5. Coalition Cabinet. Presidential candidates must name prospective individuals to all Cabinet positions at least 90 days prior to Election Day, and those individuals must participate in such debates as the states might organize, and at least one national debate for each of the positions. Presidents are obligated to appoint their designated Cabinet members once elected, as the central premise of this element of the Act is to eliminate the "winner take all" nature of partisan politics.
6. Debates. Each state shall sponsor at least one presidential debate for a total of 50 debates, each state determining the questions, format, and participants. Each state shall sponsor at least one cabinet-level debate among designated individuals, e.g. the Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Defense, etcetera. National debates shall be based on national polls that are open-ended with respect to who voters wish to see and hear participate in such debates. Candidates must participate in all debates to be eligible for free and equal access to public media.
PHASE II (Implementation in Time for 2018)
7. Representation. Enact Open Registration. Enact Proportional Representation via the Voting process (03) with full integration of the Electoral Integrity Principles (01) and full use of national referendums (04). What this means is that no voting block comprising 5% or more of the population, across the country or across any state, will lack for designated representation in the national or the respective state legislatures.
8. Districts. Gerrymandering is outlawed. It will be replaced by any combination of compact computer drawn districts using open source software and/or citizen wisdom councils selected from jury duty pools, and/or at-large districts. All gerrymanders in progress in 2011 are stopped by this Act and replaced by tightly-drawn districts. In light of the 1:1 representation provided by national referendums, no increase in the number of Representatives is necessary.
9. Funding. Qualifying candidates will receive public funding in equal amounts. Political campaign committees are made illegal and lose their public charters. For the purposes of this Act corporations are not people and may not contribute nor cause to be contributed, any campaign funds. Issue advocacy and advertising are not tax-deductible. Air time and media print space for all candidates is free and equal.
10. Legislation. All proposed legislation without exception be published on line, normally one month prior to vote but no less than 24-72 hours for emergencies, to include explicit geospatial pointers for all "earmarks" each of which must be publicly announced. Secret legislation and secret treaties are expressly forbidden.
11. Constitutional Amendment(s). Congress shall work toward a Constitutional Amendment that places Election Integrity outside the power of the government. That amendment, whose terms shall be formulated via the National Initiative for Democracy (National Ballot Initiatives). It might include but not be limited to such initiatives as:
- 01 Elimination of personhood for any organization
- 02 Affirmation of universal voter registration
- 03 Abolishment of the Electoral College
- 04 Balanced Budget
- 05 Termination of the Federal Reserve
- 07 Constraint on size and budget of the US Government
- 06 Re-enfranchises convicts who complete their sentences
- 07 Reversal of the 17th Amendment (Senate by the States)
- NOTE: DC Statehood does not require an Amendment.
What about money? Sadly, this goal that I am articulating for all of us to consider is just complicated enough that I don't think a Kick-Starter or IndieGoGo campaign is going to do for the initial funding. I would like to be wrong about that. There are two levels of funding: the first could come from individuals such as Peter Ackerman, Michael Bloomberg, and Peter Peterson (they funded Americans Elect (a brilliant idea badly executed that in addition lost its integrity early on) and Peter Peterson's 2005 book,Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It was one of the first to show me that very rich people were seeing the dysfunctional nature of our dishonest government as a threat to their own wealth); the second is from ourselves, $10 a person times 50 million or more -- that is a war chest for democracy of no less than $500 million a year! Combine that with Coast to Coast, the Alex Jones Show, Voices of Liberty, and so on, as well as social media, and it is Game Over!
Below are a few line items adding up to $2.5 million dollars, a reasonable "ask" of the above individuals, should they agree that restoring integrity to our electoral process is much more complicated than their earlier assumption (add a viable third party candidate).
- Full Time Staff, 1 per state plus 10 for a total of 60 inclusive of benefits (600,000)
- 150 Workshops with travel expenses for local, state, and national participants (300,000)
- Political advisers, author influencers, consultants, researchers, all part-time (600,000)
- Independent and small party leader engagement inclusive of travel & stipends (300,000)
- New national values survey directed by Ray Paul and Sherri Ruth Anderson (300,000)
- Summit hotel rooms, catering, audio-visual inclusive of press corps catering (200,000)
- Outreach to youth, labor, veterans, and unemployed -- roughly 2/3 of all voters (200,000)*
- TOTAL: 2,500,000 * Big Bat kicks in and there is no limit to our spending for democracy.
Now what if this idea takes off? What if all 110 million at or near the poverty level join with the 30 million unemployed electricians to CEOS and the 20 million new college graduates living again at home with their parents and the 80 million Cultural Creatives?
Here is my vision. Imagine just 50 million of these donating $10 this year to our Electoral Reform Fund. Then imagine 100 million of them donating $10 each. Then imagine the first 50 million coming back with another $20 each. The below graphic, inspired by Howard Dean and Joe Trippi and Zephr Teachout, is the tip of the iceberg, in my view.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Finally, a word on the elites that have blocked us from free and equal elections for so long.
A major reason I am so optimistic about the possibilities of our success is that I have observed a sharp breaking of the ranks among the elites. Ackerman, Bloomberg, and Peterson were ahead of their time. More recently Lady Lynn Rothschild (who was born in New Jersey) sponsored a conversation on "Inclusive Capitalism," code for "stop the pitchforks. Elsewhere, in both Europe and on the West Coast of the USA, we have the "Black Sheep Billionaires" talking about Redemptive Capitalism -- another term for "stop the pitchforks. What they are realizing is that the achievement of a 100% corrupt government is NOT WORKING. They are killing the golden goose of the economy, the individual worker and working families.
I also learned long ago that given a population of nine billion, and given the way the economies of the world work, there is nothing to be gained from confiscating wealth for redistribution, particularly digital wealth that is largely intangible and difficult to apply at scale.
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