Dump the Duopoly: Soft Ball Solution Update

There appears to be movement on changing how electoral college votes are allocated as I had suggested in my list of softball solutions to the duopoly. A number of states (9 in all, representing 49% of all electoral votes) have already committed to allocating their electoral college delegates to the candidate that wins the national popular vote in 2012. Though this change will not necessarily enable more competition, it will make every person's vote actually count and not be simply discarded due to the "winner-take-all" method created and enforced by the duopoly. In the long-run, this is also an important change because it will raise expectations for electoral reforms, opening the way to implement other, logical reforms to destabilize the duopoly, such as choice voting.

Dump the Duopoly: Hard Ball Solution Update

It seems what I first saw as an improbable hard ball solution to the Duopoly is now starting to become more realistic. It seemed farfetched to believe we could overturn (through a constitutional amendment) the recent string of US Supreme Court decisions regarding the definition of speech and ultimately, of person hood. Recent victories with municipal-level resolutions have given some life to the idea that we can not only take money out of the equation for elections (as an ultimate goal), we could also redefine the relationship between our government and the private sector. It's time to re-balance that relationship and MovetoAmend has this drive to amend the constitution in this manner as one of its primary goals. An aggressive goal now would be to go for resolutions (through ballot initiative) on an even bigger level, such as state. Would it be possible to get it on the ballot in Colorado for the next presidential election? For it to even get on the ballot would be a victory in my mind, then we'll just get the media shined on it, and that will hopefully start a national conversation on the subject. 

Anyone in?@!

Dump the Duopoly: Good to Be in Like-Minded Company

Now that the move to Colorado is over, I've had time to do something more constructive: hunt the web for blogs and content related to Dumping the Duopoly. The Poli-Tea blog is a great resource, as well as the Third Party and Independent Daily.

What I found most heartening was a recent op-ed column by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman titled, "Third Party Rising". Friedman is correct to identify the US as not inexorably on the road to decline (but not to deny the obvious signs around of said decline), as well as pointing to the techno-anarchists of Silicon Valley as a source of the grass-roots energy out there that is beginning to focus in on what is the real problem with our country; a political system that disallows competition and reifies the corporatist duopoly. The Tea Party Movement is an obvious example in this regard as well.

Is there any way we can harness this energy to overturn the duopoly applecart? Though Tea-Poli cites others on the possibility for a Libertarian-Green Alliance, I personally don't think this will go very far. The diversity of political opinion in this country is one of our strengths, and to attempt to make a melting pot of that will only muddle the message and piss off core supporters. Though it is too late for the 2010 election cycle, it would be better for independent parties to form loose coalitions around ballot initiatives or other means to modify ballot access laws and otherwise chip away at the Duopoly's tools to maintain political supremacy. Any student of US history will appreciate that change has more often come from incremental, soft-ball solutions. Nonetheless, as Thomas Jefferson once said, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing," in which case, I would argue for the hard-ball solutions.

Dump the Duopoly #3: Silencing the Apologists, Part 1

There are plenty of folks out there, who out of ignorance, prejudice, or whatnot, believe the duopoly still serves our interests. Below are a few excuses I have heard for the duopoly and/or dismissing the idea of dumping the duopoly, along with my response. Feel to lift this info as needed as we fight to spread the truth.

Apology #1: "There have always been just 2 parties."
Not true. Though a duopolistic political system has been the primary mode for a good portion of US history, particularly recently, it has not always been just 2 parties. The US has a relatively rich history of nonmajor parties since the beginning of the republic (Gillespie, 2004). Though I disagree with Gillespie’s, “natural dualism” argument (it’s equally plausible that the duopoly led to the development of the cultural dualism that Gillespie described), his summary of the role of third parties in the US political system is fair and accurate.


Beyond the point that the apologist statement above is not factually accurate, so what if it’s always been just 2 parties? Does that mean it’s not possible to have otherwise? That seems a bit defeatist and cynical. It takes no courage to be cynical. If our founding generation had shared such sentiments, the American Revolution would have never succeeded.

