's also ridiculous to act as if support for one aspect of government should serve as an indication of happiness with the entirety of government. This is such a self-evident principle that it should need no further remark, but I'll entertain one just for fun. You might love President Obama but hate your abortion blocking governor, and support for the former should never be taken as approval for the latter. Also, it would seem to me that this would likely cause an alliance among the President, Senate and governorships. Whereas we now have at least some confidence that one group will object when another group starts to exceed its rightful authority, the possibility of a senator, President or governor solidifying his or her position by keeping quiet would be a strong incentive to let abuses slide for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.

Longer Terms and Flip-Ticket Potential Will Increase Attention to Presidential Elections

You suggest that the longer terms and flip-ticket potential will encourage people to pay better attention to the people on the ticket, but people who fail to take seriously the election of the most powerful person in the country for a four-year term have already shown themselves to be woefully irresponsible voters and will be no more moved to grow a sense of civic responsibility by a six-year term. The possibility of a Vice President flip flop is even more irrelevant. As things are now, a Vice President could become the President at any moment. Under your proposal, the Vice President would still have to run for office to get the seat in the Oval Office. If the politically uniformed don't pay attention now, thy won't pay attention under the proposed system.

Judicial Appointments by Popular Vote

The judicial appointments are supposed to be apolitical appointments and are not be voted on.

The idea behind the judiciary is simple. The court is supposed to rule whether something is legal or not. Politics in the legislature and executive play major roles because it determines what laws are made and how laws are implemented. The judiciary should not be concerned in what should be but simply what is. It has nothing to do with the popular opinion or what the people want. If the people want to change the law or its execution, they can vote to fill up the other two branches with people who will affect those changes, but the judiciary is above that.

It should also be noted that this just creates another election through which votes can be bought and corruption can be seeded. Making judges elected position will just set up the typical Republican/Democrat rivalries that we always see with every other election. This creates another circus, and ensures, at best, that judges will be elected into office because of their loyalty to the public whims and not their loyalist to the law. At worst, someone with agenda could easily win hearts by tickling peoples ears.

The Supreme Court Judges Should Be Expanded to Fifteen

The judiciary's job is very simple in purpose if not implementation. As it is only needed to say what is, there should be a simple black and white in each case, but since laws will inevitably clash and the intent is sometimes obscured, there is room for interpretation. For this reason, the Founders established five different judges to fill the seat to give a chance for the majority of understanding of the law to prevail and to make corruption of the vote a bit more difficult. Since an objective interpretation of the law is not dependent on your location in the country or your specific interests as an individual or state, there need be no mass representation from across the nation as there is with the House and Senate. I saw we go back to the original five Supreme Court judges as there would still be had FDR and his Congress not subverted the original intent of the system.

Alternate Supreme Court Justices

I do like the idea of alternates. I'd be willing to consider this further.

Lifetime Appointment of Judges

I see no reason that the lifetime appointment of judges should be ended.

Judges were meant to be long term offices to add stability to the government. By keeping the Supreme Court stable, you decreased the possibility of frequent law reinterpreting which would disrupt the firmness of the government. Long term appointment also decreases loyalty to a certain group or individual If they were elected by a specific group, then they were likely to continue being loyal to that group for long periods. Under the life-time appointments, the person most directly involved with your appointment, the President, would be gone within, at the very most, eight years. If the Supreme Court became an elective issue, the political parties would be the strongest agent in getting a judge appointed, and that ever-present obligation would never diminish. The duration of the judiciary appointments was also a psychological rebuff against the advances of the executive and legislative on the jurisdiction of the judiciary. Since the judiciary is the weakest of the branches, the Founding Fathers felt it would be advantageous to increase their stature by giving them a limitless duration in office...presuming good behavior.

The Process of Popularly Electing Judges

The process for voting for judges also makes no sense to me. At first glance, it would appear to be a nerfing of the powers of the political elites to appoint judges, but in reality, it is just the opposite. Currently, the power to appoint and confirm judges is rightfully in the hands of the executive and legislature respectively. As things are, the President and the Senate vet one candidate at a time in a public manner that gives citizens plenty of time to get aquainted with the appointees. By speaking out in general and calling their senators specifically, citizens can currently have a significant effect on the approval of judicial nominees.

In your scenario, no greater power is truly going to the citizens. Though they are able to vote, the list of possible candidates has already been selected for them, so in reality, the political elites are still calling the shots. In essence, the vetting process is done by the same people. The critical difference is that rather than being able to look at one candidate at a time, the citizen would have to choose between sixty. What a laughably oppressive and daunting task. We can't get most Americans to pay attention to the President's statements and history which are much more easily understood and infinitely more promulgated than the cases and lives of any judge. How can you possibly expect the citizens to vote intelligently between sixty people at once? To learn the details of the history of each of these people would require each citizen to drop their day to day lives and spend countless hours researching judges. Even as someone more familiar with politics that a significant portion of American citizens, I cannot imagine how I could accomplish the task without ending my day to day concerns.Of course, it's a trivial exploration of the proposal anyway because a thorough investigation of the candidates would never actually happen by citizens in this scenario. In reality, people, daunted at the prospect of such a vote, would be moved by talking heads, campaign ads, and political affiliations because it would be impossible to actually get to know that many candidates, and of course, the confusion and inability of the voter to understand the issues gives the special interest, political parties and various other political elites the exact opportunity they need to shape the nation.

And again it must be asked, for what purpose are all these changes made? It is not as if the current system of choosing Supreme Court Judges has led to any scandals. I would argue that the alteration of understanding of how the Constitution functions has led to Supreme Court Justices making poor decisions, but nobody can say that the citizens never had a chance to know and, through their Senators, affect the appointment of Supreme Court Justices.

Primaries Should Be Held at Times Appointed by the Federal Government

Primaries are held by non-governmental organizations, and the United States government has no purview over how political parties conduct their affairs nor should the federal government ever have control over the internal operation of political parties for this would be a precedent which could easily lead to an end game power play for whatever political party currently in power if they could manage the operations of the opposing parties.

