Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Monday, March 11, 2013

Election Reform: fraudulent voting practices were developed by and are fomented by our partisan system

Election reform has never been more important at a time when less than half of people vote in major elections (and somewhere around 10-15% in important local elections) and yet the establishment (partisan) voices drone on about voter fraud and campaign finance. At a time when 40% of the American people identify as independent... Re-imagine the whole of American politics! [See vid below]

Democracy demands a much higher bar -- full participation by the American people -- which will of necessity come from outside the current party system.

Let's face it, the most fraudulent voting practices were developed by and are fomented by our partisan system that requires complete allegiance to a slate of partisan scalawags who vow to betray the democratic values of our nation! To wit:

ELECTION REFORM
  • Editorial: Voting laws need big change (EDITORIAL Poughkeepsie Journal) These deflating numbers are clearly unacceptable. A slew of solutions has to be pursued aggressively. They range from scheduling early voting dates, to greatly bolstering the ability of residents to register online. They must involve clearer, cleaner ballots and lengthening registration deadlines. They have to include campaign finance reform to give challengers a fighting chance to compete against entrenched incumbents. They ought to feature an independent process to draw fair, impartial political boundaries rather than leaving it up to the politicians to carve up those lines at will.
  • Ark. AG outlines election reform proposals (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The Republic - Columbus IN) Attorney General Dustin McDaniel on Thursday said he is pushing a package of legislative proposals that would toughen the penalties for fraudulently gathering signatures for a ballot measure and require more disclosures from those working on ballot question campaigns.
  • FEC Complaint Could Limit Corporate Donations In Elections (By Alex Gauthier, IVN) Responding to inquiries from the press, Dan Conston, CLF’s communications director told the Hill, “[It’s] an obvious coordinated intimidation tactic from the left masquerading as just one more utterly baseless complaint.”

EDUCATION REFORM
Reform candidates see mixed results in Los Angeles school board race (Brandon Lowrey - Reuters, Chicago Tribune)  Reformers, backed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Coalition for School Reform, want to expand charter schools and change the way the district hires, evaluates and fires teachers. They faced opposition from the local teacher's union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which has funded its own slate of candidates. Voters handed Villaraigosa and his allies one victory outright, one defeat and one draw that will be decided in a runoff election in May.




3 comments:

richardwinger said...

Chicago is somewhat infamous for election fraud, and Chicago city elections are entirely non-partisan.

Nancy Hanks said...

The thing that binds independents together is that they want to overthrow the established culture of corrupt partisanship.

richardwinger said...

But just changing partisan elections into non-partisan elections doesn't seem to help with that goal. New York city is far better run than Detroit, or Chicago, don't you agree? Yet New York city has partisan city elections whereas Detroit and Chicago have non-partisan elections.