> Dana wrote: > I'm afraid you are right. Wish I knew the answer. >
I'm confident the answer is: 1.) Publicly manage elections, 2.) Publicly fund elections, and 3.) Eliminate the electoral college in favor of 3 rounds of instant run off. The electoral college massively distorts campaign allocations and therefore the vote. For example, due to electoral maps, Ohio gets 10s of visits from candidates, billions of dollars, ads, phone campaigns, commercials, media coverage, et. al, while North Dakota doesn't exist. There's just no reason for it. By publicly funding and managing elections, you eliminate disinformation and ensure that the candidates not only visit all of the states, but campaign AND debate in them. This would eliminate the power of the lobbyists and special interests. If everybody gets the same amount of money, you can't owe anyone. And since the campaigns would need to disclose tax returns any off-campaign "gift", it would be quickly uncovered (a la Tom Delay). Every commercial or ad should get a once over by an independently appointed organization (factcheck.org?) to review them for facts and have time to disclaim them. This gets around the "free speech" argument; anybody can say anything they want but if it's crap, someone will tell us why. Finally the instant run-offs would remove the strangle hold of the 2 party system. We could take the top 10 candidates in round 1, the top 5 in round 2, and the top 3 in round 3. The final election determines the President. In a nutshell, to get the outcome we want we need to remove the incentives to do otherwise. Until we all get behind a comprehensive plan like that we'll get more of the same. Oh yeah: let's have a flat tax too. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:158581 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
