first. East (from Maine to DC and over to Pennsylvania), South (all the usual suspects, including Texas), Midwest (from Ohio to Kansas and the Dakotas) and the West (from the Rockies to the Pacific).
This way, the candidates can save time and money by concentrating themselves in just one area of the country at a time. Many of these regions share similar issues (the Midwest has water it’s trying to keep clean, the West would like that water, the East desperately needs better mass transit, and the South, they’d like more NASCAR tracks). This way, everyone gets heard.
And just so we don’t have to listen to a bunch of whining from Iowa and New Hampshire, we’ll let them open their polls an hour ahead of everyone else so they can say they were “first.”
5.Limit the Election Season to Four Months for the Primaries, and Two Months for General Election.
In Great Britain, the total length of the campaign for prime minister and parliament is three to four weeks. In Canada it’s four to five weeks. In Slovakia it’s 15 days.
Here in the U.S., it lasts almost as long as the Ming Dynasty. Months upon months have now turned into years upon years. By the time of the election, the public has grown hair in suspicious places and the pundits are down to discussing the candidates’ socks.
The 2008 election officially began in 2006, and by the time we elect a new president on November 4, more than 2 million people will have died in the United States since the campaign season began. That’s a lot of citizens who went to their graves getting all worked up about who they were going to vote for and yet never had the chance to have a say. Is that fair?
We need to set limits on the length of our campaign season. I propose we take the four regional primaries I’ve suggested and, with one month per region for the candidates to campaign in, we should know who the nominees are after just four months. No campaigning can begin until this primary season has started.
Then, after the two (and someday, hopefully more) parties’ candidates are chosen, it’s 8 weeks to barnstorm the country. Hold a debate every two weeks during those 8 weeks. That should tell us all that we need to know.
If we need more time than that to decide, then we’ve got bigger problems than this one.
6.Public Financing, Free Air Time, and Spending Limits for All Politicians.
By the end of 2007, a full ten months before the election, the entire pool of U.S. presidential candidates had raised MORE THAN A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS. Barack Obama alone has now raised a record $287 million as of late June 2008; McCain had raised $119 million and borrowed another $39 million. And they still had 4 months until Election Day. These guys are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected to a job in which they make $400,000 a year.
Compare this to Slovakia, where presidential candidates are limited to spending 4 million Slovak crowns (about $210,000). Or Britain, where parties can’t spend more than a total of £19.38 million ($38.5 million) but usually spend far less. Or France, where spending is capped at $13.7 million ($21.6 million) for candidates in the first ballot and $18.3 million ($28.9 million) for those in the second ballot. Same goes for Ireland. And Canada. And . . . well, you get the idea. They don’t turn their elections into financial free-for-alls like we do.
And in many of these countries, the public foots the bill for a big chunk of the limited amount of money they do spend. For instance, in Canada if a candidate gets at least 10 percent of the entire vote, he or she is reimbursed for 60 percent of expenses. In France, if a candidate receives more than 5 percent of the vote in the first ballot, they are reimbursed for 50 percent of their spending.
With all these caps and limitations, how do candidates get the word out? What with advertising so darn expensive, how can they actually pay for all their ads? After all, during a one-month period in
This way, the candidates can save time and money by concentrating themselves in just one area of the country at a time. Many of these regions share similar issues (the Midwest has water it’s trying to keep clean, the West would like that water, the East desperately needs better mass transit, and the South, they’d like more NASCAR tracks). This way, everyone gets heard.
And just so we don’t have to listen to a bunch of whining from Iowa and New Hampshire, we’ll let them open their polls an hour ahead of everyone else so they can say they were “first.”
5.Limit the Election Season to Four Months for the Primaries, and Two Months for General Election.
In Great Britain, the total length of the campaign for prime minister and parliament is three to four weeks. In Canada it’s four to five weeks. In Slovakia it’s 15 days.
Here in the U.S., it lasts almost as long as the Ming Dynasty. Months upon months have now turned into years upon years. By the time of the election, the public has grown hair in suspicious places and the pundits are down to discussing the candidates’ socks.
The 2008 election officially began in 2006, and by the time we elect a new president on November 4, more than 2 million people will have died in the United States since the campaign season began. That’s a lot of citizens who went to their graves getting all worked up about who they were going to vote for and yet never had the chance to have a say. Is that fair?
We need to set limits on the length of our campaign season. I propose we take the four regional primaries I’ve suggested and, with one month per region for the candidates to campaign in, we should know who the nominees are after just four months. No campaigning can begin until this primary season has started.
Then, after the two (and someday, hopefully more) parties’ candidates are chosen, it’s 8 weeks to barnstorm the country. Hold a debate every two weeks during those 8 weeks. That should tell us all that we need to know.
If we need more time than that to decide, then we’ve got bigger problems than this one.
6.Public Financing, Free Air Time, and Spending Limits for All Politicians.
By the end of 2007, a full ten months before the election, the entire pool of U.S. presidential candidates had raised MORE THAN A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS. Barack Obama alone has now raised a record $287 million as of late June 2008; McCain had raised $119 million and borrowed another $39 million. And they still had 4 months until Election Day. These guys are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected to a job in which they make $400,000 a year.
Compare this to Slovakia, where presidential candidates are limited to spending 4 million Slovak crowns (about $210,000). Or Britain, where parties can’t spend more than a total of £19.38 million ($38.5 million) but usually spend far less. Or France, where spending is capped at $13.7 million ($21.6 million) for candidates in the first ballot and $18.3 million ($28.9 million) for those in the second ballot. Same goes for Ireland. And Canada. And . . . well, you get the idea. They don’t turn their elections into financial free-for-alls like we do.
And in many of these countries, the public foots the bill for a big chunk of the limited amount of money they do spend. For instance, in Canada if a candidate gets at least 10 percent of the entire vote, he or she is reimbursed for 60 percent of expenses. In France, if a candidate receives more than 5 percent of the vote in the first ballot, they are reimbursed for 50 percent of their spending.
With all these caps and limitations, how do candidates get the word out? What with advertising so darn expensive, how can they actually pay for all their ads? After all, during a one-month period in
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