My friend and debate partner sent an article from the website Electoral Vote. The article is How to Fix a Broken Democracy and lists several things Democrats could enact if they add control the White House and Senate. For many of these I’ll let the article describe them.
* End the filibuster. There are movies about senators using the filibuster to keep some bad law from passing. But this is a relic of Jim Crow where it was mostly used – and now widely used by the GOP – to prevent good laws from passing.
* Pass a new voting rights bill. The House already did so, HR-4.
* Allow same day voter registration nationally.
* Make voting easier. Dems did this one too – HR-1.
* Stop running elections on the cheap.
* Pay people to vote. $100 to each of 200 million voters is only $20 billion, not much at all.
* De-gerrymander the Senate. Hard to do without a Constitutional amendment. But we could get a closer balance by admitting DC as a state, Puerto Rico too, and maybe even ask California to divide itself in half.
* Pass National Popular Vote Interstate Compact where Electoral College votes go to the national winner, not the state winner.
* End gerrymandering in states. Also in HR-1.
* Public financing for candidates to eliminate influence from rich people.
* Prevent judges from sabotaging reforms. While the Constitution defines the Supremes (though not numbers of seats), Congress defines the lower courts. It could do such things as create special courts to handle voting issues.
Of course, no GOP is going to vote for any of this. They don’t want to fix democracy. But with the filibuster gone (and the Senate in Dem hands) the rest is possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment