“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. ”
A Different Perspective
Open Forum
July 28th, 2010
What reforms and policies should centrists promote?
Our top two priorities are:
- End gerrymandering by enacting independently created congressional districts. Currently, congressional districts are created by legislators who design them to be "safe" for their party only. Such a process is called gerrymandering. It decreases the number of competitive seats and it marginalizes centrists. Safe seats increase partisanship because the real election is the primary which is determined by the ideologically extreme activists of each party. Centrists usually only have influence in the general election but by then the contest is between two highly polarized candidates who represent the extremes of their parties. In addition, competitive seats make it more likely that candidates have to appeal to the broadest coalition of voters rather than a narrow group of ideologically pure party activists.
- Reform the Primary System. The primary system gives inexcusable influence to the extremes of the two parties. The goal of elections is to vote for representation. Currently, our primary elections are not representative of the general public at all. Instead they help to increase extremism, partisanship, and a toxic political environment. In addition, we are currently giving control of our elections to two private organizations (The Democratic Party and Republican Party) whose main priority is the success of their organizations not the success of the country. It is a ridiculous arrangement that will go down in history as stupid and dubious as candidates being chosen in back rooms by party bosses. We need to take control out of the hands of the political party politicians and their supporting special interests. We need our elected leaders to be public servants not party servants. Primary reform will change that. By adopting a different system such as a top two instant runoff primary, we will finally give control of our elections back to the general public as well as provide them with more choices.
Without these reforms centrists will never gain enough influence to improve American politics and government. That is why we must first focus on these two reforms. They must be our top two priorities.
What other reforms and policies should centrists promote?
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I agree, centrists will never gain power if those two reforms aren't made.
What about campaign finance reform? Soon labor unions and corporations will gain even more control of our political system. Plus elites should not be the only people able to compete in elections.
I completely agree with you. Campaign finance must be a priority of ours. Plus a majority of Americans are in favor of it.
Michigan governor candidate Andy Dillon proposed health care pools for state employees. It sounds like a great reform that would save the state and local govs alot of money. You should do some research on it.
Thanks for the comment and for being a fan. I have heard about Dillon's proposal. I know that he made that proposal during the legislative session as the Speaker of the House. Unfortuantely, he could not get enough votes in the House plus it would not have mattered because the Republican led State Senate would never had let him win such an accomplishment in the run up to the gubernatorial campaign.
I will do more research on this proposal. I know that a lot of people believed that it was a common sense solutuon that could have helped the state and local govs.
Thanks again for the comment.
Michigan should get rid of the Lt. Governor position. It's a useless office that costs the state alot of money. I would like to know how much the state would save if it did remove this position. I'm guessing it would be alot.
That is a great idea. I actually heard this proposal before, but forgot about it.
The Lieutenant Governor position is a unnecessary and redundant office that should be removed. I believe that it is a constitutional office that must be eliminated by a constitutional amendment. Fortunately michigan voters have an opportunity for vote for a new constitutional convention this fall and hopefully if passed this idea will be considered.
I will check into the cost of the office and how unnecessary it really is.
Thanks for the comment!
BTW, you should register in order to get credit for your ideas instead of posting anonymous.
Reform the electoral collage, every sate should have equal electoral power. There are ways to do this, i have always thought every state has the same number and figure out a new total to have. also the veep should be the one that came in second and not someone picked by the president candidate.
Love the VP theory... The President gets enough "Yes" men, they need more people questioning their thought to promote sound judgment. The only thing that you have to keep in mind is the possibility of increased attacks on the Pres.
instead of making the vp the second place candidate, the cabinet should not be appointed by the president, since most presidents just fill these positions with people who agree with them. I suggest either legislative appointment or popular vote (and the candidates should be unaffiliated or minimally affiliated with any party).
Simple but but most likely impossible.
Any time an elected official or candidate is speaking in public, on TV, radio or is interviewed for an article. They are to be automatically placed under oath. All lies actionable under the law.
It doesn't matter about the person speaking, the idea is greater than that. The whole process merely produces an extreme opposite of candidates -- and parties -- instead of two that are closer to the center. Closer to the center shows more compromise, compromise is essential for success.
--Meese
Two completely separate things:
1. Enforce Defamation laws. It is a crime to intentionally defame somebody, however we see it in the press all the time. Enforce the laws and stop the lying. It's harder to make the ridiculous arguments that are being made right now when lying is not legal. As Centrists we must stand for the truth, not the lies that candidates from either party on either side throw at each other.
2. When the District of Columbia was formed it was taken from both Maryland and Virginia. However, the portion that is now Arlington Co., and a portion of the Independent city of Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia in 1846. Retrocede the rest of the District to Maryland and make it a county in Maryland. Reapportion representatives to represent it in both the Maryland State Government in Annapolis and in the Federal Government. Then the residents of the District would have representation. A separate District without representation has been a mistake from the beginning and needs to be fixed.
I'm a fan of instant run-off voting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
This might qualify as "reforming primaries" (if you have open primaries, then decided to have more than one run-off, this ends up being a quicker way of doing the same thing), but I think it does a bit more than a simple "top two from the primaries and then one run-off". (Since two choices can still boil down to "lesser of two evils".
I think the negativity will wane once we have more than two choices. It is only because we are forced to choice one of the two parties that the strategy of "it doesn't matter how bad you are, as long as you can make the other guy look worse" is effective.
I wonder if moderates will ever have any power in government or if partisanship will ever stop until there is either a third party of equal power or no parties (as many of the founding fathers suggested). Maybe there can be a no-party party.