I've got a silly little idea here in progress, or maybe not so silly; see what you think.
Instead of electing a person to office, we require that a candidate answer questions on record for today’s issues.
Come election time, you don’t vote for candidates, instead you are presented with the questions and the answers the candidates chose to make. You get to read the same questions and choose which of the answers you prefer. The candidate with the most answers reflecting your positions gets your vote. You get a printout telling you who you ended up voting for.
This is how it would work: at the local level, political activists, media, and even the candidates themselves create questions, and then the candidates HAVE TO respond to those questions each in kind, and only those questions.
Kind of like a debate, but on paper. A record. There could be hundreds of questions to start. The final questions themselves that would end up on the ballot could be voted on as part of the primaries. Including “write-in” questions [subject of course to a minimum support level before it had to be addressed].
This would give the candidates a chance to judge what the electorate actually gave a shit about, and better prepare themselves to answer to them come election time.
Say...50 questions total. To make it easier to choose what questions the runner has to answer, we need some rules first.
So if the questions for the election were chosen by popular vote, screened as a minimum by the two rules above, imagine what would NOT end up on the final questionnaire:
- Flag burning questions.
- Gays in the military
- Gay marriage
- Abortion
- Assisted Suicide
- Global Terrorism
- Personal Religious Affiliation
- Crime (as in “Are you for or against crime?”) Politicians love this one; they’ll talk all day about being against crime. Why? Who’s ‘for’ crime?
- Ad Nausem.
Every item the candidates like to waste time talking about – since poll analyzers know it won’t effect the outcome of the election – releases them from having to talk about issues that the voter might actually have an opinion on – and thus accidentally sink their own campaigns.
And this new rule: if it’s on either the 50/50 or the 95 list after the primary results are in, it would be verboten to discuss publicly thereafter during the campaign. A reporter could ask the candidate for his position on say, abortion, and the candidate would have to reply, “I’m sorry, that question has been stricken and I’m not allowed to address it at this time.” Before that they can yammer about it as much as they like, but after the primaries, the subjects they could discuss could not be on the banned subject list. That would leave real questions forced upon the candidates to answer to such as:
- English as a required language for citizenship in the
- Energy Policies
- Pollution Plans
- Parenting rights for fathers
- Taxpayer financed corporate bailouts
- Higher education access
- Universal health care
- Availability of drug subscriptions from outside the
- Suspension of Habeas Corpus at
- Public sex education
- Stem cell research grant money
- Immigration
- Marijuana sentencing laws
- Et al.
This would actually work in the candidates favor because they would have a people’s referendum right in hand when they got in office. --Less guessing whether their votes were going to harm them in the next election. And…
It would work for the people too, because if an incumbent was on record regularly voting against the issues that got him in, then it would be easier for a challenger to publicly parade that record in the next election and get the incumbent voted OUT.
Whatduhyathink?
4 comments:
At the local level, political activists, media, and even the candidates themselves create questions??
Q: What if I don't fit in one of those categories and want my question answered!!
Suggestion; How about we convert all the dormant mail drop boxes around the city (of your choice) into a candidate question drop box.
Absolutely no on-line question inputs..., to have a question you must first make it known that you have actually stepped outside your house/trailer or van (well I guess you could take the van to the drop box). None the less, this would prove to the reader/answerer of the question that you.., the question generator has actually seen the light of day even other than the occasional trip to the outhouse.
Q: Who is going to filter out the 76 million ridiculous question (roughly 305 Million people, 50% of those 305M won't make a question leaving 152.5M, 50% of which will want to know what the candidate thinks about "important" issues like steroid use by athletes, Designated Hitter rule (baseball, American league uses them, National league does not), grass or turf etc.., (I think you get what I'm saying). That leaves 76 million "reviewable" questions.
Suggestion; I don't have one other than don't ask me to do it..
Note: I like the "answer the questions of the people" approach. It also makes sense that we would be presented a questionnaire and we would automatically vote for the candidate that answered most like us. That would eliminate the "He/she was in the Air Force and I'm in the AF now" vote or the "He/she is of a certain race or ethnic background and so am
I" vote. I like it. And on top of that, it would prove that the
"voters" can actually read.
OK gotta run..,
Later,
M
I like the question answer thing, it is progressive only because this country is so not-gressive.
Mikey,
In answer to your question, there wouldn't be millions - at least not in Mt home. At the lowest level, the questions would be vetted by your local political assembly- your town. If you had a burning question you would take it to your local assemblyman. From there it would go to county then state, then regional caucus etc. The way I am seeing it right now, each question would take the same path like a 'bill' does now.
Each state and county would have its own rules for submitting questions. Some would have forms, and some (I'm thinking rural here) would actually let you fax or email then in. In really intimate locations, you might just talk to your representative directly and have him frame the question for you. Basic rules like, "You have to be a registered voter" would vet the most inane questions right at the start. If you want to have them on paper so there was an actual record of who suggested what, that's fine I think. The idea is that the questions that managed to make it through each level of filter would become more and more relevant. Questions that were similar would eventually morph together. Questions that were 'out there' - "When are we going to forcibly round up all the illegal immigrants and ship them off to Canada" (Yes, I've actually heard that discussed) would never get past the local level.
