Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A Vision

A Vision for Illinois Democracy....
  • Imagine elections where there is more than one name on the ballot.
  • Imagine there being many names on the ballot.
  • Imagine there being more than two political parties to choose from.
  • Imagine there being three, four or five viable political parties to choose from.
  • Imagine that voting for a "third party" doesn't mean "spoiling" an election or having to pick from the lesser of two evils.
  • Imagine every election in all parts of the state being competitive, not just in a few swing districts.
  • Imagine there not being any gerrymandering.
  • Imagine the winning party actually having to enact the platform they ran on.
  • Imagine money not playing such a big role in elections.

2 comments:

Bob Richard said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you for raising these issues. I'm with you on all three of them so far, although I think your proposal for both two-year and four-year terms in the same house may be sufficiently complicated that the advantages of mixed-member PR get lost in the rhetorical shuffle.

Welcome to the blogosphere!

Anonymous said...

I will be certainly be voting yes on Con-Con. Our Illinois political system couldn't be more corrupt, and we can't wait another 20 years to pass for the chance to change things. I like many of the ideas here. For me a key element is creating some form of binding referendums. We're one of the only states that don't allow its citizens to petition its government in this way. The fear-mongering by the entrenched political and business powers will say we don't want a California style referendum system; however, California's lenient system for enactment is hardly the only model. They have easily the loosest rules for enacting referendum. Once Illinois voters get sensible binding refendum rights, we won't have to wait every 20 years to beg the corrupt politicians to consider reforming themselves.