We don’t need an individual person to drain the swamp. These three proposals would evaporate the swamp:
- Upgrade our mathematically flawed style of voting from plurality to ranked/rated
- Insulate our laws and politicians from lobbyists and special interests
- Scale back the privileges of corporate charters to those of 1776
1. The current system of plurality voting (PV), also called first-past-the-post, is now responsible for the 5th president who did not win the popular vote. That makes 5 out of 58 presidential elections held so far where over half of the voters’ votes were thrown out. The way we elect the most important position in the country has worked 9 times out of 10, so far.
We can improve that to a guaranteed 10/10 if we make a subtle change to the way we vote. All we have to do is give voters the option to rank their preferences on all candidates running for any given position. This would make the voter’s job to be more like an Olympic judge rather than a horse race gambler. There are a number of voting styles where the voter can rank or rate their preferences, and any of them would be a significant upgrade to PV.
Ranking/rating candidates would make the field completely level for any independent or non-mainstream party candidate to enter office. Any party could run multiple candidates without lowering their fellow members’ chances of winning because they wouldn’t split the vote. This would eliminate the “Lesser of two evils” conundrum. The country as a whole could decide who it wants from a specific party, rather than being stuck with the candidate that the party leadership offers up (Bernie?). The electoral college argument would no longer matter because we would get the same result with or without it. It would also eliminate the effects of gerrymandering.
It would cause the field of candidates to become divided against each other instead of a nation divided down the middle. Candidates would be forced to stick out from the crowd to earn the public’s trust instead of campaigns where all that’s needed to win is out-smear the lone opponent for six months. We could find candidates who truly care about their job and the flag. There is another branch of government filled with those types of people. More than 536 of them, in fact.
There is no chance that The Donald, let alone either of the two most hated individuals ever running, would have come out ahead of Bernie, Kasich, or others in a ranked/rated system.
Here’s how I would have voted in the last election (10 being the highest):
Rand Paul - 10
Gary Johnson - 9
Bernie Sanders - 8
Ben Carson - 7
John Kasich - 6
Jill Stein- 4
Hillary Clinton - 1
Donald Trump - 0
2. The system of governance is rigged for outside influence and there are few safeguards in place. Lobbyist groups are writing bills all by themselves. They're sending out professionally trained, highly skilled men and women to actively seek out members of our law-writing body and ask them to put these bills into law. The friend in politics can attach one of those bills to another bill that is already guaranteed to pass so that it goes through without really being voted on.
Lobbyists are regularly penning bills that are turned into cop-enforced, judge-enforced laws without any politician ever laying eyes on them.
These practices are outrageous. Politicians and their staff should be the only ones who write bills. Rider bills shouldn’t be a thing. Everyone who votes on a bill should be aware of the full implications of the bill. The only outside influences that should ever affect laws are public opinion and science.
A 2014 study from Princeton points out that for the lower 90% of wealth owners in the US, a political idea has a 30% chance of passing whether it has 0% or 100% support, meaning that group of voters has essentially zero influence on policy. But the top 10% of wealth owners have about a 60% chance of passing something if they fully support it. They also have a remarkable near 100% chance of stopping something if the fully oppose it.
We have to enforce some standards if we want our political reality to be in line with the society that We the People, the majority of the country, desire. Represent.us has a great plan to outlaw corruption.
3. Corporations can only exist if they are granted a corporate charter by the government. The United States was the first country in history founded on the belief that corporations with unlimited powers create oppressive and unjust conditions for humans. The USA’s original charters were greatly reigned in from what Britain allowed and offered minimal, sensible limits on what corporations were allowed to do.
- Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
- Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
- Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
- Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
- Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
Over the past 250 years, corporations have manipulated the legal system to gain back the very powers that our ancestors fought the Revolutionary War to escape from.
Today if a corporation acts before legalizing what it does, it suffers no legal consequence other than paying an astronomical fine. If it can afford to pay the fines, it can stay in business and no one goes to jail. Some build fines into the budget as an operating cost. Some say that if any company makes tons of money, it’s good for the economy. But if those companies leave insufferable consequences for the world around them, it isn’t worth it.
- Big oil pollutes, destroys. Fuel we don't need. Makes up 50% of Fortune 500
- Big insurance perpetuates globally high prices and low quality for health and education.
- Big pharma falsifies research, kills hundreds of thousands, injures millions, blocks research on natural compounds including cannabis.
- Big justice over-laws, over-jails, militaristic, invasive, perpetuates the racist recreational drug war
- Big finance manipulates market, debases currency, steals.
- Military industrial complex screws up young people, kills innocent abroad, #1 Earth polluter
- Big ag relies on subsidies for dangerous chemicals and unnecessary crops. Sells unnatural simple and refined carbs as healthy when they actually cause many health conditions.
- Big tobacco lies, addicts, and kills.
- Big media distracts, misinforms, dis-informs, filters information, spins stories.
It’s possible to run a corporation without causing harm, but many that are currently in operation serve as a malicious toxin to most or all living things and continue to operate without question.
The people who started our country had a couple of things right. Keeping a tight leash on corporations was one of them. Turning back the clock on corporate charters may seem impossible in today’s landscape. The current voting system of party A or B provides the path of least resistance for corporate influence in our government structures. If we open up the voting to A/B/C/D/E/F/G/H, we can get people into office who aren’t owned by anyone. If we also outlaw the corruption, we might have a shot at getting our country back.
#evaporatetheswamp
