How to Achieve Honest and Effective Political Elections by SovereignJim
(libertarian)
Monday, January 18, 2010
How to Achieve Honest and Effective Political Elections
Political elections and government constitutions, State and Federal, are foundation stones for how our governments will function, at least how they are suppose to function. Elections in our country have never been totally pure. The Texas Federal Senate election that gave Lyndon Johnson his first Senate seat is a well documented story of one way to steal an election. There are a number of well known sayings about stealing elections such as Stalin's "It matters not who votes. What matters is who counts the votes." The tide of our knowledge about phony election results here in America has been rising lately. What can we do to assure ourselves of the honest election results that we deserve?
Here is what honest voters want from an election. They hope to have an accurate reading about the character and values of the candidate they support or they blindly follow the choice made by their political party. They want the person they voted for to win. They want only legal votes to be counted. They want the count to be honest. They want votes cast by their choice, when in office, to be in the best interest of themselves and not cast by any command or inducement from elsewhere. They expect that their views will NOT be represented by the winner that defeated their choice. How does reality stack up against these honest voter desires?
Reality shows that the candidate with the largest campaign money amount and the strongest media support is the likely winner. The trend of history shows that a growing number of illegal votes will be counted and that it is very possible that vote totals will not be counted honestly. Voters often discover that they misread the character and/or values of their choice. We also know that most votes by winners when in office will be cast on command from party leaders or cast by inducement from lobbyists. There is goods news and bad expectations for the future of political elections.
The good news is that there is a modern rational method for conducting elections with outcomes far superior to the results we get now. The bad expectations are that the voting public will NOT do the hard work needed to nominate and elect the new House and Senate blood required to bring about the new honest and superior election method. NEW BLOOD is an absolute necessity because those now in place are dependent on the existing election method to protect their positions and the major political parties depend on the existing method to maintain their power to control. A further bit of good news is that the hard work required to cause the new election method to be in place will not require a repeated effort of hard work to keep it in place. The new method defends itself.
What are the principles supporting a superior election method? The most important principle is to know the mind of a winning candidate. The main feature of this superior method is a process whereby a voter is able to get a true reading about the character and values of a potential choice. The necessary step is to subject a candidate to a series of questions with follow-up questions or statements from the questioner to point out any avoiding to answer and not being clear in the answer. The best case is where those asking questions do not have a choice of a candidate to support. The questions should be asked by a small group of six to twelve. A question and answer session should be open to view by all who will vote and to all who are interested in the choosing process.
The second most important feature is to destroy the power of money and media to determine who will win while also destroying the power of political party leadership to CHOOSE WHO CAN win by their choosing who will be nominated. These powers, held and exercised by non-elected individuals, are essential to their control of government. They use that control of government power to award themselves and their supporters unearned advantage at our expense.
The next most important feature is that the selection process begins with enough nominated candidates so that voters are not forced into choosing the least bad candidate but are instead choosing the best from a number of good candidates. Another important feature is to insure a deliberate process with a short number of days between the end of the nominating process and the vote that makes the final choice. Finally, the vote counting must be correct and the use of illegal votes next to impossible.
I need to explain the main objective for a new superior election method. That primary objective is to break the stranglehold that the banking cabal holds on the voters by way of it’s control of political party leaderships. The weak link of the stranglehold is the local party control of who gets nominated to run as a candidate for office under the banner of the party. Note that the new election method assigns the power over who gets nominated to the electors who have been chosen by voters and not by local party officials.
Well, it is time for details. First is a proper name for this superior honest election method (SHEM), or "Selection by elector choice"(SBEC). Let's leave it unnamed for now and get on with the details.
A key detail concerns ELECTORS who will select a winning candidate at an OPENCONVENTION but themselves are chosen by voters of districts. Each district represented at the convention has two electors. A majority elector who represents the majority of voters of the district and a minority elector who represents all the district voters not represented by the majority elector. The issues that separate a majority from a minority will vary from district to district. The number of votes for each district at a convention is, one hundred votes, split between the two electors in proportion to the number of voters represented. The number of districts and electors for Presidential elections should be near 2,000 districts---4,000 electors. 2,000 is about 4 times greater than the current number of Electoral College Presidential election districts. For Statewide and Congressional elections near 1,000 districts---2,000 electors. Smaller numbers for elections of; State Legislature member, County Board of Supervisors member, Sheriff, District Attorney, Mayor and City Council member.
The convention is broadcast on TV with all activities shown. Transparency of all convention steps is a must for all to view. Nominations, question and answer sessions and voting are all shown. Viewers are able to examine how well or how poorly their electors voted and to have some knowledge about the character and values of various candidates, most importantly the winner. The cost for each convention is covered by the TV broadcaster in exchange for a few minutes of time for advertisements within each hour of convention time. Advertising must wait for a normal break between convention business.
The setting for the convention is a closed arena having sufficient floor space to seat all electors. Attached to each elector seat is a small display and keyboard terminal. Electors enter a personal password when they select their seat to protect against false key entry by someone else. At one end of the arena is a raised stage with a podium for chairman and speaker use. Above the stage are one or more displays showing to all in the arena important information.
The first step is to select forty convention chairmen. They are selected from the electors with the highest number of votes who are willing to be chairmen. Each one serves for one hour in rotation. The next step is for individual convention electors to make candidate nominations. Nominators are selected at random from those electors submitting a request to be a nominator. The selected nominator then gives an up to five minute speech announcing and supporting the nominated person.
The nominating speech is followed by an up to ten minute speech by the potential candidate. Then seconds to the nomination are called for. Electors wishing to second the current nomination do so by keyboard entry. The total number of electors who gave a second is now displayed and the nominated person now becomes an official candidate for the election. Failing to receive two or more seconds is a failure of the nomination. Nominations continue until the list of requested nominators is empty. A replacement convention chairman is selected if a listed chairman has become a candidate.
We now begin a series of rounds of voting followed by candidate elimination followed by remaining candidates question and answer sessions. This repeating process of voting---elimination---questioning is continued until one of the candidates vote total is greater than 50% of all possible votes. A slow scroll, in district number order, on the giant screens of; elector names, district represented, vote count and candidate voted for, follows each vote. This allows voters to know what the elector who represents them has done.
Names of all candidates eliminated because of receiving less than 1% of vote total is now shown. The name of the candidate at the bottom of the vote count list is shown as eliminated if all candidates had received the required 1% or more. The next step is a question and answer session for all remaining candidates.
A candidate to be questioned is selected at random. A set of ten questioners is selected at random for each candidate, from the electors who had voted for a candidate just eliminated, as they must make a new choice. Questions are limited to 1 minute in length. Answers are limited to 5 minutes. One extended time request is allowed if requested and approved by the current convention chairman. This process with 10 questioners for each remaining candidate is then repeated. Individual questioners may repeat, in original order, if questioner list is exhausted.
This process for selecting a candidate for office is protective against vote counting fraud. There are no doubts about who has won. Electors and viewers have a good understanding of the character and values of the winner. Individual voters can now get on with their lives without the continuing TV posturing by lobbyists, political party supported and want to be candidates.
I am working on a follow-up article describing the necessary events for choosing district majority and minority electors that proceed a selection convention.
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