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 The reality is that in today's highly mobile and demographically mixed society, the single-member district model is outdated.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.

Dump the Duopoly: a Diatribe Against the Two-Party System

A Little Background First
The first election I participated in was after I turned 18 in 1988. I was a student at San Francisco State University, and I volunteered for the Dukakis campaign. In time, I was the Area Coordinator for the SFSU campus and surrounding neighborhoods. After knocking on doors for 3 months to gauge voter preference, I ran the get-out-the-vote operation on election day. It was a challenging and exhilarating experience to be so engaged in the political process.

Of course, the election did not turn out as I had wished, and I felt robbed, as the popular vote in California was 50% for Bush and 49% for Dukakis. Why did almost half the population of the largest state not have any effect on the final outcome?

I was also disheartened by the campaigning itself: the cynical labeling by the Baker-Bush assault, the measured and feeble responses by Dukasis. The whole exercise felt driven by shallow symbolism, appeals to fear, and a reckless abuse of facts. To me, the two parties were actually distracting the populace from a discussion of the issues that faced our nation.

The Response: A Steady Diet of Third Parties
After the 1988 experience, I forswear allegiance to either party, knowing full well that my vote was "wasted" by supporting third parties. With a few exceptions, I have never voted for either the Demorepublicans since then. The only exceptions I can recall was when I voted for the Republican candidates to the Washington DC city council when I lived in DC in the early 1990s: the local Democratic machine was so obviously corrupt and stagnated, I felt it my duty as a resident to somehow shake up the situation. The other exception is that I voted for Obama in 2008, and I only did b/c he was black; whatever misgivings I had about his lame, outdated campaign platform, I felt it was more important to elect a nonwhite president to further heal America's tortured racial ecology.

Otherwise, depending on the office and where I was at the time of the election, I've voted for either the Greens, the Libertarians, the American Independence Party, the Reform Party, the New Alliance Party, and others. As you can see, my choices ran across the ideological spectrum, and my only interest was to rob the major parties of my support.

Diagnosis of the Duopoly
Before the Civil War, political competition in this country was actually rather healthy. Though there were in general only 2 major parties, there also existed a good number of smaller parties that influenced the major parties to change public policy for the better. The beginning of the end began when state legislatures passed laws to make balloting secret (aka "Australian ballot"). As argued by Heckelman, the secret ballot did stop open bribery (where political parties used color coded ballots to bribe votes), but the secret ballot also gave incumbent parties an advantage. As the government was now responsible for printing and distributing the secret ballots, another consequence of this reform is that it put ballot access in the hands of the government, and whomever controlled the government could control ballot access.

And that is exactly what the 2 parties did with their hold on power: used the state to restrict ballot access through multiple means, some blatant, others nefarious. The most obvious impediment to alternative parties is that at most levels of government in the US, elections are decided on the what is called the "winner-take-all" or "first-past-the-post" systems, wherein the candidate with a simple plurality wins that office, or in the case of presidential elections, all the electoral votes for that state.

Beyond that are a myriad of laws designed to restrict ballot access:

• High signature requirements
  
• Discriminating filing fees
• Vote share requirements from prior elections
• Identification requirements to vote

And then there's the money thing: the cost of advertising makes it extremely difficult for third parties to gain enough exposure, and even if the party does have the financial means (such as Ross Perot's Reform Party in the 1992 presidential election), voters will still see their vote as wasted because of the first-past-the-post standard, and any viable third party candidate is invariably perceived as a "spoiler vote" as was the case in the 2000 presidential election.

Solution: Any suggestions?

Anthony's Aphorisms: Introduction

Introduction
This post is a collection of intuitive observations I've made over the years. If any of these ever stand as principle on the basis of systematic, empirical research, all the better. If these nuggets live to simply evoke or stir debate and discussion, I would insist success. Comments are always welcome, even essential.