Lawrence Lessig is promoting his ideas on the topic of unbalanced
influence and politics.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 6, 2008, at 12:25, Robert Cordingley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Someone wanted to know what we could do. Well, to break the
connection between money and power which I think is a core problem,
nationwide, I'd start with:
Influence peddling:
Ban all Special Interest Groups. Elected officials will have to
listen to their electorate for guidance. SIGs limit freedom of
speech of the person in the street and are non-democratic so can be
declared unconstitutional.
Ban jiggory-pokery with redistricting, use geography and population
densities
Eliminate term limits: find a good guy keep a good guy, vote the
others out.
Require Federal funding of campaigns (as has been suggested) and State
Reduce the number of elected officials to those that count for
political purposes: make the rest civil service career positions
appointed by non-partisan processes. You are a Judge because you
know the law not the power brokers. You are a Chief of Police
because you've achieved great crime reduction goals etc. Side
benefit: short ballot papers and elections are more relevant to the
voter.
On voting rights and polling
Register everyone to vote when they get a driving license. You
drive a lethal weapon: you vote. You vote in the district of your
current DL address.
OR
Register everyone to vote when they submit their tax return. You
file taxes: you vote. You vote in the district of your current tax
return.
Registered party members are not allowed to vote in primaries of
other parties. Unregistered party members voting in primaries of a
party become registered in that party for the next x months.
Make it illegal not to vote, punishable with $50 fine or, give
everyone $50 when they vote. The rich can afford not to vote.
Use school bus routes and drivers to get everyone that has no
transport to the polls. Make polling-day a day-off-school or on a
weekend. Use schools as polling stations - give everyone one
regular school meal for their time and their voting receipt! Side
benefit: all parents see something about the local schools.
Open and close polling stations at the same universal time, for one
24 hour period.
Make it illegal for polling officials to be party officials.
and it probably goes on ... We might need a national voter
registration database (ooooo...tricky) and way more cooperation
between different arms of government than we probably now have (ever
more tricky).
Quick questions: What political animal does this make me? How do I
get started? Can someone model all this to see if it would make a
difference?
Robert C
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
