Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #2

Develop intensive and extensive protection for the right to vote and a legitimate electoral process. 

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  All U.S. citizens will be automatically registered to vote on their 18th birthday.  A national system will be designed to enable each voter to report their primary residential address at age 18 and thereafter when it is changed.  A citizen who does not vote in an election that includes voting for a state or federal legislator will be required to complete and submit a survey or statement as to why they did not vote.  There will be a nominal monetary penalty or fine for failure to submit the non-voting survey or statement.  There will be severe criminal penalties for anyone who takes any action to obstruct voter registration or obstruct a citizen from casting a ballot.  The officials responsible for collecting and counting votes may label any individual ballot as suspected of fraud.  That voting authority will be responsible for all expenses that apply to the investigation of that suspected fraudulent vote.  A suspected fraudulent vote shall be deemed valid and counted until proven invalid or fraudulent.  All of the forms of reliable communication shall be used for collecting and counting votes.  Each voter shall receive a printed official ballot statement of how they voted and no voter shall be prohibited from publicly acknowledging or publishing the contents of their ballot statement.  If a State requires a method of voter identification, that State shall provide the identification.  If such a voter identification requires verification of any public record, the State shall verify the record and verification shall not be the responsibility of the voter.  If such a voter identification requires a photographic image, the State shall provide the photographic image without charge to the voter, and a voter identification system that requires a photographic image must allow for the voter to submit the photographic image produced by an ordinary means.  Any image or documentation required must not be of a unique or special type that can be produced only by special technology or unusual expense.  If a ballot is lost or misplaced, the results of the election shall be declared invalid and the election shall be repeated, or the missing ballot restored, until all ballots are included in the count of the votes.

 

New coaliton system recommended as the most effective transformation accomplished by smallest adjustment in current two-party system:

First, political parties self-designate themselves as offering either Liberal or Conservative coalition platforms, thereby replacing the two-party system with a two-coalition system.  Parties outside of these two main coalitions are also allowed.  This system allows maximum freedom for the formation of three or more parties.  Each of the main coalitions, Conservative and Liberal, may compose themselves as a single party, or as a coalition of two or more parties.  Also, the "outside" parties, when there are more than one, may constitute themselves as a coalition of parties.  Reasonable rules may be established to promote ideologically accurate and honest self-designation practices.  Votes must be cast for single parties and single candidates, not for a coalition.  After all votes are cast and counted, the first step is that the same rules apply as apply now in the two-party system whereby a candidate that receives a plurality of the vote but not a majority (greater than 50%) is not elected.  Therefore, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote for a designated office, the second step is to observe whether all of the parties in one of the two main coalitions received a majority of the vote.  If that is the case, then the winning coalition holds a conciliatory meeting to decide which candidate should be the one elected to the office and what revisions in that candidate's party platform shall be required in order to be designated as the elected candidate.  This coalescence of the separate party platforms shall be on public record and a genuine political commitment of the elected coalition candidate and coalition to the populace.  Additional rules could be established to determine how fulfillment of the political commitments made to the populace shall be measured by those candidates sworn in to the elected office.   

 

As a third step, if the winning coalition has received more than 50% of the votes cast but less than 60% of the votes cast, that coalition may hold additional negotiation meetings with parties and candidates from another coalition in an effort to achieve the goal of a coalition expansion that enables the coalition to be supported by more than 60% of the votes cast.  For example, if the Conservative Coalition won an office by 53% of the vote, that coalition could make an effort to incorporate elements of the Liberal Coalition platform in exchange for the votes cast for a candidate or candidates in the Liberal Coalition, and thereby make a genuine political commitment to more than 60% of the voters who voted in the election. 

 

There could be a fixed period of time in which all such political coalition negotiations must be completed, or, the winning coalition could request a time period to be allowed that must be approved by the sitting Congress.

 

Why we must make this change:  This recommended system would effectively correct the most destructive factor in the current two-party system where voting for a "spoiler" candidate who is categorized on one side of the political spectrum actually has the effect of benefitting the candidate and party on the opposite side of the political spectrum.  This factor in the two-party system imposes a severe and serious disability on the democratic process because it prevents the voters,  the will of the people, from exercising the power to move the government in a political direction that they might desire, either to the left (Liberal) or to the right (Conservative).  In a democratic system, that power must be in the hands of the voters.  The people must be enabled to move the political ideology and political practice, and the policies and laws of government, in either direction as they so choose.  The current two-party system deprives the people of that power to impose their political will on the policies of government and by that restrictive deprivation denies the people a genuinely democratic political process.  This is why it is imperative that we discontinue the two-party system.   

 

Political "promise" legislation: The people and their legislators should give serious consideration to producing a legal definition for a "political promise" made by a candidate for elected office and penalties for failure to keep or implement such a promise.

Election Integrity legislation: The people and their legislators should give serious consideration to producing a national election law that would provide for the best technology available to accomplish 100% participation of all those eligible to vote, and 100% accuracy in counting votes for every elective office. No voting technology shall be secret or private property, and every ballot shall be produced in legible and permanent form and provided to the voter who cast the ballot.