|
Yet
another spasm of partisan election activity
ended in Virginia less than a week ago. What is
the number one item on both the donkey clan and
the elephant clan agenda six days later?
Both
of the “major” political parties are gearing
up, not for intelligent participation in
governance activities but to position themselves
for the next election!
Here
in Warrenton we lived through one of those
“key” races that generated a lot of
attention.
About
39 percent of those registered to vote split 48
percent to 47 percent, with an “independent”
playing the Nader role and taking four percent.
Given the number that choose not to even
register, around 20 percent of the citizens
qualified to vote -- and a minority of those who
did vote -- determined this Beta Community's
representation in the Virginia Senate.
The
political mailings from the two Senate
candidates sent to our home/office weighted in
at 1 lb., 3 oz. That means well over a ton of
high quality paper was delivered to the over
2000 Households in Greater Warrenton alone. Had
the most recent election season lasted another
two weeks, we would have enough mailings to
completely cover the inside of our friend's
manure composting silo with two layers of thick,
slick paper.
Not
that there would have been much difference
between the liner and the content of the silo. We read the mailings with some care
and found not one substantive statement. The
“content” was all about who was the too
“conservative” or too “liberal,” who was
“one of us” and who was under the influence
of those bad politicians from the other clan
across the Potomac River. Pure
unadulterated trash from both “major
parties.”
Based
on this experience, and 35 years of prior
observation of partisan political activity in
Virginia, we offer 10 modest proposals for bills
to be pre-filed and considered in the next
General Assembly session:
Immediate
Actions (See End
Note One)
1.
Move all Virginia elections to the first Tuesday
in November on even years.
2.
Arrange ballots with the smallest-scale offices
and issues at the top.
3.
Implement an initial round of immediate limits
on campaign spending to the extent possible
under the current Commonwealth and Federal
regulations, laws and Constitutions.
4.
Recommend new postal rates to discourage mass
mailings of trash and far more effective truth-in-
advertising standards for the content of all
communications.
Actions
that Will Take More than One Legislative Session
to Put into Effect
5.
Enact longer terms for all offices but provide
for easy recall and term limits as appropriate.
With high literacy and mass communications there
is no excuse for the legislators-know-best-and-citizens-don't-understand-
what's-good-for-them
excuses that underlay the current 18th Century
provisions for tenure, terms and recall.
6.
Shift all elections to preferential/instant
runoff voting. Encourage
the implementation of the best ideas and the
election of the best candidates without multi
phase elections.
7.
Severely limit campaign spending on all
activities that do not involve face-to-face
contact between voters and candidates. End the
monopoly of the slick commercial campaigns
funded by special interests and the use of
deceptive, emotion-laden advertising. Let the
candidates speak to the citizens. It really does
work -- this is what freedom of speech is really
about.
8.
Create a governance structure that reflects the
organic structure of contemporary economic,
social and physical reality. Redistribute powers
and responsibilities so that “The level of
decision is at the level of impact.” (Because
many decisions impact more than one scale or
level, new
mechanisms of governance will be required to
share decision making between levels. The
obvious objective of this strategy is to remove
conditions such as the municipal land use
control/state transport idiocy that now prevails
in the Commonwealth.)
9.
Establish a 10-year period during which all
sub-state jurisdictional borders are converted
to reflect the 21st century governance structure
created by Number 8.
Historic borders will be commemorated with
bronze (before Revolutionary war), iron (before
Civil War) and aluminum (before 2008) plaques.
The new boundaries at Regional, Community,
Village, Neighborhood and Cluster scales will be
determined by democratic process from the bottom
up, not the top down. (See End
Note Two.)
10.
Allow Governor to serve two four-year terms or
one six-year term. (See End
Note Three.)
If
those elected and reelected on 6 November are
unwilling to make these modest adjustments then
the only alternative is to toss out all
incumbents at each election until they do take
action.
--
November 12, 2007
End
Notes
(1).
Some of these proposals may be in conflict with
arcane regulations, laws or the Constitution of
Virginia. If so, they would require a longer
time to implement these recommendations, as it
will 5 thru 10.
(2).
For a sketch of how this be accomplished for one
New Urban Region, see "The
Shape of Richmond's Future," 16
February 2004.
(3).
We listed this item separately because it has
great merit and is often discussed. It would, in
the normal course, be covered by proposal 5.
above. After we had prepared a draft of our top
10, we consulted Lieutenant Governor Bill
Bolling’s “100 Ideas for Future of
Virginia.” This proposal is “Idea Gov
1" under “Government Reform” on
Bolling’s website. Several of the other
Bolling ideas are well worth considering but all
would be covered under 8 above. From the
quality and quantity of the comments on the
"100
Ideas" website it is clear these ideas are not
generating much serious or well informed
interest.
It
is instructive to note that the “ideas”
under “Transportation” are just retreads of
the sort of well-meaning bromides listed in
every slick election brochure. For
example, there is no mention of Balance between
the transport system capacity and the travel
demand of the settlement pattern.
|
