The laws I'd make for national elections

[illusionofjoy]

Election season in the United States has become like the worst, most commercialized aspects of Christmas: it starts way too early and lasts way too long. Campaigning for position of the Republican presidential nominee began in the middle of 2011, which is utterly ridiculous. Of course, the reason for this was that Iowa moved their caucus up to the first week of January, naturally pushing the campaigning up as well. Watching this mess, I thought, "wouldn't it be nice if it were illegal for campaigns to last longer than a year?" This led down the slippery slope to all of the other things wrong with the electoral system in the United States. Thus, here's how I'd run things:

Abolish or depreciate the power of the Electoral College

The Electoral College should be abolished, plain and simple. Barring that, it should be relegated to a mere ceremonial role. In the event of abolishment, the national popular vote tally would determine who gets into office. This would be the simplest way to do things. However, to rid the country of the Electoral College means amending the constitution - not an easy task, though hardly insurmountable.

The most obvious method for relegating the Electoral College to a ceremonial status is for all 50 states to follow the model of Maine and Nebraska. These two states eschew the winner take all tallying of the other 48 and split their electoral vote totals based on the winner of each congressional district (with the remaining two going to the popular vote winner) . In 2008, four of Nebraska's five electoral votes went to John McCain while one went to Barack Obama.

A few immediate problems crop up with this system. First and foremost: if every states doesn't adopt such a system simultaneously, then whichever party holds dominance in a state proposing the change cries foul about the potential loss of clout. Last year it was proposed that Pennsylvania divide its electoral votes in the same manner as Maine and Nebraska. The state's Democratic Party cried foul as Barack Obama had won all of Pennsylvania's then 21 electoral votes in 2008. Had the proportional system been in place during the last presidential election, Obama would have received something like 12 electors and the remaining nine would have gone to McCain. Still a win, but hardly the impressive prize of the "winner take all" system.

I've no doubt that if this had been proposed in Texas, Republicans would have been acting just as out of sorts.

The bigger problem with this system is gerrymandering. In theory, the lines of congressional districts are supposed to be drawn so that communities are gathered together and the each district has a population roughly equal to the others. What actually happens is that whichever party is in power draws the lines of the district based on past voting patterns and resident party registrations so that it protects their own interests. If I had my way, congressional districts would be drawn based on county or municipality lines and spit out by a nice, non-partisan computer based merely on population data and nothing else.

"Third" parties and ballot access

The Democratic and Republican parties have done a horrible thing to democracy in the United States: by collectively collaborating to impose a duopoly and circling the wagons to protect their legacies, they have limited the voices of the voters. There is absolutely no reason voting should be an exercise of choosing the lesser of two evils. With the dead-end philosophy of "lesser evilism" we the people are seemingly forced to tolerate an increasing amount of corruption and decay with each election season. It's time to open up the polls.

The easiest way to do this is to implement instant run-off voting.

You're going into the polling booth Tuesday, November 6^th; you have a choice between the Republican (let's say Mitt Romney) and the Democrat (let's say Barack Obama). Depending on which state you live in, there may be one or more "third party" candidates to choose from as well (let's say Sally Socialist, Larry Libertarian and Gina Green). Under the current system where votes are tallied by simple majority you choose one candidate and it's over. Sally, Larry and Gina are considered "spoilers" because the Democrats and Republicans believe that votes given to each of those third party candidates could have gone their way instead. As such, the legacy parties do everything they can to keep non-legacy candidates off of the ballots...unless it suits their purposes (see: Republican donations to Ralph Nader's campaign in 2004).

A run-off vote is an election which is held if the previous election did not yield a 50% or more vote for any of the candidates. What usually occurs is that the top two vote-getters are allowed to face off against each other to finally determine who the winner is. Instant run-off voting takes this idea and streamlines it. Instead of just picking one candidate in the polling booth, the voter ranks them by order of preference. An example:

1. Sally Socialist (S)
2. Gina Green (G)
3. Barack Obama (D)
4. Mitt Romney (R)
5. Larry Libertarian (L)

Obviously voters would not be required to fill out all five slots as in our admittedly liberal example, however, you get the point. If Sally and Gina failed to garner enough votes, those votes would "run off" to Barack Obama or whomever had reached the viability threshold (in the case of a five-way race, that would be 20%). Fairvote.org has a more in-depth explanation of instant run-off voting. In any case, I propose this system for both general elections and party primaries (and all party nominations should be through primaries; a caucus is an insult to the sanctity of the ballot).

As for ballot access, most third parties can't get on the ballot because the legacy parties have the resources to challenge the signatures on their petitions. I propose leveling the playing field: if your candidate can gather a number of signatures equal 0.1% of the population for whatever office he or she is running for (i.e.: a congressional candidate in a district with a population of 200,000 must collect 200) and half of those signatures pass a legitimacy challenge, that candidate is placed on the ballot - end of story.

Reigning in primary season

I think that political parties are a good idea. At their best they allow like-minded people to organize and become active citizens. When they have a clearly defined platform and candidates who reflect that platform, a party label provides a voter with a "cheat sheet" as to what a candidate's views are and whether or not said views are compatible with the voter's own. However, political parties become ugly when they are used by an elite few to manipulate people and use their members to their own ends.

I am a proponent of closed primaries. I think the California "top two" system is one of the dumbest things to ever be shat out of a legislative body. The argument for it is that it produces candidates which people would actually want. In reality, IRV is more effective at doing that and "top two" just produces candidates who are members of either the Democratic or Republican parties. In any case, my view is that Democrats should vote for the Democratic nominee, Republicans should vote for the Republican nominee, Greens for Green, Libertarians for Libertarians and so on and so forth. Those who "decline to state" or who do not register for a party (often referred to as "independents") can wait out primaries and vote in the general election.

That said, primary season is too...fucking...long!

I have bad news for both Iowa and New Hampshire: aside from stale tradition, there is absolutely no reason that these states should be going first when it comes to selecting presidential nominees. Here's how I'd organize primary season: it lasts for ten weeks, no more. The majority of these weeks will be held in April and May. Over the ten weeks, five states get to have a primary election per week. The states voting on a particular week would be determined by the order in which they joined the union and rotated for each presidential election. This means that on the first year of this system being put in place, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut would go first. Those states would go last four years later when Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia would go first; and so on and so forth.

Campaigns for primaries would not be allowed to start until the year of the election. Any candidate caught campaigning before then would be immediately disqualified from running and barred from running in another election for ten years. A harsh penalty, perhaps, but I think the American people would appreciate having their December holidays uninterrupted by attack ads.

Finally, party primaries would have to obey the same laws as general elections (in my perfect union). Votes would be tallied via IRV and the winner of the popular vote from that party's members would be the nominee.

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Obviously, I've covered a lot while only really scratching the surface of what is wrong with how citizens of the United States elect our so-called "representatives." All I can think as we head into Election 2012 is that I don't want to vote for any of these assclowns. I'd push through some of the reforms I've proposed but, you know...I'm unelectable.