Apology #2:“Two parties is the way it was designed” or “The system was designed to have only 2 major parties.”
Related to statement #1, there’s a false assumption in the polity that “the system” was designed or meant to only have 2 parties. If we clarify what is meant by “the system,” it will be apparent that the above 2 statements are not entirely correct. The system – as in the set of institutions, documents, and social/political behaviors that define the US political system – has 3 main levels: constitutional, federal, and party.

Constitutional
The constitutional system defines how power is divided between the different divisions or “branches” of the government. The 3 main branches of the US government and their ability to serve as “checks and balances” on each other are easily identifiable to anyone who grew up in the US or studied its system: executive, legislative, and judicial.

Federal
The federal system defines how power is shared between government jurisdictions. The US is not the only country with a federal system, and any federal system involves a sharing of duties and responsibilities between regional versus national governments within the same nation (or between nations, as with the European Union). The history of the US federal system has always been contentious, but ultimately a stabilizing factor towards the endurance of the union. Indeed, the greatest threat to the union (the US Civil War, 1860-1865) was over the question of national versus state powers.

Party
The party system is the collection of laws and customs that define the nominating process for citizens to be elected and represent their portion of the polity. The Constitution does not define how this will be done beyond setting qualifications for holding office and establishing the electoral college as the means to elect the President and Vice-President. The nomination process we have today is the product of historical forces, some intentional, some not, that has led to a party system highly protective of the duopoly.

Up to the time of the US Civil War, elections were held by voice or hand votes. As the population grew, color-coded ballots were adopted as a means to simplify the process, as well as enable a “voter’s market” where political parties would openly bribe for votes (Heckelman, 2004). As argued by Heckelman, the secret ballot did stop this open bribery, but it also gave incumbent parties an advantage. The government was now responsible for printing and distributing the secret ballots, and thereby empowered to decide who would be listed on the ballot; whomever controlled the government could control ballot access. Concurrent with adoption of the secret ballot was a specific act by Congress, the Apportionment Act of 1842, which required that members of the House be elected from single-member districts, and not at-large districts as had been the custom beforehand (and still is today in most democratic nations). Single-member districts means only 1 person can be named representative of that district, thus giving incentive for the development of only a few major parties.

Of the 3 levels of the US political system, the party system is the most malleable and open to change. If when we say the “system,” and we are talking about the party system, then yes, it has almost always been that way, but that does not mean it can’t be changed. Furthermore, we don't have to change the fundamental pillars of the US political system to make it better serve the polity.

In short, to use a computer analogy, the basic hardware of our republic (the constitution and federalism) is fine; it’s the software (the party process) that needs re-writing.

More silencing the apologists in the next post.

Dump the Duolopy #2: Solutions

This post extends from the first post on the Duopoly Dilemma and is focused on what changes would need to be made to move our political system towards one that better represents the will and way of its citizens. As people have varying inclination as to the pace of political change, I've categorized the proposed solutions into "hardball" and "softball" options.

Softball Solutions:

• Instant Runoff Voting: This voting method is actually already in use in municipal or local elections across the county. Instead of regurgitating the method here, check out this video on IRV, it explains it well, or you can read more about IRV.
• Reforming ballot access laws at the state level: eliminate or significantly reduce the number of signatures required to be placed as a candidate on the official ballot, fees for ballots access, and related measures. See how restrictive ballot access is in your state.
• Modifying how electoral votes are allocated at the state level: Instead of the winner takes all method, electoral votes could be allocated on the district level or proportionally in whole numbers or fractional. Though this reform can sometimes create strange outcomes, it would at least create an impression of fairness that can rebuild the polity's confidence in the system. 

