2006 Referendum
It's almost impossible to make non-Presidential elections into a national referendum on anything. The primary reason is that voters know little or nothing about local candidates' stance on most national and international issues. Challengers rarely have enough money to communicate anything much about themselves and incumbents usually have enough money to obfuscate the positions they've taken that are unpopular with the local voters. The system, in short, produces nothing remotely like an effective choice for voters on issues of national moment. The failure of democracy is a little less acute at the state-wide level, but Senators run so infrequently and so few seats are seriously open, that the scope for voter disapproval to express itself is minimal. What should happen is a constitutional amendment declaring that Senators run every two years; that Congressional districts should be doubled in size and the number of members halved; that Congressional elections should take place every four years, half coming up every two years; that all committees in the House and Senate should reflect exactly the difference between the parties (so that if either body were divided, say, 52% to 48%, then every committee would be 52%-48%, accomplished by weighting the votes of every member of every committee); that all judges and Supreme Court justices would serve not more than 10 and 20 year terms respectively; that everyone in public office should have all their assets put in a blind trust managed by Vanguard or a similar sort of index fund (not one of their choosing); that no family member of an elected official can be appointed by a President to any office; that no President can appoint more than one family member to any job; that all political contributions (itemized and aggregated) by any office holder or lobbyist should be posted on a single web site called opengovernment.com; that no media using any government property of any kind can deny freedom of political speech, including advertising, to anyone or price access to its medium in any way that discriminates against any political speech; that any intentional interference with reasonable access to voting and fair counting of votes be punishable by a minimum of five years in federal prison and a fine of a minimum of one million dollars per vote interfered with; that all states maintain and make available for public scrutiny records of every vote cast and counted for a minimum of ten years after such vote count. I could go on, but you get the general idea: save democracy now.
Who says liberals don't have any ideas?
November 13, 2005 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
November 13, 2005 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds great. But I don't agree with increasing the numbers of elections: leave the Senate the way it is but enforce term limits and have tight campaign finance laws which provide an even playing field for incumbents and challengers alike.
Most of all, I really do believe that change will come only if it comes from within the voter. I'm not talking about what they believe, but that they take responsibility for informing themselves and voting. We really need to be harder on people who don't vote. Ain't nothing like opprobrium, expressed in the media and among neighbors and friends, for those who don't "bother" to vote. Then too, "fair and balanced" -- the real McCoy -- needs to return and be enforced in the media.
However, damn it, if you look at what happened the other day in Ohio -- a referendum in which reform was voted down, almost certainly by fixed e-machines -- then we still have ahead of us the issue of "irregular" elections. Who's going to return to vote next time when this time they touched the screen for a Democrat and their vote was cast for a Republican? (See Roanoke, last Tuesday).
Hey! Otherwise I agree with you!
November 13, 2005 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reed, I just don't agree with your proposals for Congress. As I see it the House should have more, not fewer members. Right now my Congressman represents so many people he can ignore most of us with no problem, and my chances of getting to know him are minimal. I think I prefer doubling the size of the House, and having a three two year term limit for members.
The Senate, I would leave as is, except allow only two terms for each senator. That way we still have some experienced senators at all times.
The whole Congressional rules issue is a big one - the Constitution says they can set whatever rules they please, so each Congress (thus every two years) they could drastically change the rules to suit the majority of the moment. That needs to change somehow, but I'm not at all sure how.
Judges should be appointed to limited terms, and I agree with you on that. Those terms should not be a multiple of the presidential term, so ten years seems reasonable. I wonder if it would be better if the Supreme Court selected the chief justice by vote, from their members, instead of the president selecting him/her.
Interesting idea for a thought provoking discussion topic!!
November 13, 2005 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
granted, there are some things wrong with the way our democracy works that could be improved by adjusting a few rules, but you remember the old idiom about campaign contributions. the system, no matter how well constructed it is, is a game that can be manipulated by a clever player, and it WILL be manipulated.
midterms, i think, tend not to be referendums because of the failing political parties. if a party can pull together a real platform, more akin to a european manifesto, with some central personalities to sell it and a party-wide plan, you find yourself with a 1994. with election turnout so low in the midterms, it makes it even easier for a party to win, if only they can find a way to motivate voters, starting with their own base.
why don't they do it more often? well, if you take my theory about the democratic party, because they are incompetent. looking at the republicans lately, i'm ready to say the same about them.
i think that the voters need to learn to shape up too, of course. "fair and balanced" isn't the issue, as far as i am concerned, because most all reporting is going to be somehow biased and it would be almost impossible to police. that the voter doesn't have intellectual curiosity or the ability to unscramble bias from the story, apply basic reasoning to an argument, that has nothing to do with the news media. we need education, education, education.
apart from anti-gerrymandering measures and plugging the gaps in e-voting, i've got a pie-in-the-sky idea:
let's turn the house into a straight proportional system. the old idea about how everyone needs a local congressman, considering how homogenized the nation has become, seems a bit less important than providing some official means of access to the lunatic fringe. have every party register for the election with a ranked roster of who gets in, depending on how many seats they get, so everyone knows who they are voting for, and then just cast a national ballot where every fifth-percent earned brings a party a seat. it would take some doing to restructure how committee seats are awarded, but i think it would be an interesting wrench to throw into the system... bring some of the bi- back to our bicameral legislature, actually have the two bodies have radically different characters, instead of just slightly different math. and it would forever eliminate gerrymandering from national politics.
of course, you'd never get the wyoming state legislature to ratify the ammendment, but do we really need them? i think not.
(see, i can delude myself with the best of them.)
November 13, 2005 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any change that dramatically increases the turnover rate in Congress runs the risk of making government less responsive to the people.
It takes an average Congressman a couple of years just to figure out where the Capitol's restrooms are, much less how to get good legislation passed. If we limit terms of office, or otherwise increase the number of freshman Congressional reps every two years, who will retain the institutional knowledge necessary to get things done?
Probably the unelected senior staffers. Congressman come, Congressman go, but these folks are lifers inside the Beltway. Reps without the detailed knowledge on how to get things done might increasingly rely upon the judgement and opinions of their staff, rather than their own instincts. And that would greatly increase the power and influence of the staffers.
November 13, 2005 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm on the other side of campaign finance. I say make it anonymous instead of public. The FEC should serve simply as a conduit for funds. You send it money, tell it what campaign it goes to. Every two weeks, it disburses funds to the campaigns. Define a "bribe" to be telling someone you've made a donation. Make it impossible for a candidate to check such claim, even when made.
November 13, 2005 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maine's got term limits, and a part-time legislature -- the annual pay is < $10K, IIRC.
And this describes to a t the actual workings of the body. It's embarassing to watch floor debate, and the staff of the executive agencies -- legislative staff is small for a small state -- and particularly the lobbyists, are the actual government.
November 13, 2005 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose there are worse sets of ideas floating around, but I think several of those expressed here are just disastrous. Apparently, the solution to our problem is to a)force senators to run constantly, rather than ever doing their job, b)further ensure that only the very wealthy can afford to become senators, c)write the partisanship abhorred by the Founding Fathers into the Constitution itself and d) change the House so that it becomes even less reflective of the popular vote and becomes, in effect, a larger Senate. I like some of your ideas (lobbyist regulation, for example), but I think most of your proposed changes to Congress would be disastrous, frankly.
November 13, 2005 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Two words for you, Mr. Hundt: Paragraph breaks.
November 14, 2005 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink