I agree, it’s way too easy for someone to game this system. I’d do it the other way: make voting in-person as extremely accessible as possible. Have adequate voting centers everywhere. Let early voting begin as soon as 1 month in advance of Election Day. Photo IDs would be required, but easy to obtain.
And the votes would be counted the way some democracies do it: All paper ballots. The ballots are held up and counted publicly by hand in front of cameras and audiences for all to see: “Donald Trump, 1 vote!” (holds up next ballot): “Kamala Harris, 1 vote!”
Legislate that there shall by 1 Supreme Court seat per district, and expand the court as necessary to fill this.
All candidates to federal elected office shall pass the same security and criminal background investigation as is required for military officers holding a SECRET clearance. Likewise for positions appointed by Congress.
If these changes are made, I’m confident that the rest of my desired changes will get enacted.
Contrary to this, declare all Trump-branded real estate important historical artefacts, so that, in perpetuity, the Trump family has to go through all kinds of red tape any time they want to make any changes to their properties.
And then deny them permission, every single time. Let their buildings rot.
Every civilized democracy on earth provides sufficient funding to support a robust system of public broadcasting, and they don’t find that scary at all. On a comparative per-capita basis, the US provides almost no public funding to its public broadcasters, who have to run around like paupers pleading for private donations. And Republicans are always trying to shut down what very little public funding the public broadcasters do receive. The Nordic countries even subsidize newspapers.
The situation has become even worse with the decline of journalism in commercial broadcasting. The days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow are long gone, the decline helped along by dreck like 24-hour cable “news”. CNN has crap journalism, Fox “News” has none at all. The result is an epidemic of low-information morons who nevertheless can and do vote, but whose opinions have been shaped by self-serving lies and propagandizing. The current Republican presidential campaign is so comically ridiculous that it’s become an absurd self-parody, the constant butt of jokes on late-night TV, yet nearly half the nation is happy to vote for them. It boggles the mind.
Thanks for fleshing that out. I’ve lived in the US my whole life, and apart from watching Monty Python in BBC reruns I have no idea how public broadcasting works elsewhere.
So, I have two followup questions:
Are public news networks in civilized democracies free to criticize the government without repercussions? I imagine there’s a good deal of internal debate over what gets covered and how to keep that coverage even-handed.
Do these networks retain a significant share of the public’s attention in today’s fragmented media world? A state-funded network might be perfectly fair and do an admirable job of covering all the important issues, but if 99% of the population is paying attention to non-public news sources skewed to their POVs it won’t help at all.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I’d mandate that for the Second Amendment, “shall not be infringed” means shall not be infringed. If that’s intolerable, amend the constitution. In balance, I would submit for ratification an amendment making the federal constitution easier to amend; a simple majority of the federal House and Senate, and a two-third majority of the states. That would have to pass by the old rules first though.
Really at this point we ought to abandon the whole “local solar noon equals 12:00 PM” thing and just go with a global Zulu time. When stuff opens and closes is pretty much an arbitrary number already.
All we really need is a sane Supreme Court. Reverse Heller and a couple of others and get high-capacity magazines and semiautomatic rifles built on military frames off the streets. You want a musket? Knock yourself out. STRICT Originalism!
Should the Constitution include a manifesto or thesis on the nature of democracy and therefore what fundamental principles it aims to uphold? Right now we basically have the Bill of Rights, what can be read between the lines by the Supreme Court, and traditions without official standing like the Declaration of Independence.
That would just be an arbitrary abuse of power directed against people because I don’t like them.
I’d charge the Trumps and their minions with the crimes they committed, give them all fair trials, and then send them to prison - all in accordance with the law.
By that standard it would be all too easy for the federal government to assume absolute authority to censor this newfangled “internet” thing.
Also, I am disturbed by how blithely people talk about “reversing” Supreme Court decisions. Rulings should have a little more permanency than the latest House elections.
FYI - I believe the fastest the SC has reversed itself was the cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance being mandatory in school. IIRC 3 years between decisions.
The risk of government controlling the news is well understood and therefore measures are taken to ensure the independence of public media. In Canada, for instance, these are the opening paragraphs of how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation describes its governance (bolding mine):
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is the national public broadcasting service. It belongs to all Canadians and is accountable to them through Parliament. Its mandate is defined in the Broadcasting Act; by that mandate it is judged.
The Corporation enjoys administrative and programming independence of political or governmental direction to permit it to discharge the role assigned to it within the Canadian broadcasting system. The autonomy of the Corporation is assured through the authority conferred by Parliament upon its President and the other Directors who act as Parliament’s ‘trustees’ on behalf of the public to define and to guard the public interest and to ensure the CBC’s mandate is fulfilled. This principle of ‘arm’s length’ relationship between the CBC and government is critical to the Corporation’s independence.
At any rate, I’ve seen the CBC go after the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, and the NDP in equal measure, regardless of who is in power. Here, for instance, just at random, is a CBC opinion piece critical of the present government.
You may be interested in this chart of per-capita public spending on public broadcasting among industrialized countries. The average is $82 per resident. The US spends $3, making it dead last by a large margin.
I don’t have a sufficient range of solid numbers at hand to authoritatively answer that question, but I’ll try to answer it anecdotally again using Canada as an example. My impression is that Canadian voters are generally better informed than their American counterparts. This is reflected in generally more sane and much less divisive politics and the relative absence of extremism, and I think the CBC plays a significant role in that. Conversely, when a Fox News wannabe right-wing cable network called the Sun News Network tried to establish itself here, it was widely ridiculed and found it very difficult to get any traction, and soon shut down.
While CBC Television is only partially subsidized and relies on commercials for part of its revenue, CBC Radio is fully funded and commercial-free, and provides solid coverage from coast to coast and in remote areas through a network of stations and relay transmitters. When I’ve driven long distances, when one CBC signal starts to fade out I’ve always been able to get another one. It’s an excellent source of news, documentaries, and intelligent discussions. Together, CBC Television and CBC Radio are widely viewed as a national resource and unifying influence.
I’m channeling David Warner from Time Bandits. If I were creating the world I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One!
I start with universal health care, eight o’clock, Day One!
Day two? pistols and semi-auto rifles are right out.
Day three, abortion rights, LBGTQ rights, expansion of welfare.
Day four, immigration. We need immigrants, we need them to be legal, we need them to work and support themselves.
Thanks again for the detailed reply! What you’re describing really is hard to imagine on this side of the border.
Quoting from CBC:
I’m sure there are statutory measures guaranteeing this, but I wonder how similar measures would stand up in the US if one party simply said, “But what if we didn’t?” What if an administration simply decided they didn’t like US public broadcasting’s approach and took control?
For instance, the US Federal Reserve has always operated independently of political control, but Trump has made noise about exerting his influence upon it if re-elected, and I’m not sure what’s in place (if anything) to stop him.
Chickens and eggs come to mind. Are Canadian voters better informed because the CBC is well-funded and neutral, or is the CBC well-funded and neutral because Canadian voters better informed?
Either way, it’s really hard for this American to imagine it working the same way down here. We could increase funding for public broadcasting tenfold to bring it into line with Canada, but that doesn’t guarantee anyone would pay attention to it. Maybe if the extra funding let it carry some NFL games …
Absolutely true that there’s a chicken-and-egg or Catch-22 aspect to this. I’m not sure how one would kick-start this process. But surely having public broadcaster that was well-funded and known for consistently great quality and informative programming would be a start. Certainly there would still be citizens who would prefer to watch sports or garbage “reality” shows, but a public broadcaster with a strong presence might go a long way to reducing their numbers.
Yes, the independence of the CBC is protected by law. And this is another chicken-and-egg situation. Americans have long had a strong distrust of government going all the way back to the Founders, and unfortunately events in recent history – all of them related to Trump – appear to prove that distrust to be justified, since Trump not only violates norms but thinks nothing of violating laws, too. Of course the answer to the problems caused by having a witless and immoral scoundrel in power is not to elect such criminals in the first place.
