If you had an unlimited amount of power to rewrite the Const

[JonSetanta]

Maybe I should redfine that: as with Lago's opinion, white collar crime should be punished severely.
On that note, fine print used in conjunction with legalese for the explicit purpose to deceive the average citizen and consumer for personal/corporate gain should be abolished and punished severely.
That is.. if our government would stop abusing the same first.

[Neeek]

1195270799[/unixtime]]Maybe I should redfine that: as with Lago's opinion, white collar crime should be punished severely.
On that note, fine print used in conjunction with legalese for the explicit purpose to deceive the average citizen and consumer for personal/corporate gain should be abolished and punished severely.
That is.. if our government would stop abusing the same first.

It mostly is. You are thinking of contracts of adhesion. Believe it or not, often provisions in contracts you sign are not enforceable. Last summer, I rented a storage space and went over the contract. 4 of the 13 provision in the contract were completely bullshit, and I could safely ignore them.

[Crissa]

Generally, if you want to make sure that provisions are truly unenforceable against you, cross them out and initial them before returning the paperwork.

If they accept the contract, they accept the revisions. If they don't, they don't.

If they tell you at time of submittal that the revisions aren't acceptable, they'll usually just kick you out then, or tell you when such time they will kick you out.

-Crissa

[Neeek]

Another thing that needs to go from the Constitution is recess appointments. Improvements in travel and communication technologies make the original reason for them obsolete.

[tzor]

1195332899[/unixtime]]Another thing that needs to go from the Constitution is recess appointments. Improvements in travel and communication technologies make the original reason for them obsolete.

I'm sort of convinced that recess appointments are necessary, but they should be more pro-tem than they are today. Representatives need to be as much with the people they represent as they are together representing the people. Getting people to rush in because you need someone ASAP to replace someone is simply a waste of expense. It is just like the case where Governors call special sessions of their legislature so that their pet project can be aproved only to have those legislators complain and squabble and actually get nothing done except causes the taxes to increase because unlike the federal government, state government's generally require a "balanced" budget.

This doesn't solve the real problem, when executive (who proposes) and legislature (who approves) are so full of themselves that no one gets approved and positions are vaccant for months or years at a time. That's not all that easy to solve, and I certanly don't have an answer. It's like those forced extraordinary sessions. If people were not willing to talk to each other before there is no way you can "force" them to do so.

[RandomCasualty]

I think it'd go something like this: "I am your new god, all your lands, women and cool shit now belong to me."

But assuming I couldn't do something blatantly self-serving like that...

First and foremost, I'd reconceptualize democracy for the modern age. The main problems right now are:

-Candidates need to be rich
-Candidates really don't deal with the issues, but instead spout a bunch of rhetoric, leaving people totally uninformed about actual issues.
-There is a mass of political information, plans, etc and it's all so disorganized.

So I say, make it pretty much illegal to run political ads, period. All political information is stored on a website that people who are actually interested in voting, can go to look at. Each candidate has their own little section, and in it, they can post stuff about their policies and such. Also on that section, their opposition can post comments on what they've said, pointing out various counterpoints. So you get to hear specifically what John Edwards has to say about McCain's economic plan.

There can also be subsections where you can read the negatives about a given candidate, posted by his competitors. So if you really want to hear that someone is a draft dodger, you can go read the mudslinger's forum.

There are also a set of fact checkers who make sure that the stuff they post on that site is actually accurate. If you post false information about another candidate or about yourself, it amounts to defrauding the American people and you can get arrested for that.

That way at the very least 3rd party candidates might actually have a reasonable chance, because regardless of how much money you have, you're on relatively equal footing on the website, and that's the primary source of information, as opposed to TV political propaganda, which is no longer allowed.

[Draco_Argentum]

After seeing how elections for the student union at university went I'm in favour of compulsory voting. Its frigging annoying but serves a purpose.

The science and engineering students had vastly lower turnout to the polls than other faculties. In effect this meant that the few who did vote were wasting their time, creating a vicious cycle of non-voting.

[CalibronXXX]

Compulsory voting is a bad idea, especially without required political education to go along with it.

[JonSetanta]

1195636146[/unixtime]]Compulsory voting is a bad idea, especially without required political education to go along with it.

I cite our lovely state of Florida as example to this concept.

[Draco_Argentum]

1195636146[/unixtime]]Compulsory voting is a bad idea, especially without required political education to go along with it.

Requiring people to know stuff about their government sure sounds like a horrid idea.

[CalibronXXX]

...?

[cthulhu]

1195636146[/unixtime]]Compulsory voting is a bad idea, especially without required political education to go along with it.

I'm not sure why you'd say that. It hasn't exactly panned out badly for Australia, and while I have no evidence to back it up what so ever, I'm fairly confident the mere act of compulsory voting does actually raise the level of political awareness. Anyway, even if it doesn't we effectively have a two party system and aside from people people voting for the 'beer and pies party party' (actual party going for the senate in my state last election) the idiots seem to break down in half. We have a preferences system too that makes sure the 'beer and pies party party' don't really have a material impact on the vote.

Interestingly, the really weird thing about Australia's compulsory voting scheme is that 'I forgot' can actually get you out of the fine (as demonstrated by one of my relatives). They take any excuse imagineable as a reason for not voting and waive the fine. Everyone knows this. One old guy got gently slapped on the wrist for not voting in the last 16? elections, not paying his fine and having press conferences and publishing books about it, and the wrist slap was 4 hours in the lockup at the nearest police station.

As the punishment is only imaginary, it is really just an expectation that everyone turns up. And they do.

I also feel the other benefits are high too - in America they organize bus trips to get voting blocks down to the polling station. Not an issue here.

