This series of papers proposes solutions to American governmental problems that could be addressed by a Constitutional Convention. Please refer to American Rebirth Paper No. 0 to understand additional context of this paper and subsequent papers.
This paper addresses the following problems:
Two dominant political parties have emerged in American politics. Because it is often easier and more effective to demonize your opponent to gain and retain political power, political campaigns tend to steer away from honest policy debates. In particular, the Democrats, who know that they don’t have facts or history on their side to support their policy goals, resort to lying, name-calling and labeling, character assassination, and propaganda to demonize Republicans.
Politics is driven by money, generally to the benefit of large corporations and well-funded special interests, with the general public mostly ignored. Incumbency is rampant resulting in a feedback loop – money flows to the favored incumbents, they do the bidding of the well-heeled donors, and money flows once again to the incumbent. Going against this symbiotic relationship results in negative money flow for the candidate – the more you fight the system, the more money will be used against you.
Having identified these fundamental problems, I started to think about how to solve the problems. In the end, I concluded that the structure of our government is sound; three branches with checks and balances has and can continue to work effectively for the citizens. Instead, the way we select our chief executives and representatives is broken. This idea came to me in one of those random conversations we all have, in my case a conversation I had with someone that carpooled to work with me. We were talking about our Senator from Washington State, Patty Murray, who I’m sure you’ll agree is at best a useful idiot; at least she doesn’t appear to be inherently evil like many of her cohorts. Anyway, I made the comment that someone randomly picked from the phone book would be better than Senator Murray (as famously said by the great William F. Buckley, Jr: “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”) That made me think – hmm; maybe that would work. From that point, I built on this starting block to arrive at a new system for selecting chief executives and representatives.
The premise of this paper is that political parties have proven to be detrimental to government. Almost everyone knows this to be true; political polls regarding approval or disapproval of Congress (House and Senate) have been strongly on the side of disapproval. Is there a way that political parties could be minimized? I believe they can be drastically reduced in power by changing the way we select chief executives and representative.
This paper describes changes at the federal level. Paper No. 2 will cover State elections, Paper No. 3. will cover county elections., and Paper No. 4 will address a fundamental question – would randomly selected representatives do a better job of governing than our current system of elections?
Some key features at the federal level are as follows:
· Congressman, Senators, and the President serve concurrent four-year terms.
· Federal Congressman are selected by lottery from a qualified list of entrants.
· Federal Senators are selected by state legislators (one by the state house and one by the state senate).
· The President is selected by election using a process where all candidates (with no party affiliation listed on ballots) participate in a series of primaries followed by a final runoff for the top two candidates using the Electoral College.
Additional details regarding this new method are as follows:
1. Representatives are selected by lottery and serve a single, four-year term. Anyone who meets minimum requirements is eligible to enter the lottery. Minimum requirements, include but are not limited to:
a. Must be 18 years old.
b. Citizen of the United States.
c. High school degree or equivalent.
d. Fluent in English.
e. Educated in United States history, particularly regarding its founding principles, the basic procedures and rules of the government, and civics. Candidates must pass a test on these subjects to qualify.
f. Must not have a criminal record that includes certain felonies, such as murder and other lesser crimes.
2. Senators at the federal level are selected by the state legislature, one by the state representatives and the other by the state senate. Senators have the same required prerequisites as representatives except senators must be a minimum of 30 years old. Federal senators may serve more than one term, with each term coinciding with the four-year representative terms.
3. The President of the United States is selected using a series of run-off elections in the following manner:
a. Candidates must collect, and have certified, signatures from a minimum of 1/2 percent of the registered voters in the United States by a published deadline that show support for the candidate. Voting roles are maintained at the federal level; each registered voter will be given a unique number, like a social security number, upon initial registration.
b. Certified candidates must file statement papers covering topics ranging from taxation, budget philosophy, foreign affairs, border security, and national security to other topics that may be relevant to current national concerns. These statement papers will be published to allow all voters easy access to the information.
c. A series of primaries are held, like the approach currently used to select party nominees. However, unlike the current system where Iowa and New Hampshire take a leading role, primaries will be held where a selected number of states from each region of the country are included. For example, five primary votes are held, each with ten states, one from each of ten regions. The selected states will rotate every four years so that over time each state will be included in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth primary. Points are accumulated by each candidate based on the percentage of votes for the candidate and the number of electoral votes for each state. Candidates that do not achieve a minimum percentage of votes (such as 10 percent) will get no points.
d. Debates are held before and between primaries to directly hear from the candidates.
e. After the primaries are completed, the two candidates that have accumulated the most points will be elevated to a runoff election to be held on Election Day, which is also the day that lotteries are held to select federal representatives as described above. As with the current system, the Electoral College is used to select the president based on the vote totals in each state.