Hardball Solutions:

• Repeal 1967 Public Law 90-196: This law is the latest update to a history of congressional acts that mandated all congressional districts to be single-member districts. This latest update was designed to insure minority representation in light of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The reality is that in today's highly mobile and demographically mixed society, the single-member district model is outdated. Another argument against the single-member model is the Duopoly defines district boundaries through gerrymandering, creating districts that are not logical, contiguous, and has resulted in the highest incumbency rate in US history.
• Congressional term limits: I've never really liked term limits as public policy; in my mind, voters should decide if politicians stays in office, not b/c some arbitrary law said it was time for them to go (the US Supreme Court takes this view as well). Another reason I don't like term limits (particularly on the federal level) is that with a constantly rotating slate of members, institutional knowledge would become very shallow, and the result would be empowerment of unelected congressional staff. Beyond these misgivings, I'm willing to give term limits a chance, if for no other reason but a sense of fairness in the system and it could also serve as a political hammer to push for other, more logical electoral reforms. Term limits does exist in about 30% of the states, but it would take a constitutional amendment to enact on the federal level.
• Modify or repeal the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971: FECA was another effort with good intentions to regulate and limit the influence of money in federal elections. However, the act over time has simply reified the Duopoly by giving money to the 2 parties before the election, but only giving money to third parties after the election.
• Another approach is take money out of the equation in elections. This approach is probably insurmountable as the US Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that giving money to a candidate is a form of protected speech. I'm not a legal scholar, but I think that reading of the 1st amendment is totally insane b/c in essence, such a standard means that those with more money get more "speech." This insult to the 1st amendment has been further exacerbated by the recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.
• An alternative to dealing with the issue of money as free speech is to mandate free TV time for all political candidates to office. Constitutionally, Congress would have the power to do this as the airwaves are technically public property. And if parties did not have to pay for TV time, that would greatly reduce the financial burden of running a campaign. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 supposedly mandates 30 minutes of free TV time if candidates raise a certain % of funds in their states, but I can't seem to find the actual provision in the law that states that, nor does it appear this provision was ever implemented.  

Well, that's what I have for now. Welcome any comments or counter-arguments.

Brits Teaching Americans

OK, just had this random though tonight after watching "Supernanny" and then seeing a promo for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution show. What is it with the Brits coming over here and teaching Americans how to be better people? Don't get me wrong, I more than welcome their presence, God knows we need it. I just think it's an interesting coincidence.

It almost feels like America is that old teenager or young adult who, after a brilliant and unprecedented adolescence, has slumped into apathy and profligacy of early adulthood. And then England, the mother country, has come along to put us back in place. Like I said, this is not a rant of resentment, it's a wake up call of how far we have fallen.

The mother-child analogy has also been in my mind for a couple other reasons:
1. About to have my second child.
2. Been reading a lot of biographies and source readings from the American Revolutionary period. 

This first factor has me freaked, and really deserves it's own post, so I'll leave that one alone for now. As for the second factor, I just finished a wonderful biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Alexander Hamilton (AH) has been so overlooked as a founding father, and in some ways, vilified unfairly. There are many national institutions that we take for granted today that were either directly or indirectly the result of ideas and actions by AH actions. First and foremost, AH's role as General George Washington's aide-de-camp during the Revolution was critical in the Continental's Army's success in the war. AH then led the effort to justify intellectually the merits of the new constitution as the lead author of the Federalist Papers. As Secretary of Treasury, AH established the national bank, the coast guard, a systems of custom collectors, as well as others. Unfortunately, as a man, AH's drive for personal perfection led to his own political demise and downfall. And he had many enemies, including T. Jefferson and J. Madison, and as Churchill said, "History is written by the victors," and the victors have successfully painted AH as a vain hypocrite or charlatan who did not deserve a place in the American Pantheon. I beg to differ based on what I have seen thus far, and I think this country owes AH more gratitude than his face on the $20 bill.

AH's biography has also been aspiring as I struggle to understand and express my frustration with the dystopia of our current political system in this country. And to that rant I shall return.

Aphorism #1

A1: Intelligence is an emergent property of biological complexity.

In other words, as the complexity of a species evolves, the ability to learn from experience expands and becomes more dynamic, increasing survival value of the species. It could be inducted from this that as biological entities become more complex, there is a corresponding change in sentience (in the philosophical sense of ability to have subjective perceptual experiences) and sapience (as in the ability to act with judgment), though such development is unlikely to be continuous, but rather follow the punctuated gradualism model.