This is the most popular, and seventh most important issue for an omnibus Constitutional Amendment for electoral reform and clean government—one that should be wildly-popular because it is designed to be that way. Here is a link to the thread on the first six.
On aGREATER.US where independents’, liberals’, and conservatives’ opinions are given equal weight the #1 top rated idea with a 98 percent positive approval rating is No Political Party Shall Be Privileged. We’ll be parsing out the various meanings of this statement one at a time, and in priority order over the coming week’s columns.
The most important privilege the two privileged parties must surrender is their private primaries being funded by taxpayers. This has been a popular subject on IVN. How could we have let this happen?! It’s wrong for every reason. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The clause in our Amendment should read something like this, “All primary elections for the House, Senate, and President/Vice President must be open to all registered voters. If a party wishes to hold a pre-primary election to decide who in their party can attempt to qualify to be on the primary ballot they must do so at their own expense.”
Now, let’s not forget that the second most important electoral reform is to Ban Archaic Single Mark Ballots in favor of Approval Voting (AV). In AV you vote for all of the candidates you would “approve” of winning the election. This would immediately catapult many third party national candidates to mainstream status because of Federal matching funds. Why? Independents would no longer be afraid of 'wasting' their vote—everyone can vote for all the candidates of which they approve.
Now, much discussion has been had on IVN about Top-Two or Top-Four, I’ll make the case at a later date for Top-Nine, but we’ll leave this discussion for later. One thing is for sure, no privileged party or parties should be deciding this for us—independents. There are more of us than either Democrats or Republicans.
In the coming weeks we will parse out the full meaning of No Political Party Shall Be Privileged in the topics of Ballot Access, Debates, Revolving Door, and the Federal Election Commission or what should replace it.
Do you think Open Primaries should be part of No Political Party Shall Be Privileged in an omnibus Constitution Amendment for clean government and electoral reform?