Categories
National politics

Campaign Platform of the President the Nation Needs

The other day I was sitting on a bus with time to let my mind wander. I was thinking about our presidential campaign season and the ideas being promoted by our current candidates – including our current president – when I found myself considering what kind of a president I think our nation needs – specifically I began to formulate what ideas he would offer in seeking the presidency. I decided to write up the platform ideas that came to mind. I’d love to hear what others think of this. I have written this in the first person not because I claim to be this candidate but because I would expect a candidate to articulate the platform from a first-person perspective.

  1. Any budget proposal that I submit will not exceed actual tax revenues for the previous year. Any budget bill that I sign will be paid for, either because Congress has passed a budget that does not exceed the tax revenues for the previous year or because they have clearly raised the necessary taxes as part of the bill to pay for any spending over the amount of taxes collected in the preceding fiscal year.
  2. I will not attempt to expand the powers of the presidency. I will stick to my constitutional duties. I will refrain from using the extra-constitutional powers that have previously been granted to the president, such as the ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, and request that Congress officially revoke those powers from me and future presidents.
  3. I will insist that Congress fulfill their constitutional duties. One major part of Congress fulfilling their duties is that I will order all regulatory agencies to enforce only those things that Congress has passed into law and not to enforce regulations created by regulatory agencies based laws passed by congress where those regulations were not specified in the bill. I will not sign bills in which Congress leaves the authority to specify particular regulations to other bodies such as regulatory agencies.
  4. I will not sign any bill into law, nor allow any bill to become law without my signature, unless it has been made available for public review and comment for a total of no less than seven days prior to becoming law. The seven days counts only the time after the final version of the bill is made available. That time may include any combination of time before the bill is passed by Congress and time after the bill has been passed by Congress. In other words, Congress may choose to pass bills without allowing seven days for public input but the only way I would act on a bill without seven days of public input would be to veto the bill. I will also not sign any bill into law unless I have had time to read the bill in full.
  5. As commander-in-chief of our military I will seek to maximize our national defense. The emphasis there is on the words “national” and “defense” – all military spending and activity will be focused on defending our nation in the most effective ways possible. We will seek to improve our defensive abilities wherever possible. If the use of military force ever becomes necessary under my watch I will act decisively with the intent to end the conflict as quickly and effectively as possible.
  6. I will not run a campaign for a second term. I will simply do my job as President. My campaigning will not exceed participation in scheduled debates and defending myself against any false accusations that are made by those who hope to replace me. If that is not enough to win me a second term then I do not deserve a second term.

As I considered the ideas that I wrote I asked myself whether any of the current candidates would ever articulate a platform like this. My conclusion was that none of them would. I suspect that some Ron Paul supporters would argue that Dr. Paul runs a platform not unlike this. I’ll admit that he comes the closest but I am still not sure that what he would do fully correlates to what I think we need in a president – which may indicate that I have not fully fleshed it out above. Either way – I’d love to hear thoughts on the platform I have outlined.

Categories
culture politics State

Addressing Abysmal Voter Turnout

Adam Brown had an interesting post about possible causes for low voter turnout in Utah. Adam suggests three possible causes for low voter turnout but essentially dismisses the relative youth of our state as being a cause not supported by the data (and he knows data analysis). That leaves us with two possibilities (according to his post):

Second, maybe it’s because general elections have become much less competitive over the years. … If people believe that their votes are less likely to sway the outcome (either way), then they might not bother to show up.

Third, maybe it’s because Utah strengthened its caucus-convention system in the 1990s, making it harder to force a primary and easier to win in convention.

I won’t pretend to have any insights into which of those two options might be a driving factor. What I thought was interesting was that in suggesting potential solutions to the three possible causes he listed non-partisan runoffs as a potential way to address each of the two plausible causes of the problem.

This was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, back when I was doing a lot more political writing than I have been recently, the issue of increasing participation in the political process was one that I was vocal about addressing. I suggested that increasing levels of citizen participation would be akin to our nation experiencing a new birth of freedom. Second, because in lamenting the voter turnout in 2008 – where we actually had fewer people voting than in 2004 despite a larger population of eligible voters – I suggested an idea that was very much like non-partisan runoffs (a term I had not heard before today). My suggestion was that in voting districts where one party received more than 60% of the votes that party would be required to field two candidates on the ballot. That idea really would work best in a runoff system where the top two candidates, regardless of party (assuming neither got over 50% initially), then had a runoff (I would suggest the Saturday after the election). In areas where the dominant party managed to get both of their candidates in the top two it would be the equivalent of an open primary between those two candidates (after the party delegates had weighed in on which two candidates should carry the banner at their conventions).

