These are suggestions that would make the political process representative and enhance democracy:
- Overturn the Citizen’s United ruling by an activist Supreme Court making law instead of interpreting law, which declared that money is free speech. If you do not have money, you have no free speech, thereby disenfranchising the little guy.
- Overturn the McCutcheon vs. FEC ruling by an activist Supreme Court making law instead of interpreting the law, which declared that limitations on campaign contributions are illegal. If you have money, you can donate unlimited amounts to anyone and everyone, thereby disenfranchising the little guy.
- Public elections should be funded by the public to even the playing field. I have read that it would cost more than $100 million for public funding of elections. Currently, billions are spent on elections. The result of money in politics is that subsidies, read this as corporate welfare and welfare for the rich, go to corporations and rich people. A poor person cannot run for office. Poor people rarely go to Congress.
- Eliminate lobbying and lobbyists. Subsidies, read as welfare, almost equal the national deficit. Eliminate lobbyists and you eliminate the subsidies. We could instantly balance the budget.
- Limit the elections cycle to a reasonable amount of time. England uses six weeks. This would allow politicians to actually do their jobs instead of constantly running for office and raising money.
- Eliminate all non-open source software for voting machines. This will prevent election fraud, which is prevalent and well documented. Also make exit polls mandatory and any election results outside of the exit polls will be declared null and void. Exit polls are so accurate that countries like Canada take exit polls and the results, if within the margin of error, are announced and the votes counted later.
- Make Election Day a national holiday. Extend early voting. Eliminate gerrymandering. Crack down on voter suppression. Re-enact the voting act of 1965. The Supreme Court said that the voting act of 1965 is no longer relevant. The analogy is that traffic lights have so reduced traffic accidents that we no longer need traffic lights.