Dividing primaries up by region does sound nice just for the fact that the current arrangement seems so random, but they are private operations free to operate as their organizers prefer, and more importantly to the discussion, the reforms you suggest on this point make no difference. What does it matter if a party does not know which areas to target until closer to Election Day? This just means that a greater amount of money will be spent in a shorter amount of time. What does it matter if money is spent on a few states instead of one state at a time? This might make things more hectic, but it does not diminish the role of he parties and special interest groups.

Fundraising Times Should be Carefully Controlled

As a principle, I believe people should be free to give to whatever party they choose at whatever time they choose, and I don't see any justification for limiting someone's freedom in this way, but assuming candidates are only allowed to raise money in August, what difference would it make? Currently, politicians schmooze with the elite in exchange for cash. Presumably, there are implied or implicit promises to serve the donators cause at these moments. If fund raising were delayed until the last minute, then all the deals and schmoozing would be done up front and the money would be given later. If this would make any difference at all, I can only imagine it would be negligible.

Furthermore, it wouldn't stop the donors from going to the Pacs which would already be collecting money year round. Nor would it stop people from giving money to parties which frequently give massive amounts of cash to their politicians. If anything, the inability to raise money as an individual would just empower these groups be making the individual candidates more dependent on these systems, and without the advantages of a big party, third party candidates would be pushed even more to the side.

There's also the tiny issue that any attempt to regulate what people can say to promote themselves or their candidates is a violation of freedom of speech and I would hope that it would be dismissed for that reason.

Voter ID

Unless there is some big problem that I've missed, voter ID is a great proposal. I personally find it embarrassing that we don't already have it. It doesn't need to be a brand new system; use of driver's licenses or any other state or federally provided picture ID would work just as well.

Automatic Voter Registration

I don't see the advantage of automatic voter registration. That seems to be based on the presumption that the country would be better off if everybody voted which is a presumption I hardily reject. If someone is too stupid or too lazy to register to vote, then we gain nothing by adding them to the political masses which are already uninformed as a whole. Those who are already so disinterested in politics that they would not take the initiative to register are likely to be swayed by the first argument they hear which makes them exactly the kind of pawns which the special interests groups and parties can easily manipulate through campaign ads. The only counter I can imagine for these points is the hope that people will become more engaged citizens simply by being given easier access to their voting rights. Though I'll admit this might encourage a few to become more honorable citizens, I liken it to giving somebody who had no interest or training with firearms a shotgun in the hopes that they will become an avid and responsible defender of gun rights. It could help in some situations, but it's more likely to cause trouble with someone who has no idea how to use it and has shown no previous interest in learning more. Some might find that too extreme a comparison, but I'd argue that the only difference between the two scenarios is in the amount of time that the likely devastating effect would take place.

Voting Stations

It does seem like voting stations should be easy to figure out. I'm not sure what the difficulty is in that situation. It seems so simple a problem, if it truly is a problem, that the only explanation for it is voter suppression or massive government incompetence. I'd need more info before taking an informed stance.

Electors Must Vote As Citizens Choose

I have to say that I never understood the Founding Fathers reasoning for selecting separate electors for the presidential election. It seems to me that either a direct election or an election by the legislature would be a better route. Once we went to, more or less, a direct vote system, the use of electors has become completely superfluous with the added disadvantage that electors could theoretically go their own way and disrupt the generally accepted process. As long as citizens vote for president, I say we just cut out the middle man. If anybody can explain to me either the advantages of electors in the original system, current system or the new proposal in this regard, I'd like to hear them.

Various Other Election Rules

I don't understand why exiting polls needs to be mandated or regulated, and the same goes with the announcement of winners. Also, restricting what the media can say on these manners is a clear violation of freedom of the press.

The automatic recount for federal elections seems reasonable. The federal government has no business regulating stage elections though.

I have no problem with the rules on final canvasses of political elections.

Conclusions:

1. Most of your suggestions complicate the government rather than simplify the current system. Making Senators based on population but not completely? More complicated. Making citizens have to vote for Supreme Court Justices? More complicated. Adding permanent National Senators? More complicated. Passing at least a half dozen rules on what private organizations can say and when? More complicated. Ideally, the government operations and compliance to the law should be easier to understand rather than more complicated.

2. Elections are one of the few things that get the Average Joe to pay attention to politics. For this reason, among the many others I mentioned, longer terms should generally be avoided.

3. Cramming campaigns into a shorter amount of time does not necessarily decrease the amount of money given nor does it decrease the effects of PAC's and parties. If people can only give in a small window of time, that does not necessitate that the giving will be less, and since private givers are banned from giving until August yet PACs and parties are free to give since January, that will increase their power. Also, fundraising through these organizations can go on constantly for the general PACs and Party funds, and those funds will just be transferred as needed to the politician as soon as it is allowed, so again, this empowers the Pacs and Parties.

4. If you want a more populace control of government, go for it. A few of your points seemed interested in making things more directly tied to the votes of the people, yet for some reason, you do not just say that you want the Senate and the Presidency decided by a popular vote. In the case of both issues, you either believe the states should have an equal representation in the Senate, or you don't. If you believe the legislative branch should be a compromise between the popular vote and the equality of states, then that is what you already have in the houses of the Legislature. If you are doing anything other than equality or based on population for those Senate seats/votes, then you are making an arbitrary rule which is hard to justify as either inferior or superior to any other non-even and non-population based measure of the Senate seats/votes, and with the addition of National and Electronic Senator votes, the difference between the popular vote and the electoral vote which was already small in most cases must be miniscule at this point, so why not just commit?

Not that I'm with you on it. I think the equality of the states is an excellent and integral part of the Constitution, and I think the higher bar set in the Senate is an excellent precaution against making the government too mutable for its own good.

5. Many laws do not equate to good laws. A lot of your work seems focused on unclogging the legislature, but the multiplication of laws equals the division of liberties. There should be laws passed, of course, but laws, especially on the federal level, should be an establishment or perfection of tried and true principles rather than a constant experiment to see if every problem can be solved by government intervention, and for all the complaints of a immovable legislature, I experienced not one inconvenience due to a lack of legislation this year and experience quite a few significant problems due to the law.