The final fifty would be amalgamations representing the most commonly asked of all the people in all the states. They would be of the type: "What is your proposed solution to _________". Your Neo-Nazi skinheads of northern Idaho would not really have a final input into the process because they don't represent Americans as a whole.
Questions like: "If elected, what are you going to do to help the disenfranchised African-Americans displaced by hurricane Katrina?" would never see the lights of a stage.
Why should it? That's a local problem. A bunch of people lived in a watershed area without flood insurance (because their homes were in their families for years and thus - without mortgages - they were not required by any law to carry it) and now they want our tax money to bail them out?
No. A more relevant question on a national level would be, "What do you propose should the role of the Federal Government be, in relation to the needs of individual people in the event of a natural crisis?"
The idea is to keep local questions local. I was living in Idaho some years back when a bunch of Christian Conservatives from around the country descended on Idaho and got the legal number of signatures required to force a Proposition on public employment of gay people. These nabobs had been going round from state to state doing this. Why? Gays make up less than 7% of the population. Why are we discussing this? When did it become a problem? The people of Idaho were smart enough to shoot the Proposition down; on the basis that Government should not be passing laws about how to behave in private. Idahoans saw this (rightfully) as an attempt to force one group’s religious predilections on everybody else. It's not that your average Idahoan supported people being gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but that government should not be involved in your personal business.
Texans were not that smart. Texas, like 40 other states in the country, recently passed a Constitutional Amendment against marriage of people of the same sex. How did this even end up being discussed? Texas must have the lowest gay population of any state. I'm just pointing out the danger of how a small group of obnoxious people, dedicating to forcing their views on people they hate, can use the system we have now against others, because so many people who DON'T care one way or another sit back and let it happen (It doesn't effect me...).
These same people are the ones that wind up in control of the topics of discussion in every election across the nation. With the system I'm proposing, their tiny numbers would ensure their shrill opinions would be drowned out because numbers would rule at the lowest level. It would be impossible to jump to a larger arena like the State House, just because nobody was rising up to stop you.
(I am aware that what I just talked about are actually two different subjects, but I was on a
roll...)
Bobby
in fundament i am behind your idea. but, and i think you brushed on this earlier, i don't feel that this approach can adequately address the problem of obfuscation.
the earlier assumed 50% is not to be confused with "the educated", "the interested", "the intelligent," or "the credulous" nor, do i think, that this participatory segment of the country should be assumed even to be on the whole more capable or willing to discern when they are being lied to or manipulated and i posit that it would be just as easy to deceive the public in this new manner as it is in the current way.
let me offer a simile.
in california, the place i am currently waiting, the voter initiative is king. every election is filled with issues that a, judged sufficient, portion of the population wanted to address specifically and directly. like gay rights, and abortion, and clean energy subsidies, and... and... and... and... and... i am looking at novembers voter pamphlet right now.
this, on its face, seems like precisely the cure to shady back room deals and lobbying. however, it has simply moved the lobbying and manipulation forward in the process, the ignorance remains seated in the populace, and provided those with influence and the vocal minority a more credible and effective pulpit. one of the effects of a small population yelling loud and long is often the effect of appearing to be a large population.
who would vet these questions? politicians. the same one this new voting mechanism strives to stifle and to "honestify". these people and the people they have dinner with at the local domed and pillared political cafeteria would, without much further imagination lead to a series of questions with a leaning, how ever gentile it may be, toward the incumbent government and away from the challenger, or vice-versa depending on how the question vetting committee felt. only after this can the questions make it to the formulation stage.
let me back up just a tiny bit.
how would we circumvent these problems? we would need to create a whole new arm of the government to make questions and i don't see how this question making branch would be any less contentious, or less powerful, than the one we already have, whose only purpose is to interpret laws and amendments (which were supposedly clearly written in the first.)
why is it that gay rites are such a strong (and here i am avoiding using the term "hot button", can you guess why?) issue, while healthcare, compared to its relative importance, are relegated to the second string of policy issues. i think you might have a hard time telling people that they cant even HAVE a question about abortion on the ballet because "who?" decided it isn't substantive. this is where lobbying enters back in. they now, under the new system, would be political advertising agencies, indeed i think that like current day lobby efforts, the practice would spawn its own lucrative business, that would seek to directly influence the credulous and ignorant.
(please forgive my poor outlook on the wisdom of humanity. but i think it is the reason that we need so much supervision and we [rightly as i think it turns out] create contenant spanning governments to take care of us and then deign to invent an invisible, all powerfull, non human god to take up the slack when we find our selves wanting of oversight, and this does not go any where near how poorly i think of us.)
ive lost my train of thought. um.
oh, never mind.
forget i said anything.
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