Step 3: Make a list of goals

Term limits for Congressional positions

Senators have 3 year terms, Representatives have 2 year terms; 6 year term limits for both, however, after 6 years (or the duration of their prior term if it is less than 6 years) they can run again. Benefits:

  • Corporations are significantly less likely to put money into a candidate if the candidate will be gone in 6 years anyway.
  • Removes the life-time/-long politicians.
  • Forces the politicians to live as a normal citizen even if it is only for short periods of time.
  • Reason: The founders never intended for people to be in a position like this for life.
  • Sens and Reps required to pay taxes on their income; I could be wrong but I don't think they do now.

Also want to have other impact on their income, either make it 100% Social Security (in other words their retirement fund) or just an overall reduction in pay scale. (Some people may have a problem with this but keep in mind while they are in office they have very minimal or no expenditures.) Personally I am for not paying them until they are out of office.

Removal of all Super Pac money donation groups.

As other people in this sub and elsewhere have noted that Super Pacs are just bad form and should never have been allowed to start with; they are easy ways to conceal donations and tie it up into impossible to untangle balls of mistrust and subversion. Benefits:

  • All donations must be made by an individual.
    • Time Warner cannot donate to a particular candidate.
    • Should help with the media's bias if their parent companies cannot back a certain horse.
  • Donations must be 100% in public eye for review.
  • No donation may exceed 10% of the FDIC insurance value per month.
    • Currently $250,000, this puts a hard limit of $25,000 currently, in a single month.
  • No foreign donors1 .
    • Currently, it is impossible to prove that there are or are not large foreign donations because of Super Pacs; however, it is best to eliminate this anyway.
    • Any donations to a candidate should be made by individuals within the United States; either a US citizen or an immigrant with at least green card status.
  1. Can someone come up with better wording for this?

Require truly open primary elections.

The DNC and RNC should not be permitted to hold their own three ring circus

  • The primary should be held one month and one week prior to the cut off for Presidential candidates to be added on the final ballot.
    • No state should be given preferential treatment or the ability to "set the tone" for an election cycle.
  • One polling place, no segregation of Republican and Democrat to specific polling areas.
  • A special ballot for US presidency during the Primary.
    • Because it only happens once every four years this is attainable; this ballot is given to all voters regardless of their party affiliation.
  • Primary voting should be held for one week with at least two days of extended hours.
    • Extended hours = overnight or partial overnight coverage either in the form of opening early at 4am local or staying open late to at least midnight if not later.
    • This allows people who work third shift or may not be available during the polling time to cast their ballot.
    • Nurses, doctors and other emergency personnel may not have the ability to show up within the current window do to their jobs and should not be excluded.

News/Reporting

A large part of the current reporting by the news can change the voter's mind by constantly putting up arbitrary numbers showing one candidate ahead; there should be a moratorium on the voting results by all news outlets until the votes have been cast and counted.

  • With the proposed week of voting it will make it difficult to get numbers to the news regardless.
  • Exit polling data should be made open and public during the voting process.
    • There's more in the next section.
  • Debates should actual debates. I'd encourage the use of PBS as the main network for coverage of the debates.
    • Adding in either lawyers or other individuals who are constitution experts that truly grill every candidate on their platform.
    • This should result in Bernie Sander's statement of "Break up the big banks" being shown for the enormous task that it would truly be and force Donald Trump's statements of "Build a wall" into the logistics and how it would be accomplished.
  • No reporting of the final tallies until after all voting places are closed including those in Hawaii and Alaska.

State Department

As has been reported in a few areas we should be requiring the State Department to follow their own oversight of outside elections to our own.

  • Exit polls outside of the 2% margin for error used in other countries should automatically call for the immediate recount of ballots.
    • Exit polls would be the only number the news organizations can access making it nearly impossible for them to adjust the number at the last minute to match the actual tallies.

I may think of more items later and come back.....

/r/2016Protest Thread