Lou Dobbs has immigration as his big issue. This disappoints me. Lou claims to be a vigorous independent who gives nobody a free pass. I believe he is an independent. And I love the idea of an aggressive independent who can give the lie to O’Reilly AND Keith Olberman. But immigration as the rallying issue is a disappointment for me. The issue I feel needs most attention from independents is election reform.
In the United States we don’t directly elect our President. And even if we did, the candidates for president are selected by a legally protected primary system that assures that only two parties have a candidate with a real chance of winning the presidency. Granted a Ross Perot or Ralph Nader can have an effect from time to time, but even those stalwarts have little real chance of winning.
We need to eliminate the electoral college and eliminate legal protections for the two-party system. We also need to eliminate the practive of gerrymandering and develop a fair process of redistricting. Granted prejudice will always exist in drawing these borders but we can do so much better than we do now.
Beyond that I believe proportional representation deserves exploration.
You can learn a lot more about real election reform at Fairvote.org.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
A few thoughts on election reform.
Electoral College – While you are right that this prevents us as citizen from directly electing our president it does also act like a firewall. For instance in the 2000 election when contest was so close, we only had to have a recount in Florida, because we only had to resolve the dispute in that electoral college. If we have the popular vote dictate the contest as you suggest then, recounts could easily digress into a national affair. Additionally the EC also reinforces the notion that the state should have primacy over the federal.
Legal Protection – This I think we are probably in agreement on. I would just be worried that if we removed all legal protections we could find ourselves in a position with to many candidates as opposed to only two.
Finally I would recommend a book by Larry Sabato called “A More Perfect Constitution”. I heard a great interview with him in which he covered his thoughts on the Electoral College and elections in general – really interesting stuff.
March 30th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I absolutely agree with you Tom and Tim thats some interesting points you stated, I most certainly will be checking out “A More Perfect Constitution” by Larry Sabato
September 30th, 2008 at 4:18 am
I propose a way to pave the way for reforms while accepting the continued existence of a two-party dominated system.
http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2008/08/initiative-for-most-people-and-polemic.html
We can have two main nat’l parties and a host of local-state third parties and thereby combine both stability and accountability, with third parties bringing up new issues and increasing voter turnout and education.
dlw