My Dream Election

This is something I started after the last Presidential election, and here we are poised to go into another heavy political "season."

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The next time I vote I want a chance to evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. I overheard a frustrated Republican the other day.  He said the reason the Democrats gained so much local ground in Maine was because they had spent more money. (!!!) Why couldn't the reason be that local people felt more aligned with the stances taken on issues by the Democratic candidates? Does no one else ever vote on the basis of the issue information given in the League of ---Voters guides and other websites and newspaper compilations? Do I really want to hear ever-refined words coming out of the candidates mouths, knowing they are based on the goal of getting votes, not on changing anything? I don't care how much money you spend or how you twist the shape of your policies. I want to know what you REALLY think and what you've already done.

Here's my dream presidential campaign.  About six to eight weeks before the election, every legitimate  candidate would come up with a position platform in which he or she addresses any possible political issues in the order of their importance to him/herself. He or she is then required to make a public presentation of personal stances in a speech that is recorded on National Public Television and Radio and rebroadcast at various times to make it convenient for all who wanted to view/hear.  Also, "un-tamperable" websites will be set up for each candidate with verifiable biographies, voting records where applicable, and any non-inflamatory information which a voter might need in order to make a rational choice. There would be no celebrity endorsements, no trips around the nation to drum up votes. (In this day and age, when you can't even get kids to stay in touch other than over the Internet or cell phone, why do we need our candidates to touch our hands and kiss our babies? Is it so we can feel like hero-worshippers and jump up and down at rallies like bees around a queen?)

Back to MY dream.  Expenses would be limited to these items and money come from our public coffers--exactly the same amount for each candidate, and no private monies could be spent. And I would hope that a great, great many political analysts and pundits would have to take jobs reporting on the state of finances or on the migration patterns of near-extinct species. (And that we would give them as much attention as we did to William and Kate's wedding.)

I would abolish the electoral college. This was created in the day of lower rates of literacy and when communications took days or weeks to get from one end of the 13 states to the other. I would like us to move our process to an instant run-off, so that less Americans would be disenfranchised and leave the polls feeling that they were strong-armed into voting for one candidate only because they didn't want the other major candidate to get into office. We could have really viable third, fourth, and even more paties represented on the ballot, assuming they met the requirements of legitimacy.  This would mean that instead of ticking off the little box or circle next to one candidate, the voter puts his choices in numerical order, first to last. As the candidate with the least votes gets removed from the list, all the others are moved up one slot, until at last, one candidate has a majority of over 50% of the popular vote.

Of course, I have no real hope of this plan coming into reality any time soon. But in the words of John Lennon, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."