Improving the political system – American Thinker

There are several potential changes that could make the political system a little more responsive to voter’s concerns, but we must realize that it is an uphill battle to try and reduce the power that big money, special interests, and entrenched politicians have in elections.

Perhaps the most impactful political reform would be campaign finance reform, but this approach is harder than it seems. Maybe the best solution is just to insist on total transparency of campaign contributions and severe penalties for not being transparent.

Even with transparency, there are contributions from shell corporations and seemingly unaffiliated organizations that contribute to a campaign where true transparency is not even possible without a police state mentality and unscrupulous attempt at following the money flow both internally and externally to the campaign. Collusion with contributing independent organizations external to the campaign could not be realistically traced. So, donation transparency and putting campaign contribution limits on all forms of campaign contributions is only a partial solution to realistic financial reform which could only theoretically be complete and fair to all parties.

Modified rank-choice voting could theoretically promote a more diverse range of candidates, but each voter would have to list all the candidates in order of preference. This is to avoid the spoiler effect which results from a single vote per candidate. This could split the vote for the most popular candidate and let the second most popular candidate win, which is not a fair result. With modified rank choice voting the integrity of the most popular, second most popular, third most popular, etc. would be maintained thus making the most popular vote getter always a winner.

Term limits for politicians should be instituted to prevent entrenched politicians from slowing down new legislation which would be more responsive to the voter’s needs. This would reduce the possibility of politicians becoming millionaires in office and catering too much to monied special interests.

Civic education in schools could be improved so that everyone is exposed to the Constitution and the way that government functions on the local, state, and national level. Understanding the separation of powers of the three branches of government is also important.

A paper trail for electronic voting machines could enhance election security.

One could develop civic engagement apps to facilitate direct engagement between constituents and elected officials.

One could create programs to engage and educate young people about politics and encourage their participation.

Enhance financial protections for whistleblowers who expose government misconduct or corruption. The financial protection would be proportional to the monetary fraud amount so big fraud whistleblowers would be financially protected more than for smaller monetary fraud amounts.

Establish nonpartisan expert panels to advise lawmakers on complex issues.

Empower state and local governments and reduce federal government powers so that needs are addressed closer to the people’s desires and policies.

Promote decentralization to give local communities more control over certain policies.

Require presidential and senate candidates to release their tax returns to enhance transparency.

To enhance transparency, perhaps the most important feature would be an online information bank accessible to the public that would contain all the details of the legislation proposed and passed by executive order, congressional affirmation, and local ordinances and laws.

Recent events like the four Trump court indictments point to the new danger of collusion between the executive branch, DoJ (Department of Justice), justices, and the FBI as an enforcement arm. How this authoritarian attempt to weaponize the legal system to go after politicians and conservatives or contrarians can be curtailed or stopped is something that will probably take years to remedy if it is done at all.

The above measures could potentially lead to improvements in representation, transparency, accountability, and overall functionality but would probably require considerable grassroots efforts to implement.

Image: Picryl