A few thoughts on fixing the politics in the U.S....

[mjr]

I know that most of Congress would never, ever go for this, but here goes...

1. "Truth in Campaigning" legislation. Legislation that dictates you cannot knowingly put something in a political ad that is not factually and demonstrably true.

2. Place limitations on what can be raised and spent during a campaign. I'm just using made up numbers here to illustrate the point, but let's say you place a cap on the maximum that can be raised and spent at $5 million. Anything beyond that goes into the budget for the country itself. This would apply to both individuals AND corporations. This way, if Wal-Mart or Exxon decided to contribute to a campaign, they have no more power to donate any more money than Joe Citizen.

3. Full disclosure of PAC and SuperPAC monies. #2 would also apply to PACs and SuperPACs.

4. Ban all "professional" lobbying, with the exception of medical and scientific research.

5. Term Limit Congress. Two consecutive terms maximum for senators, and I'd be OK with 4 to 6 terms for House members. Here's how this would work. Let's say Joe Blow gets elected to Senate, and serves his two terms. After his two terms are up, he would then become ineligible to hold office in both houses for the duration of one Senatorial term. I vacillate on whether or not Joe Blow would be eligible to run for President.

6. Put Congress in their own home districts. It's much easier to hold Congresspeople accountable when they're not way across the country. It's also easier to keep up with what they're doing politically.

So, those are just a few ideas. What say you?

[Greenday]

I'm a big fan of term limits and full disclosure of campaign donations. I want to know who owns my congressman since the public does not.

I'd like to ban smear campaigns. Stop talking about why I shouldn't vote for the other guy and start talking about why I should actually vote for you.

Don't put that letter next to the candidates name on the ballot. No more just looking down the list and voting for everyone with a R or D next to their name. If you can't vote without having it in front of you which party the person works for, you are too dumb to vote.

[HYHYBT]

The thing with term limits is you'd wind up with nobody knowing how to do things and why they're done that way. And yes, that WOULD be a problem. If all of Congress turned over every few years, much of the effective power would go to the nearest positions that didn't; staff, perhaps. Or lobbyists; it's unreasonable to demand they go away. (Separating them better from the elected, so that neither can EVER become the other, might be useful though.)

What I'd like to see is a blanket ban on campaigning (including the kind done by those who haven't announced yet that they're running, and also including announcing that you're going to run) for all positions before January 2nd of the election year, with primaries in all states on the exact same day halfway between then and the general election.

[mjr]

I'd like to ban smear campaigns. Stop talking about why I shouldn't vote for the other guy and start talking about why I should actually vote for you.

This is interesting, and a great point. My wife and I (who generally differ politically) were discussing this one day. The issue here is that "smear campaigns" generally target low information and/or undecided voters. And most of the low information/undecideds who actually do vote wait until they are actually in the voting booth with a ballot in hand before they do so. Most people aren't going to be swayed by a "negative ad". For instance, in the Texas gubernatorial race, there were negative ads on both sides. That did not affect me, personally, in any way, because I already knew who I was going to vote for.

Therefore, if they see an ad that says "Joe Smith likes to kick puppies! Do you really want a puppy-kicker representing YOU?" That might be the turning point for some voters.

Campaigns spend large amounts of money on "negative ads". Studies have shown that most people don't react positively to them, and for the money spent on them, they aren't nearly as effective. An ad that says, "Hi. I'm Bob Smith, and I would like your vote because I want to do X, Y, and Z" is more effective.

Don't put that letter next to the candidates name on the ballot.

I'll go one step further. Do away with "straight ticket" voting. Get rid of that option completely.

[mjr]

The thing with term limits is you'd wind up with nobody knowing how to do things and why they're done that way. And yes, that WOULD be a problem.

I understand that concern. I wonder, though, if the same thought process was in place when the Office of the President was term-limited.

I'd guess that the first thought that runs through a President's head when they actually take office is "What did I get myself into??"

My thing on term limits that I failed to mention is that they're about consecutive term limits.

So if you have a candidate, let's call him Bill, and he's in the House of Representatives. He can serve 4 consecutive terms, for instance (8 years). Then at the end of that 8 years, he would be ineligible to run for the House AND Senate for two years. After that two year ineligibility period, he could run again.

