Political Corruption solutions

[SHRED]

Publically funded elections.
Public control of vote counting.
National holiday/3 day weekend to vote.

Each party gets X number of dollars and airtime.
This way, I believe that the best candidates would rise up instead of the best "connected".

These 3 changes would restore confidence in the system and, in the long run, be less expensive to us taxpayers.

As it stands now, you and me paying for corporate pork barrel, corruption investigation and prosecution, and also the candidates are distracted because they are so busy raising money to run.

Just having a high turnover will not change a thing.
In fact, corruption might get worse if we feed greenhorn Congressmen to seasoned lobbyists.

A sweeping change needs to take place and these 3 would work, I believe.

[salin]

1. add a sixty day campaign season,

strictly enforced.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Very good idea!

And let's not forget that all ballots have a paper trail.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I also think that there should be a public forum

consisting of three programs-one a debate style program (and I mean a real debate), and one town hall meeting type of program, where the audience is randomly selected-no ringers allowed, and one "call in" type program where questions to be answered by each candidate are asked by folks who call in from around the country. I think on the last one, only questions (not a lot of rhetoric) are allowed-they are recorded, screened by both candidates, and then presented for the candidates to answer.

And this should be the extent of TV time for the candidates, except for maybe 10 one minute ads presented the week before the election weekend. Print ads would also be restricted, as well as posters and signs, but I'm not sure exactly how.

[BR_Parkway]

4. One thing to add - put the voting booths in the malls - that would

get the corporate money behind the idea - be patriotic, shop and vote this holiday weekend!

[SHRED]

5. More...

Also a ban, for a period of time (maybe lifetime), on becoming a corporate "consultant" and the like.

[gulliver]

6. Organize pickets, not just boycotts of political contributer businesses.

Not just red, but blue businesses too. Not just nationally, but internationally. Any business found to be making large political contributions should find picketers outside their places of business. The signs would read:

- X-co buys governments.
- Hands off our government, X-co
- Web site addresses

In the United States, you could also show the amounts of the contributions, together with a chart of red vs. blue as BuyBlue.org uses. No company wants to lose customers from either party.

Make it more expensive, even disastrous, to try to buy government, and corporations won't do it anymore. Absent that, we'll never have another Bush/Cheney/DeLay level of corruption in government.

[baldguy]

7. Make "Election Day" a three-day holiday

With no exit polls predicting the outcome.