Only have to follow one, the licensing board. Licensing is no joke. It’s not the same as a political advocacy group. It is specifically there to maintain a base level of accountability for behavior that is minimally acceptable for someone with the power of a politician. Then they put it up to a vote of the public, with the findings of their investigation made public. Allow mail in votes for those who actually have to be at work.
Yeah, it’d be like the FCC. Surely nothing bad could happen.
Idjit Piece of shit and the noose he put around America’s future as an innovator and leader in internet services.
It’s just like the FCC expect they wouldn’t have the power to make policy, they’d be elected by the entire state, not appointed by politicians, and any politicians found wanting would be put up for a vote of their constituents, rather than facing legal action. So it’d be almost exactly not like the FCC. Want to try again?
As a general rule I’d say changes that require a Constitutional amendment aren’t really worth talking about, because a Constitutional amendment ain’t happening in our lifetime; unless, that is, it’s a bad Constitutional amendment. I can see ginned-up fear railroading weak members of Congress and the Senate and 38 state legislators and producing something totally awful, but I don’t see any way positive improvements happen. When Democrats have 67 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and control of 38 statehouses, that’s the time to talk, but that situation hasn’t existed in my lifetime.
Isn’t licensing something states handle? Why can’t California have its own politican licensing board? Is there something in the constitution that would prevent it? I know that the constitution spells out requirements for running for national office, but does it exclude additional requirements placed by individual states?
Your state could theoretically do whatever it wants in that regard. I just don’t think that it would actually achieve anything towards the ends you suggest, since it would be subject to the exact same problems that you are trying to solve in all your other elected officials.
Actually, it’s not entirely up to the states. Eligibility requirements for Congress are spelled out in the Constitution, and so is the election schedule. You can’t add a “licensing” requirement or add a recall election without a Constitutional amendment.
I don’t think this is true, right? I mean, I thought states pretty much controlled a lot of that, according to rules laid out in their state constitutions. They have to abide by the federal election schedule and terms, but they can have recall elections and stuff, and I thought those were specified within the state constitutions.
You can’t recall anyone in Congress.
You can recall someone elected to statewide office, like the governor of California, if the state constitution permits it.
Oh, really? I had thought that some states had issued recalls for their congressmen in the past, but I must be mistaken.
A few attempts have been made to recall Congressional reps and Senators, but so far they have all been shot down as unconstitutional. More info here.
Furthermore, the SCOTUS has made it clear that states cannot add restrictions on who can be elected to federal office.
I have a different proposal to try to accomplish something similar to Banzai’s idea (I’ve thought about it a bit more since the hints upthread):
- Your vote for each office you are eligible to vote for is an ongoing subscription, which periodically prompts you to refresh it, just like your voter registration / party affiliation.
1 a. If you don’t refresh after N reminders, your vote goes inactive
1 b. If the person you are voting for withdraws or dies, your vote goes inactive and you get an immediate prompt
1 c. The prompts include a basic platform / summary written by each candidate that you can vote for, including an indication of your current selection, if applicable
1 d. You update your vote by sending in a paper ballot by mail
1 e. This all probably applies only to the most major positions, and the ballots for primaries are separate, so it doesn’t become a massive tome to read each time
- There is a cut-off day every single year, like Tax Day, where all the votes are tallied.
2 a. This allows a media blitz around Vote Day to make sure everyone is updating their votes.
2 b. This allows politicians to have some certainty about how long they are in office and lets them survive little blips in their popularity.
- When a new candidate enters a race, notifications are sent to all voters about that specific office.
3 a. There probably needs to be some significant hurdle to enter a race, but I think this is already true for all but minor local positions
3 b. When old candidates withdraw, only their voters are prompted to make new selections
3 c. If a candidate cedes their slot to a new candidate (like with a party slot), everyone gets the prompt
- Candidates are able to view their current tallies and those of their direct opponents
4 a. The tallies are anonymized and not broken down by location or any other factors
4 b. The candidates get periodically updated numbers, not necessarily instant live data
So this way, you have constant accountability, higher participation because everyone has time to consider their response and send it in, and yet you still have some stability and routine to the process. You could also hang certain incentives on keeping an active vote subscription, such as a tax break, or nudges like the “your neighbors use this much less energy than you” reports.
Now, tear this all apart! Aside from being a difficult sell, why would this be a worse system?
Ah yes, an optional task that I could complete at any time, but with a hard deadline.
Exactly the sort of task that I am prone to procrastinate until it’s too late.
But do you think people are more or less likely to be able to vote this way? In other words, if this was the only way you could vote, would you forget to do it? Do you think we’d actually get fewer voters?
As compared with current mail-in voting, the primary difference is that Election Day is more often, and you get more ballots in the mail.
This wouldn’t make any changes to who could be elected. It would make changes to how often they must be elected to remain in office. May still be uncontitutional, I’m not an expert in that area of law, but it’s not restricting people from running for office in any way, just trying to hold them accountable with additional elections if they screw up badly enough. It’s more voting, not restricting candidates from running.
So how did that 2016 Presidential Election vote go for you? Do you really think voters are the answer?
It is the only answer we have in a democracy. If you want a different form of government, that’s a different conversation.
2016 went poorly, no doubt, but a large part of it was because of lies by both trump and his russian allies. Of course, plenty of idiots fell for them, and still do, but voting is the only answer we have.
Voters are surely bad, but all the other alternatives seem, well, worse.