Australia's electoral system does have a few other advantages too - the Australian Electoral Commission (the body that administers the vote at the federal level, and also administers the vote for some of the state elections, some local elections and for any other body that wishes to hold an election with rigorous standards - some unions for example) is a very 'strong' organization that has a fair degree of control over the process which avoids it being politicized, which minimizes gerrymandering for example (though it still does happen), and also means they invest a lot of effort in making sure everyone gets the chance to vote, preventing things like long waits to vote. The longest I've waited is 15 minutes. I understand in some areas it gets really bad and you may have to wait up to an hour. I've read reports of people having to wait up to 8 hours in America, so i sure know what I'd prefer.

Other great examples are the whining that occurs in america about electronic voting machines. In australia, the electronic voting machines are actually open source and you can download the source code. Whats more, people have found security flaws, and the AEC has fixed them. It's great.

Now some of this is just because the AEC is a good organisation, but the reality is (I suspect) is that because everyone has to do it, no-one is willing to put up with any bullshit when they turn it up. It has to be wham bam thank you ma'am otherwise everyone would get extremely pissed.

The downside with the compulsory vote is that it means the centrist candidate wins every, single, time. If you can capture the middle, you are in. This is a real material downside, and the biggest problem I see.

Edit: the other featurette I like is that if you win, you do actually have some sort of mandate because probably about 50% of people actually voted for you proactively.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

I'd like to see less government officials mixing and mingling with corporations. I have no idea how to put that in there.

That's easy: A constitutional amendment that says the following: Corporations are not people. Done.

I'm actually down with Australia's mandatory voting. I think that's awesome, even if the fine is relatively token (I think it was, like, $75 USA when last I checked). It's enough to where most folks say, "Shit, I gotta get down and vote today," and not so much that folks say, "That's ridiculous! Voting shouldn't be fucking mandatory! I'm'a'gonna fight that in the courts, dammit."

Ah, Baby Bear. You're my hero.

[cthulhu]

The fine is actually about 45? dollars US. For reference I pay 3-5 times for a parking god damn fine.

[RandomCasualty]

1195636146[/unixtime]]Compulsory voting is a bad idea, especially without required political education to go along with it.

Yeah, if anything we want less people voting, not more.

If there are people out there who vote blindly, we don't want them voting. In fact, I think it might be good to actually have a quiz for people before they can vote. If you don't know jack about the issues, then you can't vote. Period.

While I have no issue with allowing people to make decisions regarding their government, having them blindly go with gut feelings and crap because there's no real good sources of information on the candidates beyond propaganda campaigns is bad. I'd really rather not have those people vote.

Also less people voting mean that the people who do decide to vote are going to feel more like their votes count.

[tzor]

I have to admit I really don't know. In fact I'm kind of torn. In the end I'm convinced that we have the whole process backwards. No government can stand without the support of the people. No democracy can stand without the support of the people. When voting becomes like jury duty then we all loose.

First and foremost, we need to admit that democracy is a bottom up process. Democracy always works better on the local level and gets worse the higher up the chain we go. So the first priority is to get people really interested in local goverment, so much so that they really feel that not only does their vote actually count but that the time and effort they put into understanding the issues is worth the effort. It's not that we need smart voters, we just need informed voters who care.

This year my former next door neighbor ran for the town council. But even though I contributed to his campaign (enough to get a listing in the local paper) I really wasn't all that connected with the campaign. I missed the debates. Hopefully I am going to get the time to see him at a town council meeting or two or three.

Then again when the current Town Supervisor, (who got reelected - darn) proposed an indoor ski resort that is actually going to be taller than the one in Saui Arabia I got very involved.

Of course I also live in New York, the state where the oligarchy of governor and leaders of the assmebly and senate form a divine pantheon at war with each other on a non stop basis.

[CalibronXXX]

1195702591[/unixtime]]It's not that we need smart voters, we just need informed voters who care.

Quote For Truth!

[Draco_Argentum]

1195682905[/unixtime]]The downside with the compulsory vote is that it means the centrist candidate wins every, single, time. If you can capture the middle, you are in. This is a real material downside, and the biggest problem I see.

Least it tends to weed the extremists out. If the people who aren't fired up don't vote you get the US. Pandering to the far right can get you in because you're only losing votes from the far left who wouldn't vote for you in any circumstance.

RC is sort of right, know nothings voting is a problem. Problem is, dyed in the eye supporters of a party who always vote the same way are currently mostly voting in the US. So not forcing everyone to vote biases the sample towards the unthinking tools.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, but it does become harder to outline a vision in someways, but you do have to campagin on issues so in otherways its not. On the balance, I am a clear proponent of compulsory voting.

[Koumei]

I'm in favour of compulsory voting, even if it does lead to some people voting without really knowing what's going on. That just makes it a more or less random vote, which could still be worse.

I also like the idea of one vote being worth exactly one vote, regardless of where you are, rather than applying some kind of multiplier that encourages you to kill your neighbours just so that your vote is worth more.

[shirak]

Compulsory voting and compulsory informing (I'd seriously pay Frank to come at your house and explain things to you)

Education above all. Priorities are critical thinking. Less emphasis on rote knowledge

Every law must have a build-in time limit. The Legislative gets to decide if any given law should continue after a time (say 25 years)

[CalibronXXX]

I think I could get behind a law that incurs fines for not voting if it had a rider that forces you to fulfill some sort of current political education minimum or incur a heavier fine.

[Crissa]

Classes to get out of fines?

Still, one of the problems in the US is that employers are not encouraged or required to allow their employees to vote.

-Crissa

[cthulhu]

Don;t you have elections on tuesdays or something? Australia's are always on saturdays and you have to give leave.

[Koumei]

Well, I just came back from voting. It was very easy, and I had to wait maybe one minute.