Elections

Here’s what I think we need:

• No private election spending.
• Free media air time on our air waves for candidates qualified by signature gathering.
• Public financing, ballot access, and debate access for candidates qualified by signature gathering.
• No gerrymandering.
• Hand-counted paper ballots publicly counted in every polling place.
• Election day holiday.
• Limited campaign season.
• Automatic voter registration.
• Full representation for Washington, D.C., and all of the U.S. colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific.
• Voting rights regardless of criminal conviction.
• National popular vote with no electoral college.
• Mandatory voting with an option for “none of the above.”
• Abolition of the Senate.
• A larger House of Representatives.
• Direct public vote on important matters (national initiative).
• Ban on war profiteering.
• Ban on secret budgets and agencies.
• Ban on executive power use by vice presidents.

Here’s how we could get it: Declare the current system so broken that you will invest not a minute and not a dime in trying to elect anyone president of the United States. Instead, put all that effort and money into a policy-driven nonviolent activist campaign for these reforms and other urgent policy changes (peace, the environment, etc.) at the local, state, and federal levels.

A “Democracy read more

“Vote. It’s the American thing to do!” read an email I received yesterday. Actually it’s the just-about-anywhere-else thing to do. U.S. voters lead the world in staying home and not bothering.

There are three schools of thought as to why, all of which I think are largely correct.

1. They don’t make it easy. Americans, in many cases, have to work long hours in unlivable cities, go through a hassle to register to vote, wait in long lines, produce photo IDs, and get past read more

I was lucky to attend a debate among the candidates for Congress from Virginia’s Fifth District just before game 7 of the world series. This was the kind of event you can write about while drinking beer and yelling at a television with your family. In fact, I’m not sure there’s any other way you could write about it.

Here are our choices for the House of Misrepresentatives:

The incumbent Robert Hurt, a fairly typically horrendous Republican, if a bit less of a warmonger than his read more

In this local TV news interview (video), we see Virginia Fifth District Democratic nominee for Congress Lawrence Gaughan say, “We need to get back to the Constitution on the issue of war, and I will never authorize the executive to use force when there is no direct or imminent threat to our national security here on our soil.”

I’m not aware of a stronger statement from any candidate for Congress. 

Virginia’s Fifth District is currently misrepresented by Republican Robert read more