To expand on the topic more eloquently, I'll turn to the Federalist Papers #73 with regard to the higher standard of approval needed for the Senate.

"It may perhaps be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments. They will consider every institution calculated to restrain the excess of law-making, and to keep things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period, as much more likely to do good than harm; because it is favorable to greater stability in the system of legislation. The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones."


6. Politicians can be corrupted while in office not just when running for office. Out of all the strange assumptions you seem to make in the plan, this seems to be the biggest. Many of your suggestions attempt to fix the problem of PAC and political corruption by making elections less frequent, but corruption can come at any time. As mentioned a couple of times already, promises can be made while in a position that will not see financial compensation until the next election cycle. More than this, promises can be made during the tenure of office that might be rewarded when outside of office in a completely untraceable way. Dirt on politicians can also be used to blackmail someone to do something you wish by Parties or PACs or private individuals. Even this does not go far enough because politicians frequently act in corrupt ways without any external influence. Countless politicians have been shown to approve policies or spending for projects which give them a direct or indirect benefit without the need of any external force bribing them. Politicians have slanted policy in the favor of friends with no discernible motivation except favoritism. Sometimes spite is the source of the corruption as can be seen in Christie who had infinitely more to lose than to gain by punishing someone who he wished had endorsed him.

The point is this, power corrupts. Can donation money be used to corrupt? Sure, but it is but one route to corruption, and regulating political donations just throws up a wall of red tape that only the political elites have the skill to navigate. Joe Blow who truly believes in John McCain's primary campaign might not be able to figure out how to get all his intended donations to the candidate, but the People for the Buying of Politicians Society will certainly find a way to route the funds.

7. In many cases, it seems like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is no doubt that the system has problems, but rather than try to restore it to it's former state, you seem inclined to chop down and begin fresh. I have little respect in tradition for the sake of tradition, but in the Constitution, we have a document that revolutionized the way the world worked and (hopefully) rewrote the rules for how man would evermore interact with government. Under the Constitution, Americans have experienced more freedom than they have every previously experienced in the history of mankind. With that in mind, let's give it some props and try not to throw out every article just because we have an idea we think might work better. That's not to say that it shouldn't be changed. It has already been changed...sometimes for the better. When we change it, we should be extremely mindful of why it was constructed the way it was, and we should make sure to prune away no part of it unless it is proven fundamentally corrupt, broken on a conceptual level.

An example where I feel you did some baby chucking is with the judiciary. The judiciary is supposed to be impartial in it's interpretation of the law. Clearly, that is no longer how the court or at least most of the officers of the court operate, yet rather than urge a pursuance of a more apolitical court, you seek to make the court an elected office which would only ensure that it becomes more political. That seems to me a fine example of sending the child flying through the air admidst great amounts of moisture.

8. The need to campaign for election is practically non-existent. I mentioned this in a separate post, but it's worth reconsidering. In the modern age, we can find all the information we need to elect a politician without ever leaving our computers. 95% of the nonsense leading up to election is completely frivolous and capable of swaying only the very stupid who have either no political knowledge or no political values. Everybody who is a thinking person and takes the time to do their civic duty could easily choose a representative without the need for a single film to be filmed, a single pin to be pinned or a single poster to be posted. All the hoopla is done for the dumb vote.

9. It's the overreach of the federal government that entices the corrupting influences. The entire attempt to control campaigning, which in one way or another will almost always result in an attempt to control free speech, is a classic example of trying to solve the wrong problem. The vast majority of lobbies and political interests involve the passing or opposing of laws that were never put under the purview of the federal government in the first place, but since the federal government is constantly making laws about what sort of products you can and can't buy, who gets this tax break and who gets that tax break, who gets this exemption and who gets that exemption, private interests can profit greatly by getting involved. If the federal legislature and executive were to focus exclusively on passing laws they are actually legally allowed to pass, the lobbies and political parties would have significantly less to gain or lose from the process. What would be left for their interests? An occasional interstate trade dispute might draw some interest. Foreign treaties would frequently affect some groups though infinitely less than our own internal laws do already. Taxes might be an issue, but if the only federal programs active were the ones that were constitutionall allowed, taxes would be a much smaller concern.

To put it metaphorically, you have a lot of bears trying to get the food left outside the dumpster. Instead of trying to deter the bears, put the food in the dumpster and the allure to the bears will significantly decrease.

10. The solution to these problems is the attention and knowledge of the voter.

Freedom of speech is not bad. Lobbies that try to promote a certain cause to politicians are not necessarily bad. Political parties that band together along common values and for a common goal are not even bad. However, politicians that will rely on lying free speech are bad, lobbies that try to manipulate rather than present information are bad, and political parties that put their own power over the good of the nation are bad, yet all of these can be kept in check by a voter who actually has a brain.

If you know what you believe, you know what the laws are and you know what specific politicians do, then there is no need to try to disassemble freedom of speech to fix the problem. The voter will fix the problem. That's not to say that we will always agree or come to the same conclusions, but at least we'll be on the same page, and we wont be easily fooled by politicians who promise one thing and deliver another.

I do not think you can wave a wand or pass a law to make people more informed; it's something you have to inspire in them on a one to one basis, but it seems to me that finding ways, as private individuals working alone or separately, to encourage citizens to stay informed is an infinitely better discussion than how we can shield citizens from hearing certain kinds of freedom of speech we may find unhelpful.

Wow. Some truly incredible work on your part. Too tired now to speak to each and tomorrow I have a very heavy work day, but at the weekend I will go over all of this in great detail. Thanks for your input!!!!

