Campaign Reform

[Proteus_MST]

...

2) Shorten the Process. Does it really need to stretch out over 2 years.
It seems like half the time we are in election mode.
Have a declaration day... Primaries follow 2 months later with more on the same day and none of this one or two a week crap.
Have the conventions, and then hold the election 3 months later.

...

How true ... Dana, an american living in germany (and has a YT VLog) also notices this, now that she has a view from outside of her country on US elections

She also notices the differences (between US and germany) about the number of election ads in TV that were broadcast (with the number of ads broadcast in Florida alone dwarfing the number of election ads in the whole of germany)

[Jon Miller]

I like Utopias.

How about this:
Full citizenship is conferred by successful completion of service. Service can be in the Bureaucratic Corps, the Defense Corps, or the Public Safety Corps. People who are in service are not full citizens and so can not be selected as a representative. A service term is 2-20 years, there are (monetary?) incentives to stay in service but in service you aren't a full citizen and the offer to continue service is not guarunteed. The Bureaucratic Corps serves many of our current local/state/national government work (DHS, EPA, Public Defenders, Public Prosecuters, FDA, Government Laboratories, Transporation, etc). The Defense Corps is self explanatory. The Safety Corps provides the Firefighters, Police Officers and Homeland Security type Officers.

Judges are selected from the Public Defenders and Prosecuters in the same manner as representatives are chosen. Generals are selected from the Defense Corps officers by the Representatives as needed, and are immune to the 20 year limitation on service time. Other government executives/leaders are selected in a similar manner either to Judges or to Generals depending on the qualities of leadership required.

There is the benefit that a 'career public servant' is for the most part a maximum 20 year career. Also that everyone that is a Representative or a Judge served the system. Finally, the requirement of successful completion of service should mean that the Representative has a minimum level of competance.

JM

[pchang]

Somebody's been reading Heinlein.

[rah]

I was thinking the same thing. Kill the bugs

[Jon Miller]

I read Heinlein in my teenage years when I was most interested in Utopias. That is one of my few recent posts that you could image coming from me when I joined this community.

I have not put much thought into them in over a decade and am much more pragmatic now. I like the Obama style although I wish he could have made a little more movement.

JM

[Lorizael]

I like Utopias.

I spent a good chunk of my late teens/early 20s devising utopias. I eventually decided that solving political problems was super difficult and way beyond my knowledge/capacity, which is part of why I've settled on solving much easier things now, like differential equations.

Edit: Ditto Heinlein.

[giblets]

Campaign finance reform is impossible since the Supreme Court decided that dumping a bunch of money on a candidate is "free speech".

[Dinner]

I would love to see it but Republicans have been dead set against campaign finance reform and now they control everything. Donald could show real leadership here and Republicans could show they actually havr ideas but I doubt they will.

[Ben Kenobi]

If you were to cut up the map randomly the DEMs would have to beat the GOP by 20% to take the House. This is because college grads and minorities cluster together extremely harshly.

This election was even more evidence that the Democrat vote has clustered even moreso than in 2012. They will have the fewest number of counties that they've ever had. It's also why they lost Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and nearly lost Minnesota. The rural democrat has been hunted to extinction.

I did a write up of the Obama election, and why it posed issues for Americans in general - and also noted how fragile the democrats were in Pennsylvania.

You have to artificially draw the map to overcome this. The reason why this isn't as bad in other countries with FPTP is because they have much lower amount of minorities and don't have a President so politics centers around winning districts and the voters get dragged along. The question is if representatives represent their community or party. Well unless you artificially draw the map (which would make them not represent a community in the first place because 1/4 of a black district and 3/4 of a white district is not a community) the vast majority of general elections are total massacres so the real elections are the Primaries. This makes it in practice that representatives represent their party. This would make the party list system just better. There's issues (like what happened to the blue dogs and non-voters disappearing into the void) but I don't care to address them because the Founding Fathers made the Constitution too hard to amend.

Again, Democrats, especially southern democrats crafted districts to match racial divisions. As a result this consolidates racial divisions. It's a vicious cycle. Democrats would be better off if they didn't have their 'black districts', but they will never go away, because it's more important that they 'preserve' these seats than to win elections.

[Lorizael]

Actually I've always like your number 3 but I usually get hung up on determining a base level of competence.
Do you want a homeless wino as a rep? Now the odds of the happening would be slim and maybe they should be represented.
Should there be a bar where education is concerned that might turn into bias.
Who is the judge of who would be qualified?
If we could work those out fairly, I'd support it.

One major problem with sortition is that nobody likes jury duty.

[rah]

I think political service would be more palatable than jury duty. If you're on a jury you can usually only screw one person. If you're in government, you can screw millions.

[Grandpa Troll]

I read Heinlein in my teenage years when I was most interested in Utopias. That is one of my few recent posts that you could image coming from me when I joined this community.

I have not put much thought into them in over a decade and am much more pragmatic now. I like the Obama style although I wish he could have made a little more movement.

JM

He making great movement now..his @zz out da House!!!!

[PLATO]

Now that this election is in the rear view mirror, We really need to change how we elect our president.

My thoughts...

1) Get rid of the Electoral College
Enough is enough... it was system designed for the times... and the times have changed.

The United States is still a Union of soverign states. That has not changed. There are limits to federal power in many ways. The Electoral college is just one of them. The Electoral College keeps states from being overwhelmed by more populous States. Say for example that California cast a vote for a very popular local candidate and they got 90% of 20 million votes (a margin of Victory of 16 million votes) and the rest of the states selected a different candidate with an average margin of victory in each state of 300,000 votes (Which would be considered a pretty strong margin in most states). That is a margin of victory in 49 states of 14,700,000 votes. Should a very popular California Candidate, who the rest of the country rejected, become President?

the answer for a union of states is "no" and thus why the Electoral College is a good device.

2) Shorten the Process. Does it really need to stretch out over 2 years.
It seems like half the time we are in election mode.
Have a declaration day... Primaries follow 2 months later with more on the same day and none of this one or two a week crap.
Have the conventions, and then hold the election 3 months later.

Amen....Amen

3) Change the lead time for getting people on the ballot. Making 3rd party candidates jump through hoops just to get on the ballot is just another rig by the major parties. Yes, there should be some requirements, but let's not make it near impossible to get on all state ballots. Heck, since it's for federal office, maybe the process should be a national one... Qualify, and you are put on all state ballots.

Good idea, but how would it work?

4) Campaign Finance Reform. Why do elections have to cost more than a Billion Dollars.
I think there should be set limits. Maybe this will keep our candidates from being bought before they even get into office.
Add more debates or have the government buy time on the major networks for the candidates to talk about their stances.

They spend so much because it has become a reality TV show and not an issues based discussion (Thanks Media!!). Why else do you think Trump beat Hillary...he was already a star at reality TV...she was only an experienced Politician.

Those are just a few ideas... any others

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

[giblets]

If you want to stop large states from overwhelming small ones you could just weight everyone's vote according to the population of their state. So if you live in Wyoming, your vote is weighted as being worth three Californian votes. No need for an electoral college system where the candidates campaign in fifteen states and ignore the other thirty five including California and Wyoming.

[Aeson]

Electoral college just changes which group of states matters the most.