Same thing in the Senate. If you have Bob, Bob could run for two consecutive terms, then would be ineligible for a term (6 years), then he could run again.

Interestingly, with the Senate, 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election every two years -- it's staggered.

What I'd like to see is a blanket ban on campaigning...with primaries in all states on the exact same day halfway between then and the general election.

This is a good idea. I don't think Congress would go for it.

I don't necessarily think that the Primaries should all be on the same day, though. You'd have to allow for early voting and such, but I wouldn't have a problem with them being all within the same two-month period, or something like that.

[Greenday]

The thing with term limits is you'd wind up with nobody knowing how to do things and why they're done that way.

If it took any of us here at Fratching that long to figure out how to do our jobs, we'd all get fired for being incompetent.

[s_stabeler]

you need to be a bit careful with consecutive limits though- look at Russia for an example of how it can be abused ( Putin swapped his job title to Prime Minister with a relative puppet President, and swapped back at the first opportunity)

The primary issue is that politicians can easily be isolated from the consequences of their actions- it's entirely possible for a politician to spend their entire working lives in Congress in some capacity or another.

Personally, I think it would help if the incumbent cannot run for re-election- i.e. there needs to be a new face in the seat each time. Certainly in the Senate, where the elections are staggered, IIRC. In the House, less so- or introduce staggering in the House as well- to reduce the possibility of lobbyists of=r staff members taking control away from the elected members.

[MadMike]

I'd like to ban smear campaigns. Stop talking about why I shouldn't vote for the other guy and start talking about why I should actually vote for you.

I have mixed feelings on this one. I don't like the mudslinging that goes on, but if the other candidate did something bad, I think people need to know about it, or be reminded of it in case they forgot about it. Like when our current (soon to be ex) governor jacked up our fuel taxes, I think it needed to be mentioned. Especially since in his own ads, he clamed that he "did not raise taxes." I know all politicians lie, but most of them aren't that blatant about it.

[wolfie]

Don't put that letter next to the candidates name on the ballot. No more just looking down the list and voting for everyone with a R or D next to their name. If you can't vote without having it in front of you which party the person works for, you are too dumb to vote.

Definitely! Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the population would vote for a chimpanzee if it had the right letter following its name on the ballot. Of course, given the performance of some congresscritters and senateturds, a chimp might be an improvement.

[mjr]

I kinda like the idea from the movie "Brewster's Millions".

Run a campaign for "None of the above".

But to the negative ads, what if you made it where your ad could NOT be completely negative?

Referencing MadMike's post above about the Pennsylvania governor, his challenger could have said something like "Governor X said he wouldn't raise taxes...but he raised state fuel taxes. Candidate Bob doesn't think that's right. Candidate Bob won't say something, then do something else..."

Or something like that.

[Hyena Dandy]

"Governor X said he wouldn't raise taxes...but he raised state fuel taxes. Candidate Bob doesn't think that's right. Candidate Bob won't say something, then do something else..."

Isn't that how most negative ads play out?

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Greenday -

I think the difference is you're dealing with a number of committees with active projects and overhauling almost half of the membership of some 535 (House and Senate) total every two years. That's a lot of disrupted continuity combined with having to quickly figure out the temperment of a large number of people extremely quickly.

Add to that people with nothing to lose in terms of elections really have no governor on their actions. I can totally see the public being mad about a policy, electing a large number of "we'll blow it all up" types, and then for once actually seeing it followed through as they won't be the ones dealing with it. So imagine being a retirement age and seeing Social Security blown up while you're on it because it fixes a lot of problems in the budget. The congress knows it's not being reelected, it knows it causes a huge budgeting problem, and it knows it's a huge line item. So blow it up and let the next guys figure out a better way.

They just won't be around when society has to figure out what to do with all the starving, freezing, homeless types stuck in between systems. And the thing is, you just need one Congress with the wrong temperment and makeup to get extremely bad results like that or a number of other permutations. People get enraged by Congressional inaction, but a lot of people don't think about what an extremely wingnut Congress could do. It's why the original design of the Constitution encouraged as much continuity as it did.