 

[FA_Q2]

I read your thread at work and had not had the chance to respond until now. Though Knight stated most of the same things that I wanted to say, I will expound where I differ from either of you using a similar format. Unfortunately, I disagree with the lion’s share of your points but then again, a debate where we all agree is quite boring

Legislative
Increasing the House Representatives
Knight brings in a good point in that increasing the number of representatives is going to lead to a more ‘mob’ type rule in the House. This might be more of a problem than the fact that the representatives are a bit out of touch with the individual voter. Leaving the number where it is or only slightly increasing it seems more prudent IMHO in light of that point. I think that it must also be said that increasing the number really solves nothing over the long term. This is because you are only brining the numbers in line temporarily. In reality, population will grow and then, even at a 1000 representatives, the current ratio will be a reality once more. If your end goal is decreasing that ratio then you must be comfortable with an ever increasing pool of representatives. If you think that the number of representatives is more important then you must accept that the ratio is going to get worse.

Personally, I feel that LOCAL representatives are where the ratios are important where national offices need a real cap on the total number of people that are trying to accomplish legislation. You still have representatives at ratios that existed within the founders time – they are just local ones now.


Term Limits
I disagree completely. To date, not one single person has been able to articulate a coherent reason that anyone should be limited in terms other than they don’t want that guy around too long. The fact is, in my opinion, term limits are an artificial way for voters to avoid the stunning reality that they are the ones voting these idiots in office in the first place. If the people want that person back in office, then he/she SHOULD be back in office. Term limits literally solves NOTHING. You need to attack the source of the problem, voter apathy, and term limits will no longer be necessary. Instituting them simply ensures that the politician in question can ignore the voters entirely (his job is no longer on the line) and that another person will simply take the same mantle over. New blood is NOT needed because the old blood has changed or will not allow new ideas into the legislator. We need new blood because the voters KEEP VOTING FOR THE SAME FAILED IDEAS. Forcing the replacement of representatives without changing the core issues simply ensures that different faces are elected making the exact same failures. THAT is not going to help one iota.


Computer Readjusts Districts
I would just point out to all those mentioning that the program itself is somewhat dubious because it can be fed errant parameters has been ignoring the OP’s original supposition: the program taking only three variables into account (and a few hard rules like not districting over state boundaries). I think this is a fantastic idea to remove gerrymandering and would essentially eliminate the problems that it has brought. The source code can be made public as well considering that the program, its results and the process used to get there will have nothing that can be considered ‘secrete’ like voting electronically requires.


Tickets
I don’t see the value added here. You are railing against special elections. Why? I fail to see how this particular event matters at all when you are dealing with something that is very rare. I have NEVER been in a district that required one (though I moved out just before Gray Davis in CA was removed) because you are dealing with REGIONAL issues. Your ‘solution’ is dealing with something that is very rare, does not cause too much of an issue anyway and ultimately costs a TON requiring a complex solution. Furthermore, such elections are still quite possible even with the system you are advocating. It all seems like a solution in search of a problem.


Senate
This is the ones big areas where I think you have gone completely off the rails. You are changing the senate to something that it is simply NOT supposed to be by connecting it to population. You espouse support for a bi-caramel system but then remove the KEY difference in the two houses. If you are going to change the balance to reflect population then don’t tinker with the senate under a false premise – simply abolish it.

The senate itself is an expression of a federalist system where states are sovereign entities. They have equal say and equal representation because they are all ONE state. Rhode Island gets 2 senators like California precisely because they are both a single state. IF you have a real problem with the divide because the population differences then the real solution is splitting those larger states up. Otherwise you are completely obliterating the senate to make it more like the house. I would VEHEMENTLY oppose such a concept as I see it as one of the CORE pillars that has fallen and caused much of the current problems we face. Had senators actually upheld the purpose of the senate and protected states’ rights we would not be in the current mess we are with a massive and overbearing federal bureaucracy dictating to states issues that they should be taking care of locally. You are making that problem WORSE. As Knight pointed out, this is a matter of separation of powers and weakening that separation only allows more power to pool in a single place – the anti-thesis of what our system of governance is supposed to be.

You don’t like the disparity of representation in the senate – just do away with the states entirely. After all, the distinction is rather meaningless if we are going to reduce everything into a case of populations and direct control.

I want to ask why you want them to be elected all at once as well. Changing a local election to all at once does NOT reduce political campaigning – it is still one election every six years – but rather adds MASSIVE volatility to the system in general. I think that is a bad thing.


Presidential Senate Seats:
No, no and no. For all the reasons that Knight said and one key more: the legislative branch is NOT the executive branch. We should not be crossing the two with lifetime seats given to members of one from the other. Further, no political seat anywhere should ever be a lifetime appointment. I am very curious to hear what you think to gain with this idea as I don’t see a real reference to your thought process in your OP.

As for something Knight said:

On a tangent, the recently employed nuclear option does away with much of the difficulty of getting things passed in the Senate, correct? I realize this does not negate your concerns since there still is an imbalance if you want representation based on population, but I'd like to take this moment to ask for clarification on this issue from anybody knowledgeable. I've heard partisans from both side say the nuclear option is legal, and I've looked into it briefly, and I can't see how it makes any sense. Can someone shed some light on it for me?

It is legal for 2 reasons. First, the constitution is utterly silent on the actual rules of the senate itself. There are a few things set is stone so to say in the constitution but the vast majority of the senate is controlled by none other than the senate itself. This includes such things like procedures (which is what a cloture vote is), the house majority leader being able to set the agenda, committees and a host of other things. Essentially, the senate sets its own rules to fulfill the duties and requirements outlined within the constitution. Second, as a direct result of the first and the constitutions silence on actual procedure within the legislative bodies, the courts DO NOT have purview over senate rules. IOW, the courts cannot say anything about what the senate decides to do that is not specifically mentioned within the constitution. Should the senate decide that you must perform a rain dance on the senate floor nude with a monkey on your head before introducing new bills then that is what you have to do. I don’t have the specific case off hand but the SCOTUS has already refused to hear a case challenging senate rules because of that very reason – that is not the purpose of the judicial branch.

Executive
Extending Presidential Term to Six Years
I agree with Knight in this statement: Less campaigning in exchange for less chance to control the Executive is a bad trade in my book.

I don’t see the realized advantages of extending the POTUS term.

