WHAT WILL IT TAKE .....TO MAKE IT BETTER ???

A POLITICAL & ELECTORAL OVERHAUL......THAT'S WHAT !!!


                          

Watch the movie trailer "Broken System" 

YOU can  also help NOW...TODAY!!
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The right to cast a free and secret ballot is the foundation of American democracy.
Yet it has become all too clear that our voting system remains deeply flawed.

This page is used to help coordinate and promote the understanding & education of the three most prominent available real solutions to reforming our current political system.
(We welcome CONSTRUCTIVE comments and discussion, however any misuse of this principle will be immediately deleted.)

It identifies the 3 main areas as:

1. VOTING SYSTEM REFORM (Approval Voting) as opposed to the current Plurality method of voting.

2. CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM (Move to Amend) which eliminates "Corporate Personhood" and rejects the concept that "Money is Free Speech"

3. TAX REFORM and the elimination of the IRS (via passage of the Fair Tax):

The House Ways and Means Committee posted a video below showing they understand the problems with our tax code. Now what we need to do is to demand that they solve the problem by passing the Fair Tax HR 25.
The American People deserve a solution that serves the American people -- not the special interests or members of Congress!!
Members of the House Ways and Means Committee can be found at:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/about/members.htm
You can find contact information for your Congressman and House Ways and Means committee at:
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
Please let your Congressmen, House and Senate, know you want them to pass the Fair Tax HR 25 & S 122!

"Faced with not only the utter failure of the electoral process, the new libertarianism also recognizes the failure of politics too.
 As a result, they are taking the task of liberty into their own hands, forging new enterprises and innovating new strategies to build a new liberty outside official approval -- using the disruptive tools of entrepreneurship to cobble together new and innovative forms of exchange and social association. " 

One of these such tools is currently underway with the COS (Convention of States) Project:

Many of the solutions discussed in this presentation will hopefully be dealt with in an Article V Convention being promoted by this project

We also feel that EDUCATION OF THE VOTER is paramount and should be encouraged whenever and wherever possible. This is an important goal...  however, we realize that this will take a longer time in accomplishing.....just as any improvement in our overall civic morality will also take time!
                                                 

The following is a more detailed outline of our platform:

THE SOLUTIONS:

1. Adopt APPROVAL VOTING via each State Legislature, followed by adoption nationally for all Federal Elections.
This is currently being done.... individually, State-by-State:  i.e.: The Oregon Approval Voting primary has switched up its branding and immediately gets to it by referring to itself as: Fair and Unified Elections Initiative - Oregon 2014
The solution really is THAT EASY!!   It’s not that there aren’t other issues with the way we vote. There are. But we find this to be the most impacting. And so you’ll find that we focus heavily on this topic.

 Approval Voting is a voting method that allows voters to vote for any number of candidates. The candidate with the most votes wins.  Approval Voting is most often discussed in the context of single-winner elections, but variations can also be applied to multi-winner “at large” elections.
In the debate surrounding what electoral mechanisms will make for a more representative democracy, numerous systems have been proposed. The different permutations and names for preferential voting systems:  Ranked choice voting, instant-runoff, open-list voting, and range voting are all ‘approval’ voting systems. Some have been employed throughout the United States in various forms, each with its own pros and cons.  Notably, ranked choice voting is in use in governmental elections worldwide, range-based systems are not. Find out more on range voting here.

In summary, Approval Voting allows voters to choose all the candidates of which they ‘approve.’ In theory, the phenomenon of ‘spoiler’ candidates or vote splitting can be averted. Such is proposed by the Center for Election Science.
(Adoption of ANY winning threshold requirement and/or procedures for Following Runoff Elections can be determined later as needed by each State or District, and Nationally in the case of Federal elections). 

2. Open Ballot Access for ALL qualified Candidates irregardless of party affiliations.

Different courts have always reached different conclusions regarding what sort of restrictions there should be; often in terms of ballot access, public debate inclusion, filing fees, and residency requirements, which are randomly imposed.  This is discriminatory at best.

3. Restrict Campaign Financing and eliminate Corporate "personhood/financing".
We, the People of the United States of America, should and do reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling concerning Citizens United and other related cases; and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.


