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The recent shenanigans in the Senate have a lot of people steamed. There has got to be a better way to get things done than by buying votes. Many people think we should just throw the bums out and start with a clean slate.
The linked web site is dedicated to getting rid of all 435 members of the House of Representatives and replacing them with regular people like you and me. The group is called GOOOH which stands for Get Out of Our House. GOOOH will allow you to:
1. Help select your Representative - while being considered yourself
2. Hold your Representative accountable
3. Replace career politicians - with true representatives
4. Take the money out of the process
While they claim to be non partisan, this group was born from the anger of the Tea Parties of the summer, and my knee jerk reaction is to just dismiss them as a bunch of right wing nut jobs.
But then I started thinking about the actual goals of the group. It is true that most of our representatives no longer represent the will of the people, they represent the will of the special interests that financed their campaigns. This group plans to democratically select 435 people to run for office, and these representatives would promise to represent the actual people or be kicked out.
I often think that just anyone off the street could do a better job than the career politicians we have in office, but what would keep the new guys from becoming career politicians? They would only be in office for two years.
Athens had the first direct democracy and it had problems. It was sometimes called a government of a hundred fools, because the common people didn’t know much about the issues. Instead of reducing the government to the lowest common denominator and dumbing down the legislature, how about going the other way and making it a meritocracy which would require a basic understanding of the problem before a person could vote on that issue?
But what would keep your nominee from just being a spoiler like Ross Perot, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, or other third party candidates? Would Sarah Palin be able to get on the ballot in all 50 states? We would need to change the rules in many states and allow proportional representation and instant runoff or preferential voting so those votes weren’t wasted. To keep the main parties from overwhelming the third party candidate with party money, there would have to be public campaign financing.
The current system requires representatives to spend the majority of their time begging for money for their campaigns. They rarely bite the hands that feed them, so the rich, powerful and corporations benefit at the expense of the rest of us.
What I like about this movement is that this is a small step towards Direct Democracy. If a representative is directly elected using the internet and they are pledged to vote as the people want, why not do away with the representative altogether, and allow people to determine policy directly?
When this country was formed the only way to communicate was to travel by horse or water from one community to another. It took a long time so electing a representative to work in your behalf was the only way democracy could work over great distances. Now things are different and we have the technology to make our wishes known instantly using the internet. We now have the ability to eliminate the politicians altogether.
Of course most people don’t have the time to listen to all of the arguments and read all of the bills, so how about getting a rep. to do the humdrum stuff and we the people can vote directly on the important issues? After all in the recent health care session there were hundreds of bills introduced and voted on and thousands of amendments. Could we eliminate most of those and just simplify the bills so they are short and everyone can understand them? If there are just two parties the extremes dominate. If they are evenly matched, it will result in gridlock. If one side gets the upper hand that party will dominate the other until they overreach and then the other extreme will dominate. The majority of people who are somewhere in between are rarely represented.
Our current system is designed so it is hard to get anything done. It allows a single Senator to put a hold on a bill, and when votes are close a single Senator can make or break a bill so they can ask for the moon and get it. Our founding fathers wanted the votes to be decided by a simple majority, and blocking methods like filibustering was very difficult and rarely done. (Mister Smith Goes to Washington). Now the process has required every vote to be passed by a supermajority. Why is that?
A better way would be to require at least three competing bills for every issue and to use preferential or instant runoff voting. Say that one health care bill would be made by the Democrats, one by the Republicans, and one by the third party. The third party could take the best ideas from the right and the left. When people vote they give three points for their first choice 2 points for their second choice and one point for their least favorite choice. Add them up and the option with the most points would win. In the majority of cases the centrist position would prevail, and that would better represent the view of the majority of Americans.
So what do you all think? Do we have the best political system in the world, or is our current political system broken, dysfunctional, and in need of some serious reform?
How would you change it?