I would add that doing so will do NOTHING to address campaigning. The POTUS would still begin immediately after swearing in (likely even before) because the core issue is not resolved. As another poster said, the ability for the government to dole out tax favors and cash giveaways WILL continue the habit of purchasing politicians. That is simple reality. Until we face that fact no amount of changing the system will amount to squat.

I have to add here that the fingers being pointed at Citizens United are glaringly misplaced. It seems that you are all ignoring the fact that there has been no real change in the corporate sponsoring of politicians, just the figures involved (not to mention that the ruling itself is completely misunderstood). As long as there are BILLIONS to be made out of rigging the system, it WILL be rigged. Stop trying to pass pointless finance laws that have NEVER worked and focus on actually changing the ROOT of the problem: political favors. Until that changes, you could make ALL campaign finance illegal and it would amount to pissing in the wind. The companies are going to find a way to get to their billions in favors, legalities be dammed.


3 year extension
I inherently disagree with tying the elections of localities to that of federal elections. To think that a majority of states liking the federal government and voting for it will lock the worst governor in Wyoming history in place because… because…

Yes, for no reason whatsoever. As for the rest, my opposition to term limits says it all as covered earlier. Given that, these rule changes don’t really do anything. Also, I don’t see how the ticket flipping idea will make anyone care about the VP. TBH, people are going to ignore the VP under that concept as they do currently. People just don’t care. As Knight pointed out, such is already a possibility.


Judicial
You OP was in opposition to electioneering and here you are advocating with spreading that to the judicial system. I don’t think SCOTUS should be touched at all. What are you solving by making the supposed changes? What problem do you think is rectified by making judges MORE political? You point out a problem in the OP and then infect the one branch that does have the issue with the problem.

You point out that judges are elected throughout the country but that is utterly irrelevant as the SCOTUS is a unique animal. It is the FINAL arbiter. The deciders of what the constitution is going to mean in its application. As much as people demand that the court is completely partisan I think that opinion only comes from a basic misunderstanding of the court itself. They do have different outlooks on what the constitution means (we all do and you can’t avoid that as long as you use humans to decide law) BUT they are sufficiently removed as to avoid much of the partisan blather. They are completely immune to being bought through elections because they don’t have any (not to say they cannot be bribed but one avenue is closed to that). Changing that would fundamentally change the court in terrible ways.

Increasing the Judge Count
Why? I think this is another idea that solves nothing. What are 15 judges going to do that 9 cannot other than water down the decision. Such decisions have MASSIVE reverberations and need to be clear and concise. 9 is too many TBH but really is the minimum as I don’t want fewer than that to have that much power. In many ways, SCOTUS judges are more powerful than the president himself.

Judge term limits
This is something that kI actually want to see but for different reasons than you might have. I am interested in Clays opinion on this as well considering that he advocates for the current life terms. I thing that shines some political bias at the court and tends to keep seats liberal or conservative.

I think that there should be very long term limits but that they should exist so as to stagger the court appointments. I don’t think a single president should get to appoint more than a single judge over his term. It has caused judges to retire or wait based on the political position of power at the time as well as opens the door for a particularly partisan president to appoint multiple judges that may move the court to far in one political direction or the other. I would like to see a 32 year appointment time minimum meaning that a new judge would be selected every 4 years. Perhaps even a longer time like 40 years. This makes it essentially a lifetime appointment BUT also means that judges should be retiring in different terms and on a somewhat steady cycle. You could no longer hold out that extra 4 years in hopes that a conservative or liberal would be replacing you as that should NEVER be a factor in the first place.
[MENTION=29614]C_Clayton_Jones[/MENTION]

Stand in Judges
This I don’t really have an issue with. It would not be a bad idea to have 1 or 2 SCOTUS seats that were ancillary so that split decisions were not a possibility and there were always the full number of opinions on each case. How to integrate this is another issue altogether.

Elections
Primary ‘Lotto’/Fundraising
I don’t see the value in such a concept. Why do this by lotto? Each locality can decide how its local elections are held. Not only is this not a federal issue but the order of primaries are completely irrelevant. Politicians don’t sink cash into one place or another because of the order of the primary, they do so because it might get them more votes. CA is devoid of election funds because the vote there is decided. FL is contested so there is far more spent there.

The ONLY thing that staggered elections does is allow the actual politician to visit the states in question in person. This is a good thing though as that has little to do with fundraising (that is always done earlier). Affecting primaries themselves is dubious anyway as those are NOT government institutions.

Knight covered the problems with your funding changes pretty well. You are, again, attacking the symptoms and ignoring the actual problem. That will never solve anything.


Voter ID/Registration
I can get behind this. I think that not having a basic voter ID is rather asinine tbh. I also don’t really see why you need to have a separate system to ‘register’ to vote. Exercising your right to vote should be as simple as voting without any added requirements. All the checking for eligibility/district can be done when obtaining your ID.

I can also get behind the other changes that stop media feeding frenzies and early calls. That should not be accepted by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t understand your call for mandatory exit polling though? What are you hoping to attain through that metric. It is NOT as accurate as actual vote tallies and should not be used as a measure to gauge the voting results. Actual ballots are the only way to do this.

We don’t need exit results, we need more secure voting machines/ballots. Such should be easy to do.

Lastly, I want to cover something that was discussed in the middle of the thread:

on some great ideas and responses from GW and GT too.

I tagged some additional members whom I believe could make some excellent contributions. (Used the [Tag Users] function at the top since that is what it is for.)

Some of what you suggest is going to require Constitutional Amendments and that means that this is going to be difficult to implement. Not impossible, but harder than necessary. Overall I agree that we are way overdue for a complete overhaul.

My suggestions actually piggyback on the concept of voter involvement in elections via the internet and using unique ids similar to SSNs.

1. Compulsory voting for all citizens. Doesn't matter if you vote for Mickey Mouse but you must cast a ballot. This eliminates parties having to focus on "turnout". If everyone must vote then turnout becomes a non-issue.

