Our founding fathers included an Amendment process in the U.S. Constitution for a reason. They realized that from time to time, it would be necessary to tweak our Constitutional framework in order to insure the continued existence of this great experiment called the United States of America. I believe that it's time to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to both preserve and reinvigorate our democracy. Here are my five suggestions:
First, abolish the electoral college in Presidential elections. This abolishment would of Course require a Constitutional Amendment.
Second, within this amendment also set out certain new minimum requirements that must be met in all Congressional and Presidential elections. Require a paper trail in all federal elections so that ballots can be manually recounted. Require the Federal Election Commission to perform random audits in the presence of all the candidates or representatives from their respective campaigns to insure that no significant statistical discrepencies exist. Finally, require states to provide equal access to the polls to all its citizens so that citizens in urban areas don't have to wait in line several times longer than their rural counterparts.
Third, make all federal elections a national holiday, and require employers who work their employees on this day to pay their employees doubletime. Also, keep polling places open for twenty-four hours on election day.
Fourth, within this amendment provide that in order to be elected to Congress or the office President, you must recieve a Majority (not a plurality) of the total vote. Then if their is no person recieving a majority, there will be a run-off election between the top two vote getters. Such a system would benifit our electoral process by allowing persons to vote for Third party candidates without the legitimate fear that their vote would ultimately help elect their least favorite candidate. For example, under such a system in 2000, someone who agreed with Ralph Nader on more issue than Albert Gore Jr., could have voted supported Nader in the General election, and then when the field was narrowed down to two candidates they could have still voted against against George W. Bush in the runoff election.
Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, within this amendment prohibit campaign contributions from private sources, and provide all qualified Congressional and Presidential Candidates with Public Campaign Financing. Thus, all qualified candidates would be on equal footing, regardless of what special interests support their cause. Additionally, once elected, politicians would be beholden only to the taxpayers, and not special interests.
In order to become a qualified candidate, a candidate would have to collect signatures from .1% of his or her prospective constituents. Thus, someone running for the U.S. House would have to collect 600 signatures from registered voters in his or her Congressional district. Someone running for U.S. Senate in an average size state would have to collect 6,000 signatures(This would vary according to the population of the state). Someone running for President would have to collect approximately 300,000 signatures.
Further, qualified candidates would recieve a dollar amount equal to 50 cents multiplied by the number of prospective constituents. Thus, Qualified House candidates would recieve $300,000; the average Senate candidate would recieve $3 million, and Presidential candidates would recieve $150 million. This figure would be indexed for inflation(like Social Security). While this sounds expensive, if we assume that 5 candidates will qualify for each federal election the total cost that would need to be allocated per annual budget year would be only $ 763.75 million, which would constitute about 1/2000th or .05% of the annual federal budget. The total costs would average out to about $3 per year per U.S. citizen. In my opinion, this would be a cheap price to pay for a political system where politicians aren't bought and sold by special interests and are instead accountable only to the public.
Finally, all FCC licensed broadcastors(TV and Radio) would be required to provide political candidates with a certain amount of free airtime to be distributed equally to all candidates as prescribed by the Federal Election Commission.
What do you think of this proposal?