Seriously though, if the federal government came to me and said I could reorganize federal procedures and systems, here's some of what I'd come up with.
It's a little long, but just hear me out.
State Primaries for the Presidential Election
No voter in any state would ever again feel overlooked or uncounted with the following changes.
- States can hold either votes or caucuses as they please, but there will be only two dates on which these will be held.
- The first date will be for all the lower population states, based on the most previous U.S. Census, until the sum of population for these states reaches at least 52% of the total U.S. population.
- The second date will be one month after the first date, composed of the rest of the states making up the remainder 48% of the U.S. population.
- Candidates for President may not announce their candidacy until the final year of the current presidential term.
- Candidates must campaign in every state.
Political Party Conventions
- There will be no winner takes all of delegates in any state.
- No superdelegates will be sent to a convention from any state.
- All delegates must enter their convention pledged to a particular candidate based on their state's primary vote tally.
- Yes, this will take away any suspense of who the nominee will be, but it will free up the conventions to focus on their party platform and campaign strategies.
- The Electoral College is abolished.
- The direct popular vote will still be carried out county by county to help avoid a national vote hacking event.
- All counties using electronic voting machines must also securely store paper evidence of the votes. Electronic voting machines may not be connected to the internet.
- Every candidate must visit each state of the union at least once in their campaign.
- The President will be elected for a six year term, one term only.
- The 15 current Cabinet Departments will be reorganized and merged into no more than 10 departments.
- Bureaus and agencies within all Departments will be studied for redundancy and merged if found so.
- Some of the issues currently dealt with by Cabinet Departments now, and bureaus and agencies within them, would be more sensibly and more efficiently handled locally by the states. There will be a tax shift for the states commensurate with their added burdens, meaning some tax dollars would not leave the states to begin with. The entire U.S. Senate will convene to study and determine these changes, setting a firm list of minimum requirements of services that must be provided by all states to their state populations.
- When this merging and elimination of redundancy creates job losses, those former employees will become living generous tax credits for companies and retraining facilities who take them on.
- A Constitutional amendment will be passed that defines the annual convening and adjournment dates of Congress. The Constitution now states that Congress must meet once a year, and Congress currently sets its own schedule, which is scandalously rife with breaks.
- Also defined in this amendment will be a minimal percentage of votes which a Congressperson must be present for and participate in.
- No political party officials may demand a congressperson spend blocks of time making party fundraising calls. No congressional committee seats will be assigned based on party fundraising efforts.
- A Constitutional amendment will be passed that defines a Senate term the same as currently, at 6 years, but with a two term limit.
- House of Representative terms will be doubled to 4 years from the current 2 years, with a 3 term limit.
- Each state currently draws its own Congressional districts, supposedly of even population representations. This will no longer be allowed to be done by state legislatures, but rather by elected state commissions. Splitting of cities will not be allowed. Regional/geographic integrity will be the goal. Drawing of boundaries for political party advantage will absolutely not be allowed in any state.
- Currently, a proposed legislative bill first goes to an appropriate committee, but most bills never see the light of day after that. The committee chairperson sees to that. Congressional website transparency would let citizens easily discover what fluff bills have been proposed and by whom, and what important legislation is being sat upon for political reasons, and by whom.
- Bills must become one issue only. There will be no tacked on hidden amendments that bear no relevance to the main issue. This will force Congress to vote on many more bills, but those bills will be more simple and transparent. Congress will have to do the job it is supposed to. It will no longer be able to sneak tax advantages for lobbyists into a bill.
- Bills will be written by Congressional Staff, never by lobbyists.
- Pork barrel requests from Representatives or Senators must be bundled into one big annual Congressional pork barrel bill, with complete transparency about who is asking for what, with complete internet access to this information by citizens.
- The Senate currently is supposed to approve or not all types of federal appointments proposed by the President. But the leaders of the majority party in the Senate can choose to do nothing at all as a political jab at the President. This creates large backlogs in the entire federal judicial system especially. A relatively short time limit, such as 90 days, needs to be set, in which approval or disapproval needs to be given, or else an appointment approval will happen by default.
- If Google can map the entire Earth down to its street levels and into its oceans, there must be a think tank that can study and dissect the costs of state, congressional, and presidential campaigns. I suspect an insane and disgusting amount of money from all sources gets dissolved into thin air, never to be accounted for again. Mandatory campaign spending standards should be set so that a candidate for Congress or the Presidency need not be a one percenter or in bed with the one percenters. Other countries have restrictions. There is no reason we can't.
- A firm timeline standard must be set about when a candidate for Congress or President can publicly announce their candidacy and begin campaigning. That timeline should be the final year of the current term for either office.
So, citizens of the United States, you're welcome!
Remember, the Constitution has been amended 27 times already. What's a little more tweaking?
The big question is, do the citizens of this country have the focus and the will to demand these badly needed changes, or are we just a selfie nation?