2. Voting via the Internet is something that needs to done sooner rather than later. Yes, it is feasible and it eliminates the BS about long waiting lines and voting hours and all the rest of the ways that politicians are using to mess with voting rights. If we trust the internet to make credit card purchases (sometimes for thousands of dollars) then why can't we have a similar secure system for voting? Eliminates weather concerns too. Best of all counting electronic votes can be tallied in seconds and there are no "hanging chads" and other nonsense. Polls close and vote counts are known nationwide.

3. Allow permanent residents to vote in non Federal and non State wide elections. These are taxpayers too and since their taxes pay local municipal taxes and for schools it only makes sense that they should be allowed to enter the electoral process in this manner. (BTW this is already allowed in some states.) This is all part and parcel of greater involvement in the process rather than less.

Right now part of what is messing up the system is the deliberate and malicious process of driving voters away. A vote lost for your opponent is a vote gained for yourself. If voting becomes compulsory the incentive to drive away voters falls away (and so does the money to make that happen.)

The use of the Internet for voting eliminates the excuse for not voting. Every place that offers WiFi now becomes a potential polling station. College dorms, coffee shops, libraries, shopping malls and yes, in the comfort of your own home. Once again greater involvement across all registered voters means that trying to appeal on single issues to drive "turnout" becomes a non issue and again, it undercuts the benefit of outside funding.

Internet voting doesn't require a constitutional amendment. It can be implemented sooner rather than later and it makes the most sense to begin here because it will increase voter turnout simply because it makes it easier. It also increases voting in primary elections which are notorious for low turnout. This can eliminate a subset of the voters being able to restrict the choices of the greater electorate.

Anything that increases involvement in the election process means a democracy where votes count more than dollars. That is where we must begin in my opinion.

Mandated voting is a TERRIBLE idea. You do have a right to vote but that right comes with a MASSIVE responsibility. Americans, for the most part, have utterly failed in this responsibility. I see it all over the news. You hear it whenever one of those shows does a ‘man on the street’ moment. I experience it every day at my place of work. If you ask the average American basic civics questions they do abysmally. Even more important, ask them basic questions about the current platforms of the various politicians that are running. Most of the time they can’t tell you squat. You really want THOSE people being mandated to vote? People that have utterly shirked their responsibility?

Nay I say, I have the exact opposite view here. I think that ANYONE not living up to their responsibility of their vote has the same responsibility to NOT VOTE. We can’t make that happen (it is their right) and any government movement to get a lower turnout is wrong but so is encouraging people that are willfully ignorant to vote. Each one of us has the responsibility to take our vote seriously, utilize it in the best way that we can and ultimately abstain if we are going to ignore facts and refuse to research the candidates in question. More people voting is NOT better. A greater percentage of informed voters to ignorant ones is. If you don’t currently have the wherewithal to go out and vote then you certainly don’t have the motivation to understand what you are voting on and that is actually a good thing.

 

[AVG-JOE]

I don't agree that making wholesale changes to the constitution is the right way to go. Neither do I think that this is the fault of the voter. Restricting access to the polls by elaborate ID measures answer a problem we do not have, namely voter fraud.

The problem as I see it is the money. Money spent on ads and campaigns. If contributions from individuals AND corporations was restricted to a three digit number, we could eliminate checkbook politics.

Perhaps it's the length of the campaign that makes the money so needed. If we had one national day for primaries, in May perhaps, and a national moratorium on campaigning until early August, long drawn out budgets for media buys would dry up and take the cash with them.

I have to agree about the money spent on ads, sometimes a year or more in advance of an election. I would suggest some election financing reforms.
Only an individual may make a contribution. Individual = a single identifiable person, no other "entities" may make contributions. A contribution can only be made to the candidate running for office in the individual's geographic location. I.e.: If someone is running for mayor of Anchorage, AK, only residents of Anchorage, AK may make contributions. If someone is running for state senator, only verified residents of that state may make contributions, and so forth...
Advertising would be limited to a certain period prior to an election. 30 days, 60 days, something reasonable. (Personally, I'm already sick of the 2014 elections.)
Any candidate who starts ragging on what another candidate has done, rather than what they will do if elected, is penalized. Maybe pull all their advertising and "sanction" them for a period of time. (Again, I really don't care about some trumped up charge of animal abuse, or some similar bs. I want to know what the candidate's ideas are, what their plans include, what they will do for us.)

Just a few thoughts to toss out there...

This is why Citizen's United is absolutely THEE worse ruling in modern history.

Far RW judges run amok.

Have have paid, are paying, and will continue to pay for that dearly, until we're able to repeal that rancid ruling.

Citizens United would be meaningless if politicians didn't have the power to customize anyone's taxes or deficit spend.

Don't limit freedom of expression, limit what influence can be purchased with a million dollar campaign contribution. Make giving such sums to a politician a waste of money, not a crime.



It's easy... strip just those two powers from your politicians and Citizens United becomes moot.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Fair and simple, baby!

 

[Knightfall]

Wow. Some truly incredible work on your part. Too tired now to speak to each and tomorrow I have a very heavy work day, but at the weekend I will go over all of this in great detail. Thanks for your input!!!!

What! You mean you didn't immediately drop today's work and take the time to address this point by point? Outrageous!

Kidding obviously. Like I said, I wanted to use your post as a mental exercise, and it's been a month or two since I've written something substantive, so I figured I needed the practice. Conversations with me often tend to crash under their own weight since I tend to be exhaustive in responding to comments that posts become massively large and take up ridiculous amounts of time. I need to work on being more concise, but in this particular post, I was more focused on making sure I covered all the bases.

Anyway, I'm just kind of babbling, but what I mean to get at is that I don't expect you to respond quickly nor do I really expect you to address everything I mentioned because that would take forever. Feel free to respond to as little or as much as you feel inclined.

@FA_Q

I'll admit I'm a bit torn on term limits myself. On one hand, I like the idea of limiting federal power and it seems to me that breaking up the strongholds of the established politicians can only help with that goal. On the other, I don't like the idea of limiting people's freedoms unless absolutely necessary, and by that logic, people should be able to vote for whomever they choose. I can pretty much point/counterpoint myself back and forth ad infinitum on the issue, but since I've come down on the pro-term limit side in this discussion, let me continue to counter you.

