By The People

We do not have a government that is By The People. Only about 60% of the voting population votes in elections. Why is that? Election Day is not a national holiday and many people work and/or do not want to stand hours in line in the freezing cold. We are forced to pay taxes to fund this corrupt government but are not forced to vote in order to bring about Democratic change. Many choose not to vote because “what difference does it make?” There is a general lack of interest or disgust with politics, because it does not work for them.

Below is what I would want to see in our government but remember I would rather have Democracy than get what I want 100% of the time. So if everything below does not get established, that’s fine, just as long as the majority gets what it wants.

Three Branches Remain

I believe a three branch government is fine but I think we should replace one of the three branches with a new one. I want to keep the Executive branch, the Legislative branch but replace the Judicial branch with the Peoples’ branch. Let me explain below.

Executive Branch

While the Executive Branch (EB) is corrupt beyond measure, I believe the usefulness of the EB is still there. To put simply, the EB confirms the bills passed by the Legislative Branch (signing them into law) and then implements these laws into action. (Ex: Department of Transportation designs and builds a bridge using funding from a law; Department of Veterans Affairs provide services to veterans and their families as stipulated by law) The EB does the work of the government. That is why having all of these federal departments are good in my opinion but that leaves us with the corrupt Presidency. I believe the powers of the President should be reduced so that he simply signs bills into laws and goes to international events as an ambassador. No need to send troops to war without Congressional Declaration (not done since WWII), no need for executive orders that inflate his authority and violate the Constitution. So I largely want to keep the EB the same, just take away some of the President’s powers.

Not only do I support decreasing the powers of the President, I am also in favor of electing the President by Popular Vote instead of the Electoral College (EC). Why? Because the EC does not actually help small population states as many says it does. Presidential elections do not care about small population non-swing states during the campaign. Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Rhode Island and Vermont don’t get much publicity or rallies in the days and weeks leading up to the election so the people of those states are largely cut out of the process. Only swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina etc. matter and they are not exactly small population states (all in the top 10 actually). So you get a presidential election of 10-12 states instead of an election of 50 states. If you support this unequal system where certain states are more important than others, then you must be supportive of the presidential primary system too!

You know, that good ole system that puts unreasonable importance on Iowa and New Hampshire every four years. Think about the economic boost Iowa receives being the first place where presidential votes happen? How about California passes a law making their primary one week before Iowa giving CA that economic boost? What stops other states from moving their primary/caucus up in the election calendar in order to get more attention and money? It is an odd and unequal system that should be replaced. Every primary/caucus should happen on the same day to bring about greater equality.

Legislative Branch

The Legislative Branch (LB), like the EB, serves an important purpose. They write and pass the bills that will eventually go the President to sign. We need a competent LB that will write laws that are legal and follow common sense. The people do not have time to write and vote on these bills so representatives will do so on our behalf. The LB and the EB are like theory and action, you need both to work together to make it work. However, the structure of how we elect our politicians into Congress creates this ‘lesser of two evils’ dynamic where the People lose either way.

My vision is to change the way we elect politicians so that we aren’t left with just two mediocre political parties jockeying for power. The reason we have this two party system is largely because we have a winner take all voting system (Read Duverger’s Law for details). What that means is the politician who gets the second or third most votes (possibly the People’s champion not bought by special interests) won’t be elected into Congress, all you usually get is the Democrat or Republican bought by special interests. That usually happens because the politicians who raise the most money in their campaign tend to win and those same politicians are funded by the corrupt Oligarchs.

Therefore, the way to get away from the corrupt two party system is to have multiple politicians win a district, lets say 3 instead of 1. With 3 politicians from your district going to Congress, you can elect the corrupt Democrat, the corrupt Republican and a third possibly non-corrupt politician. This is called Proportional Representation and it is quite common in Europe where many countries have multi-party systems.

Believe me, multi-party systems can easily work here. We already have four main political ideologies in this country. We have the traditional Democrats and Republicans, then we have the Libertarian wing that are largely anti-abortion, but still pro-choice and go by the phrase “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”, and lastly we have the progressive/socialist wing popularized by Bernie Sanders and others. Each of these factions make up at least 15-20% of the country and yet we are merged into these dysfunctional two parties that does not work. Therefore, my new government will have multiple politicians represent the same district, elected with Rank Choice voting, in a multi-party system that doesn’t devolve into stupid trench warfare where the two sides just take pot shots at each other.

Judicial Branch

There are two primary reasons why I want to abolish the Judicial Branch (JB), mainly the US Supreme Court. 1. It is a undemocratic institution of government that has a history of bad decisions that go against Democracy and/or Morality and 2. It is not an effective check on the other two branches.

One only has to look at the bad decisions the Supreme Court (SC) has decided on to know it is a bad institution ready to be done with. Let’s go back historically: Dred Scott v. Sanford ruled against a fugitive slave who escaped his captivity essentially supporting the institution of Slavery. That decision may have been the Democratic majority at the time but it was morally reprehensible. Another one along a similar vein is Plessey v. Ferguson which instituted the “Separate but Equal” stuff, thereby allowing racist Jim Crow laws to be widespread. Also Korematsu v. US legalizing Japanese internment camps.

Now the Supreme Court is a largely immoral institution in the modern era too. Citizens United v. FEC essentially made political bribery legal by giving corporations and special interests the 1st amendment protection of giving money to politicians. Shelby County v. Holder essentially overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This happened in 2013, which is when voter ID laws and other voter suppression schemes started popping up. The Federal Government has little to no power to control the rules of local elections no matter how corrupt it is. Then finally the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Decisions past and present that are so abhorrent that the whole branch needs to go. Nominating “objective” people to this court gives them way too much power.

Solutions like expanding the court or doing term limits are not viable solutions because it doesn’t address the core weakness of the JB: it does not provide a good enough check on the other two branches of government. First off, the Executive Branch seemingly picks and chooses when to follow the Supreme Court’s decisions. Like the Trump Administration is following the court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but not following the court’s decision in banning Tiktok? So it doesn’t appear to be an effective check on the government if another branch can pick and choose which decisions to follow with little to no repercussions.

People’s Branch

What I would consider replacing the Judicial Branch with is the People’s Branch. This will be somewhat similar to the Ballot Proposition system we have in California. The idea is for a regular citizen to gather signatures and get his idea on the ballot for a up/down vote, avoiding the corrupt state house in Sacramento that will weaken and strip the idea down to the wheels. Instead, it will be a large counsel of people that will decide on what issues are most important to the People and put those issues up to a vote on a national level. This would make for a more effective check than what the Judicial Branch does.

Let’s use an extreme example. Hypothetically, what if the LB passes a bill making homicide legal and the EB signs it into law. What good is the Judicial Branch in this situation? We would have to wait for a legal case to make its way through the various courts, THEN the JB will have to discuss and make a decision. Even if it was fast-tracked, the JB would not be able to overturn the legal homicide law for months and by then, too many people would be dead.

Instead of waiting months for the SC to save us from destruction, we could implement this new branch that can call on a national vote within days. If a majority of the people vote against the new legal homicide law, then the law is overturned immediately and many lives would be saved in this hypothetical situation. I recognize printing paper ballots and organizing such feats in a matter of days is no small task but I know we can do it, just gotta streamline it and have the materials ready if such a moment happens.