Election Reform: How COULD I Have Left This Out?
I revisited a post I’d written on election reform, back in 2007. In that post, I listed seven specific steps the United States could take to make its elections more representative and relevant.
But I left out a huge one—did I think back then, that it was so obvious it didn’t need to be listed?
Getting. Money. Out. Of. Politics.
That means not only repealing the wretched anti-democratic Citizens United decision, but much more. It means making politicians once again responsible to the people, and not to well-funded lobbyists. It probably means public funding of candidates, and limits on the dollars that can be spent. Ideally, it would mean an end to TV advertising of smear ads, and replacing them with a list of candidate websites (not just the largest parties but any party that achieves an agreed threshold of support) where people could learn the candidate’s positions on actual issues—in more depth than attack sound bites.