Though it is true that a more politically responsible culture would negate the need for term limits, term limits solves the problem of recurring corrupt politicians regardless of whether the public is paying attention and safeguards possible inattentiveness in the electorate. Even among those who do pay attention, there is a tendency for people to take the devil they know over the devil who has not yet proven himself. Limitless are the examples of those who have said, "I don't like this guy, but we know he can win over the other team." I think coming off the heels of widely acknowledged tyranny, the Founding Fathers were overly optimistic about the people's willingness to stand up against every corrupt politician. Though it's true that term limits do remove the reckoning with the voters inherent in reelection, it also keeps people away from Washington where it seems our Reps are frequently seduced by power, it removes those key figures in Washington which due to their vaunted and long lasting history are viewed as the leaders and moral arbiters of their party and have an obvious effect in keeping the newer members in line, it keeps politicians at home after certain short time spans where they will have the opportunity to reintegrate with their state citizens and hopefully gain a more grounded perspective, and it keeps bad politicians from being reelected by name recognition alone.

Regarding the nuclear option, I think I got confused in regard to the nature of the rule that a bill must have 60% to pass the Senate. I thought that was specified in the Constitution, but glancing through the Constitution quickly just now, I didn't notice that, so am I correct in now understanding that the 60% was just the Senate's own rules about how bills should be passed and not in fact a Constitutional mandate? If it is just a Senate rule, then why doesn't the Senate do away with the rule altogether instead of going through all the "Constitutional Question" rigamarole?

I see two problems with your idea of the exchange of Supreme Court Justices every four years. First up, it would, as you suggested, decrease the loyalty to the party that put you into office. Second, it fails to take into account the need for Supreme Court Justices to retire early. According to Some Random Site I Just Googled, the average tenure for Supreme Court Justice is just sixteen years, and considering the consistent reliability of Some Random Site I Just Googled, I think we should realize that plan will not work.

Finally, I'm surprised considering your other positions that you would want the media to be prohibited from making early election calls. Any citizen who decides to forgo his civic duty, especially after Florida, has only themselves to blame, and any network that does this in a way that hurts the election process should be hurt by people leaving it and going to a more reliable network thereby punishing the guilty in that scenario. If a harmful effect is had on the election and intent to deceive can be proven, you would also have a hefty civil suit on your hands. It seems to me that there are plenty enough factors in place already to encourage ethical networks in the area of predictions especially when the alternative is an infringement on the freedom of the press.

 

[whitehall]

The term "electioneering" is yet to be defined. Democrats seem to be acknowledging another defeat in the next mid term and are acting as though the senate majority and the democrat president is a freaking hindrance to the political process. Thanks to the Founding Fathers, the United States has the power to hire and fire representatives and any citizen is welcome to vote. What do we see from (left wing?) alarmists? The assumption that Americans are too dumb to vote for a candidate and/or an agenda they support. Maybe so.

 

[FA_Q2]

@FA_Q

I'll admit I'm a bit torn on term limits myself. On one hand, I like the idea of limiting federal power and it seems to me that breaking up the strongholds of the established politicians can only help with that goal. On the other, I don't like the idea of limiting people's freedoms unless absolutely necessary, and by that logic, people should be able to vote for whomever they choose. I can pretty much point/counterpoint myself back and forth ad infinitum on the issue, but since I've come down on the pro-term limit side in this discussion, let me continue to counter you.

Though it is true that a more politically responsible culture would negate the need for term limits, term limits solves the problem of recurring corrupt politicians regardless of whether the public is paying attention and safeguards possible inattentiveness in the electorate.

Part of my point was that is not actually true. You ASSUME that it counters corrupt politicians. That assumption though is based on a false premise (at least IMHO) that it is the politician that is the source of that corruption and replacing him/her can counter that corruption. I would point out that is inherently false. For one, you are just as likely to replace a ‘good’ politician with a ‘bad’ one as you are replacing a bad one with a good one. IOW, it is not the fact that the politician has stuck around for a while that creates or causes the corruption.

For another, as long as we have this current party system, mandatory rotating of politicians just moves that power base more from the politician to the party itself. Sure, you replaced the politician BUT you only replaced the single cog in the machine. The entirety of that machine is still there and without an entrenched position, as a long time politician might have, none of them will have any real power to shape the party itself. At least currently, one of those long time politicians can buck the party in favor of his electorates opinion and the party must at least pay attention – he will be running again.

Lastly, I don’t really care what you do with the system itself, there simply is nothing that is capable of overcoming an apathetic electorate. Term limits, IMHO, only serve to make us THINK that we are addressing the problem without effecting any real positive changes and possibly introduce negative ones in transferring power to the party and not having politicians accountable during their term. As long as the voters themselves do not do their due diligence and exercise voting rights with the proper obligations then systemic changes are simply cosmetic.

I am a firm advocate of NOT making changes that attempt to cure symptoms but not the core issues themselves. I believe that addressing just the symptoms leads to a deeper, more entrenched problem that becomes that much harder to root out.

Even among those who do pay attention, there is a tendency for people to take the devil they know over the devil who has not yet proven himself. Limitless are the examples of those who have said, "I don't like this guy, but we know he can win over the other team."

That might very well be true. That does not really mean anything though. I don’t really care if the tendency is going to go to the current office holder. That does not inherently cause corruption. As I said earlier, an apathetic electorate is what causes this.

I think coming off the heels of widely acknowledged tyranny, the Founding Fathers were overly optimistic about the people's willingness to stand up against every corrupt politician. Though it's true that term limits do remove the reckoning with the voters inherent in reelection, it also keeps people away from Washington where it seems our Reps are frequently seduced by power, it removes those key figures in Washington which due to their vaunted and long lasting history are viewed as the leaders and moral arbiters of their party and have an obvious effect in keeping the newer members in line, it keeps politicians at home after certain short time spans where they will have the opportunity to reintegrate with their state citizens and hopefully gain a more grounded perspective, and it keeps bad politicians from being reelected by name recognition alone.

