As you may have heard, members of the online progressive community - including many Kossaks! - have been working together to collectively and democratically craft a Netroots Platform. Now we're rolling out what we've created and asking what you think. Democracylover in NYC's diary from earlier today is serving as the 'Mothership' as the planks are individually diaried.
Without further ado, here's the Electoral Reform plank:
We believe that the basis for any democracy must be free and fair elections. We therefore endorse the following reform proposals to ensure the fairness of our elections and to make participation in our democratic system more accessible to Americans.
1. We support a mandatory paper trail for all electronic voting systems to protect against error and fraud.
2. We support the institution of a federal election holiday to ensure that every American has the opportunity to vote.
3. We support the public financing of all political campaigns, with no loopholes - including donations through national party committees - to allow corporate and lobbyist money. We believe that our elections should be driven by the people of this country and not by the rich and powerful elite.
4. We support a federal standard for ballot access in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the American territories.
5. We support a more inclusive public debate process, including the adoption of reasonable and clear standards by which candidates may participate in debates.
6. We support instant run-off voting to ensure that our elected leaders are always chosen by a majority of the electorate and not by a mere plurality.
7. We support proportional representation to ensure that all parties and candidates that enjoy the confidence of a significant percentage of the American people will have a seat at the table for the making of public policy.
8. We support a binding national initiative to enable the people to have a direct role in the making of public policy, a proposal now made possible by new technologies.
9. We support governmental affirmative action to ensure that minorities and women are well represented at every level of government.
10. We support a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college, and in the meantime we support state-by-state efforts to award electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
11. We support a change in the too expensive, too prolonged and unfair Primary Election system by adopting the use of an equal distribution of money by the Democratic Party to all candidates, a six month electoral race and a one day election thereby eliminating the unfair advantage of the early voting states.
(This was created by 16 people using MixedInk's collaborative writing tool.)
Compare this to the language on voting rights and campaign finance reform in the official DNC draft platform (see pages 47-51). A couple of things are immediately clear. What we've created is much more specific and thorough, as you'll notice right off the bat. And one of several major differences is that we're advocating a federal election holiday.
What do you think?!?!?
You can go to the Netroots Platform site for the Electoral Reform plank and click 'browse' to check out some of the alternate versions submitted and see how this text was developed.
======================
Watch the Netroots Platform Unveiled: The Mothership diary for the roll out of the next plank! Recommendations are most welcome in both places.
Links:
See the whole Netroots Platform (with stats and history!) online
Netroots Platform Press Release
Know Your Platform! Or There Will Be Wedggies For All! Something the Dog Said's dairy discussing the preamble of the Democratic Party Platform