Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Random, dashed-off thoughts on the election process

What if we could elect people every day? Micro-elections, if you will? Instead of a huge shebang that took attention away from the issues, every day a person would evaluate their elected officials and their decisions and decide if they were happy or not. Over time, that cumulative impression could result in an election, if, say, "disapproval" votes reached a certain percent. And people would throw their names into the hat to replace them whenever they felt like it--"Don't like how Steve's doing? Vote him down this month and I'll run for his spot when the election comes!"

I don't know, it's just a thought. I'm tired of how ridiculous elections are. Things either don't get done during that time, or get done without anyone paying attention to them. And can a person who has to focus a great deal of energy on re-election really make informed, proper decisions?

Maybe there could be a pool of politicians, and elected officials would be chosen from that pool. To get into the pool you'd just have to meet certain criteria (education, experience)--it'd be open to anyone, regardless of how much campaign money they had. People in the pool would put out opinion statements that would be published for them, with no frills. No mudslinging would be allowed. And if people liked someone in the pool better than their current elected official, they could start voting that official down and voting that pool guy up.

Or something else. Whatever. It just seems like technology could seriously level the playing field if we'd let it.

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