I think I addressed most of this in my first reply in this post. I would reiterate that I don’t think that you are going to remove that tendency to ‘keep newer guys in line’ by removing the long standing politicians. When you take away the chance for re-election, the party can simply disregard those newer politicians entirely. They have no power because they are simply going to be replaced in a few years, this time with someone that the party vets better. OTOH, if that member might be sticking around because his bucking the party jives with the electorates wishes, the party itself MUST deal with it.

Regarding the nuclear option, I think I got confused in regard to the nature of the rule that a bill must have 60% to pass the Senate. I thought that was specified in the Constitution, but glancing through the Constitution quickly just now, I didn't notice that, so am I correct in now understanding that the 60% was just the Senate's own rules about how bills should be passed and not in fact a Constitutional mandate? If it is just a Senate rule, then why doesn't the Senate do away with the rule altogether instead of going through all the "Constitutional Question" rigamarole?

Yes, it is correct that the 60% cloture vote was entirely fabricated within the senate and has nothing to do with legislation or constitutional requirements. I am confused about your statement:

If it is just a Senate rule, then why doesn't the Senate do away with the rule altogether instead of going through all the "Constitutional Question" rigamarole?

They have not gone through any ‘constitutional rigmarole’ AFAIK. There has been no legitimate discussion about the rule itself and the constitution in general. The rule has been a point of big contention over the last decade though because it serves a KEY role – keeping the minority party relevant. So far, cloture actually has not gone away. The only change that was made eliminated cloture requirements for presidential appointments other than the SCOTUS. I seriously doubt that the remainder of the rule is far behind that change though but I think that it will be the republicans that do away with it in essentially a one up against the dems when they get back in power. I am getting off track with that though so…

The real contention here is that a single party managing to garner 51% or both houses and the presidency could essentially just send the other party home and disregard the entirety of their positions and/or agenda. That is, almost universally, considered a BAD thing for the nation as a whole. I think such has been proven to be a REALLY shitty concept in both Bush and Obama’s terms in office. Given cloture requirements, it is a MUCH higher hurdle to gain such a large portion of the senate in order to disregard the other party. This essentially allows divided government on the more important issues even while a single party controls the government.

I despise 2 party rule but not near as much as I despise even the concept of single party rule. Not much would be worse for our nation IMHO and I think that this move has brought us much close to that being a real possibility over the coming years. I will not forgive the dems for allowing this to occur out of continence over their agenda.

I see two problems with your idea of the exchange of Supreme Court Justices every four years. First up, it would, as you suggested, decrease the loyalty to the party that put you into office.

Really? You see that as a negative! For me that is a MASSIVE positive. As a matter of fact, it is one of the main reasons why I suggested it. The judicial branch is not supposed to have a party much less be ‘loyal’ to it. That is the ENTIRE point of being a lifetime appointment and not an elected position.

Let’s face it, people run around all the time complaining about how liberal the 9th is and how conservative the SCOTUS is. That should not even be a question. The court is the court and if there is true bias in it than those judges need to be removed. We should not have a ‘conservative’ or a ‘liberal’ SCOTUS and I don’t really like the fact that such judges can and will hang on just to ensure that another president shared the same letter next to their name that the one appointing them did. Nor does it sit well with me that a presedent might swap 3 or 4 seats in a single term by virtue of being elected at the right time. Essentially, a shitty POTUS can destroy the nation’s principals for an entire generation. I would prefer that they have the smallest effect on the makeup of the court possible.

How can you be against judicial elections of the SCOTUS but use the opposite reasoning of party loyalty in justices?

Second, it fails to take into account the need for Supreme Court Justices to retire early. According to Some Random Site I Just Googled, the average tenure for Supreme Court Justice is just sixteen years, and considering the consistent reliability of Some Random Site I Just Googled, I think we should realize that plan will not work.

It does not need to take into account a justice retireing early. Just because it will not work out perfectly each and every time does not mean you cant do it at all. If a justice retires early you just select a new one.. You could possibly add the time that judge had left with the tenure that the new one would serve. I don’t really know as I would have to dwell on it more.
Obviously I would have to come up with better terms than I threw out though as you point out the average term is considerably lower than 30 years. Perhaps stick with the average or slightly more – say 20 year terms. If they retire early then so be it.

Finally, I'm surprised considering your other positions that you would want the media to be prohibited from making early election calls. Any citizen who decides to forgo his civic duty, especially after Florida, has only themselves to blame, and any network that does this in a way that hurts the election process should be hurt by people leaving it and going to a more reliable network thereby punishing the guilty in that scenario. If a harmful effect is had on the election and intent to deceive can be proven, you would also have a hefty civil suit on your hands. It seems to me that there are plenty enough factors in place already to encourage ethical networks in the area of predictions especially when the alternative is an infringement on the freedom of the press.

I think you have my position a little confused. The government has no right to tell a news organization what it can and cannot report as long as they are falling within a reasonable line of truth. I belive utterly in a free press. What the government does not have to do though is provide preliminary election results before the votes are tallies. Essentially, I don’t want free press infringed but rather want the government to stop giving out incomplete information on current election results. There is noting that requires uncle same to report election results before the election has even remotely come to an end. It is irresponsible and does lead to snafus like FL.

Further, I think you are completely incorrect on that last point. There are NOT factors in place encouraging etical news networks. The exact opposite is actually true. Networks continuasly report incorrect information because the actual barriers in place ENCOURAGE outright lies over not being one of the first to report. Sandyhook illustrated that very clearly when the story and the weapons used changed a dozen times. Many people still have incorrect facts because of that idiocy.

Now, just like the first point I made, there is noting that the government can (or should for that matter) do about that because the real problem comes from the fact that the viewer’s not only allow this but DEMAND it. They patronize the news company that reports first rather than the one that reports accurately. That, however, does NOT mean that the government must release data before it is complete. Just like the police withhold information on a crime or an event until they have the whole picture (or at least what they do when they are doing it correctly) the government should not be releasing election data until the picture is firm and mostly complete.