[HYHYBT]

So if you have a candidate, let's call him Bill, and he's in the House of Representatives. He can serve 4 consecutive terms, for instance (8 years). Then at the end of that 8 years, he would be ineligible to run for the House AND Senate for two years. After that two year ineligibility period, he could run again.

Then you get the problem of what they do in the meanwhile. Such a system would actively encourage buying politicians by hiring them during their off years in exchange for favorable legislation.

As for president... no, it's not the same. There was already a term limit by custom, only put into the constitution once custom was broken.

[mjr]

Then you get the problem of what they do in the meanwhile. Such a system would actively encourage buying politicians by hiring them during their off years in exchange for favorable legislation.

Interesting thought. I'd say the banning of lobbyists might curtail some of that. I'd have to think about a way around that.

As for president... no, it's not the same. There was already a term limit by custom, only put into the constitution once custom was broken.

While this may be true, custom is not law. Congress was supposed to work the same way. You were supposed to go, serve, and then get back to private life. It wasn't supposed to be a career.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

As someone who has worked in the public sector, you can't get the money out of it. You just can't.

The issue is this: as a legislator bound by our prescriptive judicial system you have to anticipate every possible mechanism that could be used but you can't. New instruments are created all the time.

Can you prove a one sided stock swap was a pay off or that perhaps one side just bet really wrong. What about an interest rate swap contract that doesn't make much sense? Even if you prevent leglislators from taking jobs and consulting gigs after their terms, can't the payoff just wait the 2, 5, 10, 15 years you set as the limit? In the drug trade, this kind of thing happens all the time when people get out of jail. If you're doing it for your kids anyway, who cares?

At the end of the day, lobbyists simply represent those people or interests with bank accounts. They can be rich or a group of poor. If you ban them what you now have is legislators entirely confined to the interests of those they know or those who are not working and/or have the free time to visit them.

There's really only three things you can do:
1) Amend the constitution to allow only a set amount of funding for campaigns and only through one source. Thus, you can campaign all you want but it doesn't increase or decrease what you can do in a reelection.
2) Amend the constitution to only allow for non gerrymandered districts using some sort of quantitative mechanism based on actual geography. You kill the safe seats and you disallow non proportional representation.

You may actually have to override parts of the ERA to do that though since you cannot draw district lines based on race YET because of that it becomes easier to gerrymander legally because races often vote for a single party by a majority. It has historically created two very corrupt white/black voting machines in the US. So the reason you end up with 2 Republican districts and 1 Democratic district is the ERA prevents minimizing/evening out the african american population across the geographic area creating three competitive districts so instead racial voting power is maintained along racial lines without actually reflecting the voting preference of the overall geographical area.

The danger of that is though the Ferguson issue. You even out along political lines but if things actually do come down to racial issues, you have three majority white voting districts or the inverse. Human beings are proven to be oppressive in those situations. It's a tricky problem because racial/political representational parity can't really exist until races aren't political locks for either side.

3) Allow for National referendum on passed laws and Supreme Court Justice recalls. Certain laws and court decisions result from the insular nature and checks and balances as they've been designed. Telecom and CEO's writing it's own laws through paid legislators is really a problem of they've paid off and schmoozed both sides. Their power comes from the abstraction of voting power from constituents to representatives.

Likewise, cases like Citizens United last for 50 some years because the check on it (the power of the legislative to amend) requires that the topic under discussion does not somehow benefit the legislators. Citizens benefits incumbents greatly since they CAN make deals with those with money because they already have power. The required amendment will never take place.

You can't really rewrite the thing as a direct democracy, but you could conceivably send large signals to both the judiciary and legislative that they've overstepped by allowing direct action to remove one or more sitting justices. The downside is the possibility of abuse. But if you set the threshold to something like 60% or 65%, you've eliminated the ability of a single party to meet it. And back to race, you have also introduced the ability for racial majorities or racial bloc's to get oppressive.

I think at the end of the day though all you can do is ask what problems you currently have and what steps you can take that might actually work. But the trick of the original constitution was it tried to account for the abuse that would inevitably result from what it set up. It just didn't account for everything.