A chart from an earlier post by Adam shows that prior to me becoming old enough to vote, Utah always had at least 60% participation or more in presidential election years and 40% participation or more  in non-presidential election years. Since that time we have never hit either of those benchmarks and our participation has gone from above average to below average (measured against the rest of the nation). That leaves me with two questions:

  1. Is this a generational issue?
    • Did people starting about my age and younger lower our participation levels by not stepping up to the plate when they came of age?
  2. What effect would an idea like non-partisan runoffs have?
    • What would it take to implement such a systemic change?
    • How could we make such a system work in conjunction with the rest of the nation where federal elections are concerned?

I would love to hear what others think about those questions because if I really thought it would make a difference and that it was possible to make such a change I would start finding ways to get the issue on our legislative agenda (not this year of course – that would be impossible).

Categories
Local politics

Perceived Electability and IRV – A Case Study

As a followup to last night’s special election to fill Dan Liljenquist’s term as State Senator, I noticed some interesting things based on my interactions with other delegates and my review of the actual results (round-by-round, not just the final tally).

First let me provide some metrics that some people might be interested in – we had 264 delegates eligible to vote in this election. Of those, 258 showed up and received credentials but only 257 cast ballots.

At the meeting there was discussion about the practice in IRV voting of still only choosing one candidate – more generally that can be applied to choosing anything less than all the candidates. We can’t really know for sure how many people put less than all 8 candidates on their ballots but in the last round 7 ballots were discarded because they did not include either of the remaining candidates – Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. This means that the election was finally counted with 250 out of 264 possible votes.

Now on to the issue of perceived electability.

I had the sense before the voting that this would come down to a two-way contest between Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. That was based on what I had observed of the campaigns and what I had seen and heard from various delegates. The interesting side note to that was how many people I heard speaking favorably about Tim Hawkes but wondering whether he could win.

When the results were announced my instinct that it was a two-man race was confirmed as evidenced by who the last two candidates were. When I saw the full results from all seven rounds I discovered that my impression of Tim’s widespread appeal showed up strongly in the voting. From the very first round it was actually a three-man race. Todd had the lead in every round (in fact, until the final round Randy did not receive more votes than Todd received in the first round) but the top three were always Todd, Randy, and Tim in that order. Tim had 58 votes and the fourth place candidate had 16 votes. All the candidates below Tim combined for 43 votes in the first round. The fact that many of those who liked Tim questioned whether he could get elected bore out in the phenomenon that in the first 6 rounds – until he was eliminated – Tim  gained more votes than any other candidate. By the time he was eliminated, Tim was only 4 votes shy of Randy.

Tim and Todd seemed more similar than Tim and Randy as shown by the fact that most of Tim’s votes went to Todd. That leaves me to wonder whether there were 5 of those who supported Todd as their first choice who chose Tim second based on the perception that he could not win. If so and they took that perception out of their calculations Tim would have beaten Randy for second place.

My best guess is that this phenomenon is based on widespread misunderstanding of how IRV voting works. Based on how I have heard people talk about it, it seems that many people think that their vote is counted less if it is not their top vote – they think their vote is wasted if they do not guess correctly who is going to win. They seem to instinctively feel that having a second choice vote hurts their first choice candidate rather than recognizing that their second choice candidate can never receive their support unless their first choice candidate is already eliminated which only happens if their first choice candidate was viewed less favorably than their second choice candidate.

I suspect that the voting patterns would be different if people understood that IRV gives them the opportunity to rank all the candidates rather than being dependent on how all the other voters vote if the person they first voted for is not one of the top two vote-getters. They don’t need to see how others voted in the first round before deciding where to throw their support in the second round.

Categories
Local politics

Special Election – Senate District 23

Tonight is the night that county delegates will vote on who should finish the term for Dan Liljenquist. I have noticed over the weeks of campaigning – especially in the last few days – that many of the good ideas that have been promised by one candidate or another are being adopted by other candidates. These adopted positions may be talking points or they may be candidates recognizing a good idea and deciding that they are willing to adopt it on its merits (I think it is usually the latter). Regardless of their reasons there is one idea that I have decided to hold the eventual winner of this special election accountable for. Those who have made this promise already are going to be higher on my ballot than those who have not made or adopted this position.

This one key promise is that  a recognition that representation is a two-way street. Whoever wins this special election must demonstrate their understanding of that fact by proactively maintaining open lines of communication with their constituents. I wrote about this a couple of years ago and have been very happy to see multiple candidates speaking to this aspect of holding office. This must include them communicating to constituents in asynchronous ways (websites being the most widespread method for this currently) and regularly being available for synchronous public communication (open houses or townhall meetings being the methods I have seen used for this by others).

Just as those who have made this promise already will be higher on my ballot than those who do not, the first and most crucial step that the winner can do to earn my support for future terms – whether I supported him or not and whether he made this promise or not – it to keep this promise that has been made by multiple candidates in this campaign.