4. Eliminate the Electoral College.   It is antiquated and no longer serves its intended purpose.

 Critics argue that the Electoral College is inherently undemocratic and gives swing states disproportionate influence in electing the President and Vice President. The Electoral College gives a numeric advantage in the election of the president to the smaller states, as the minimum number of electors for the small states is three compared to one for the election of representatives. On the other hand, the winner-take-all method of voting favors the larger states. A number of constitutional amendments have been proposed seeking to alter the Electoral College or replace it with a direct popular vote.

 A result of the present non- functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual significance on determining the outcome of the election. Since the national popular vote is apparently irrelevant, both voters and candidates are assumed to base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by capturing coveted swing states, not to maximize national popular vote totals.

5. Adopt improved Voter Qualification requirements. The "right to vote" is NOT explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution except in certain amendments, and only in reference to the fact that the franchise cannot be denied or abridged based solely on the aforementioned qualifications. In other words, the "right to vote" is perhaps better understood (in layman's terms) as ONLY prohibiting certain forms of legal discrimination in establishing qualifications for suffrage.  States may and do deny the "right to vote" for other reasons.

a. Identification & Verification....Voter Identification and verification MUST be properly performed. Currently, many methods are subject to errors, systematic failures as well as fraud.

This must be corrected.

b. Citizenship authentication. Eligibility to vote in the U.S. is determined by both federal and state law. Currently, only citizens can vote in U.S. federal elections. Who is (or who can become) a citizen is governed on a national basis by federal law. In the absence of a federal law or constitutional amendment, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own jurisdiction.

c. Knowledge/Information testing. The description of a class of people known as "low information voters" became a popularized term among conservatives following the 2008 election of Barack Obama. The oft-talked about low-information voters are those people who have little interest or understanding of political affairs, rarely watch the news, and can't name major political figures or national events yet vote anyway on this limited knowledge basis.
It is easy to blame ignorance on stupidity or on the media. But basic information about most political issues is readily available in the media and online. The problem is that most people don’t take the time and effort to do so. That is not because they are stupid, but because there is so little incentive to acquire political information. Since most are convinced that the probability of one vote actually making a difference in the outcome of an election is infinitesimally small.....most people, whose only reason to acquire political information, is to make a better decision at the polls.....tend to remain minimal at best.
There is no easy solution to the problem of political ignorance. Providing more information is unlikely to work, since most people fail to assimilate the information that is already available.

So what's the answer??

Well....if you can license a car driver or issue a permit to carry a gun.... why is the same logic not applied to voting?  For something that is as fundamental to life as the one who passes legislation to affect your well being, ....and to choose who represents you in government .... Why would you want the ill-educated, easily manipulated and misinformed to vote on such matters ???
The logic behind the current voting system is much more dangerous than a gunman or a drunk driver behind the wheel.  Voting effects your life and the country around you in every way possible.  It can not be indiscriminately given or allowed to be abused by the less responsible people in our society.

Should voting be restricted to people with at least a basic knowledge of their government or current affairs???

Could YOU pass a U.S. Citizenship Test??

If you were not born in the United States, the process of becoming a U.S. Citizen is called naturalization.  U.S. immigration law has certain requirements for becoming a citizenship, including: you must be at least 18 years old; you must be a permanent resident for at least 3 years; you need to be able to read, write and speak basic English; and you must have a basic knowledge of how the U.S. government works. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) administers a Citizenship Civics test to determine whether you have a sufficient knowledge of the United States government. This would be a good place to start considering a basic testing requirement prior to voting.

6. Adopt standard Voting System usage.

a. A Public Network Electronic DRE system with memory component and printable backup. (A public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to another location over a public network. Vote data may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast, periodically as batches of ballots throughout the election day, or as one batch at the close of voting.)

7. Adopt standard Vote Counting procedures with acceptable Cryptographic verification. (individual/universal/eligibility)
a. The concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions has emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and trust in electronic voting systems. It allows voters and election observers to verify that votes have been recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of verifiability are considered: individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability allows a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome, universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote in the election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.

For more detail, one should refer to:
 the Move To Amend : https://movetoamend.org/....
and Fair Tax Links : http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_basics_main