How to Reform the US Voting Process: A 7-Point Plan
Do we ever need serious electoral reform in the US (all those in parliamentary democracies can take a moment to laugh at us)! Here’s my reform platform:

  • Instant runoff voting
  • Allocation of presidential electoral votes proportionally in *all* states (Nebraska and Maine already do this)
  • Proportional representation in Congress and state legislatures including minority parties at a 5 percent threshold
  • De-marginalization of third parties (possibly through a parliamentary system)
  • Participation by all recognized party candidates in party debates
  • Removal of elections from the control of clearly partisan operatives such as the State Co- Chairs of one candidate’s campaign
  • [This actually happened both in Florida, 2000–Katherine Harris–and Ohio, 2004–Kenneth Blackwell. In both cases, the Secretary of State, in charge of the election, also happened to be the Bush state co-chair. In both cases, the question of who actually won that state will be forever under a cloud. and in both cases, the state was the crucial determinant of victory or defeat nationally. and in both cases, millions of people do not accept the “result” as valid–myself included–and therefore grant no legitimacy to the Bush II presidency.]

  • And don’t let us forget the most important: voter-verified paper ballots, screened on a first pass by an optical scanner machine for a preliminary count but then hand-counted under appropriate supervision and controlled conditions, in the presence of neutral observers, observers from each party (including third parties), and the media
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    It’s bad enough that sploggers go around lifting articles and slapping them up on splogs (spam blogs) with no paragraph breaks and a bunch of Google ads.

    Now, Business Week reports on professor Philip M. Parker, “author” of 300,000 scraped books.

    I am sorry, but setting a computer robot to pull data from a topic is not authorship. While as a multi-source compilation it probably doesn’t qualify legally as theft, it certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth! Some of “his” reports sell for as much as $495, too.

    Yuck!

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    A friend recently sent this link to a very controversial article on IQ and race by William Saletan that appeared in Slate.

    I’m for reconciliation. Later this week, I’ll make that case. But if you choose to fight the evidence, here’s what you’re up against. Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain. White populations in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States score closer to one another than to the worldwide black average. It’s been that way for at least a century.

    I wouldn’t be so quick to reach Saletan’s conclusion. The ultra-high score among Jews, for instance, points toward the influence of culture vs. nature (and as a Jew, I can say this on the basis of some experience). The vast majority of Jewish homes are filled with books, and the people who live in them have a 3000-year-old culture of reading, learning, and testing their theories by argument, even with God. Jewish parents are more likely to take their kids to museums and cultural events regularly, to expose them to highbrow music and art (though I think Asians do so even more).

    The classical music youth scene in my area, which is overwhelmingly white and Christian, runs about 40 percent Asian or Jewish. By percentage of population, it should probably be somewhere around 3 to 5 percent, combined.

    I don’t think you can generalize to innate intelligence. But it would be worth looking at why such a lower percentage of parents in the normative group, and even lower percentages among non-Asian people of color, expose their children to the kinds of experiences that expand brains. I strongly suspect the reasons would be cultural. I’d love to see some studies that address that aspect.

    Not to mention that the IQ test itself is widely known to have strong cultural biases toward the majority culture. And that it measures expected capability over age. I was never told what my IQ score was as a child, but I was told that it was quite high. However, I may just have been ahead of my peer group in that regard, and if I were tested today it’s quite possible that my IQ would be more typical. Because I was extremely book-smart for my age all through childhood, but others have had a chance to catch up. If I was reading at 12th grade level in 4th grade, it doesn’t mean that by the time I finished college I was still reading at three times my grade level. In fact, I don’t do well with writing written above the level of a liberal-arts grad student.

    And then there’s the matter of different types of intelligences. I can argue intellectual concepts at a reasonably high level–but don’t *ever* ask me to take apart a car engine–or connect a thin wooden bat with a fast-moving round object! I’d have flunked those intelligences completely as a child and would flunk them again as a 50-year-old.

    Intelligences can evolve over time. As an example, over the last 12 years or so, I’m slowly, slowly learning to declutter my physical space. It comes very hard for me, but I am making progress.

    I surely hope we don’t retreat to the days of making social policy based on these sorts of data!

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    It’s not often that I see a salesletter that not only moves me to immediate action, but also makes me laugh out loud.

    Rob Toth’s letter at https://www.buynowwizard.com/report/index.php did just that.

    First of all, Rob got me to his page by having a brief tip in Doug Hudiberg’s Daily Marketing Ace. I was so intrigued by the title of the free report: “Buy Now! How To Get Customers Ordering So Fast Your Bank Account May End Up With a Speeding Ticket” that I had to click on over.

    Reaching the page I see the same headline and a cute cartoon that directly illustrates it.

    After the cartoon and a couple of brief lines, he jumps right in with the zany, humorous tone that pokes fun at the whole genre of sales letters while pulling me further into the content:

    Sorry if I seem a bit out of breath. I was just at the hospital and had to hurry back to be able to tell you about this. You definitely want to hear this.

    Why was I at the hospital? I went to see a friend of mine. (I feel so bad for this). He was rushed in for surgery hours ago. Doctors say he damaged his jaw’s bone structure when it dropped to the floor hard after having read a sneak-peek copy of my new report that I sent over to him.

    Like I said, I feel really bad about it. So let’s have a quick safety meeting you-and-I. Do me a favor and go grab a pillow (or one of those Costco sized bags of marshmallows should do the trick as well) … before you listen to anything more that I say (and definitely before you read my report), please place that pillow (or your baggy) under your jaw. This is for your own good.

    Of course, I read all the way down.

    And then he’s got a really short window to take action, with a visible, ticking clock counting the time–just a few minutes (warning, once you say yes, you have to get back to the confirmation email very quickly as well–something I think could easily backfire). Since it’s a free report and there’s nothing to lose, I took the bait. I haven’t read the report yet, but I signed up.

    I understand why the back button doesn’t work, because he quite correctly wants the time limit to be real. But one thing I’d do differently if I were Rob is make it easier to share the webpage. After I said yes, I wanted to share it, but it wasn’t easy’ the back button didn’t take me there. I finally had to dig through my email trash can and find the Daily Marketing Ace that had the link.

    I think this could go viral if it the you-signed-up, confirm-quickly page had some language like

    “Did you have fun here? If you want to share the page with your friends, here’s the link.”

    For more on great copywriting, BTW, my award-winning book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World has a huge and informative section.

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    By now, everyone’s probably heard the news earlier in the week: not only did Iran stop pursuing its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but Bush knew this as far back as August–even though he was still claiming otherwise as recently as Tuesday

    ABC put it like this:

    “I was made aware of the NIE last week,” Bush said Tuesday. “In August, I think it was [Director of National Intelligence] Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.”

    However today the White House is saying the President was told much more…

    [White House press secretary Dana] Perino stated Bush had been told in August that Iran suspended it’s covert nuclear weapons program.

    Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney et al. are still beating the drums of war against Iran. Isn’t it time to beat the drums for impeachment, instead?

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    Bassam Aramin lost his daughter in January. Bassam is Palestinian; his daughter was killed by the Israeli army.

    Most people would seek revenge–especially someone with Bassam’s background. He spent seven years in an Israeli jail, for terrorism.

    But Bassam, and the small group of people he works with on Israeli-Palestinian relations, understands that more violence doesn’t bring his daughter back.

    Bassam is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, a remarkable group that brings people together on both sides–not just bystanders or even activists, but people who formerly participated directly in continuing the violence.

    Bassam has a beautiful essay in the Jewish Daily Forward: “A Plea for Peace From a Bereaved Palestinian Father.” I urge you to read it.

    Here’s a little piece:

    I will not rest until the soldier responsible for my daughter’s death is put on trial, and made to face what he has done. I will see to it that the world does not forget my daughter, my lovely Abir.

    But I will not seek vengeance. No, I will continue the work I have undertaken with my Israeli brothers. I will fight with all I have within me to see that Abir’s name, Abir’s blood, becomes the bridge that finally closes the gap between us, the bridge that allows Israelis and Palestinians to finally, inshallah, live in peace.

    I heard some members of Bassam’s group, a former Israeli soldier and a former Arab terrorist (not Bassam) just days after Abir Aramin was killed, and I was deeply moved by their story of seeking peace even as their own hands had built the violence. Here’s the report on that event.

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    TV pundit and talk show host Lou Dobbs is a master manipulator. He did an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now–an arena that he clearly considered hostile territory–and he used every sleazoid right-wing media manipulation technique I’ve ever seen: interrupting, name calling, avoiding the topic with a twisted answer changing the subject, denying he said something until it was proven on tape, claiming to hold a high standard only to be caught out on fact-checking issues, demanding to be allowed to finish the question but not granting his interlocuters the same courtesy…and plenty more. This interview demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with “punditocracy.” Oh yes, and he cleverly started the interview by focusing on areas that his audience would actually agree with. But most of his hour focused on immigration, and especially on exposing his rather bizarre sources for his politics on that issue.

    Fortunately, Goodman and Gonzales were up to the challenge and kept him honest–territory that seems, from listening to the interview, to be terra incognita: unknown.

    I particularly liked Juan Gonzales’ response here:

    LOU DOBBS: What in the world is your point?

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m getting to my point, but give me the time to do it. We have time on this show, unlike—we don’t do soundbites here, alright?

    Go to the link and don’t just read the transcript. Listen or watch, and examine this interview through the lens of media manipulation by a right-wing punditocracy that doesn’t want to give air to opposing views, makes up facts when the real ones are inconvenient and resorts to personal attacks when nothing else seems to be working.

    Lou Dobbs embodies much that is wrong with contemporary journalism–but Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, and the entire Democracy Now staff (which does an amazing job digging up news that doesn’t make the mainstream media, five whole hours a week), embody much of what is right.

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    Look what a skilled marketer can do to create a news angle.

    A government agency, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), sent out a news release advising people to dispose of old prescription meds so they can’t be abused. Since flushing them down the toilet can have ill effects on water sources and the animals that use them,

    “Mixing prescription drugs with an undesirable substance, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter, and putting them in impermeable, nondescript containers, such as empty cans or sealable bags, will further ensure the drugs are not diverted…Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of pet waste, can be effectively used to help prevent the abuse of unused prescription drugs,” SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.

    And the American Ferret Association was ready to pounce! That group’s press release noted,

    “The U.S. government declares ferret poop to be an effective weapon against drug abuse.”

    Brilliant! So brilliant that Reuters (one of the largest newswire services in the world) picked it up.

    Can you find some lessons on making yourself newsworthy?

    (Thanks to Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.com for tipping me off to this story–I’ve been reading her excellent newsletter for years)

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