Im enjoying this too, great ideas mostly. The idea of incresing the size of the House is a great idea (why didn’t iI think of that). I agree with Jeff and Kimstu on changing the Senate.
Phil_15:
I’ve never much bought into “term limits” as I thought that was the purpose of elections. Yes I know there is one for President, but the reasoning behind it is acceptable,imho.
Thanks for all the great responses so far folks! I’ve had to be away from the SDMB lately, so I apologize for being an absent OP. (What? You didn’t miss me?)
Just some quick comments:
Gilligan: I like the idea of approval voting as well. Can you post a link on declared strategy voting? I also like the idea of more accountability from federal employees, but I think the real problem we’re talking about with career civil servants is that, good, bad or indifferent they approach their jobs the same way non-government employees do. I think it always has to come down to better and more accountable management.
Kimstu: Interesting stuff as always. I like the sound of more focused and accessible representatives and smaller staffs, but I’m not sure the better accountability to local constituents would necessarily occur; with the US such a mobile society a fairly large percentage of most urban districts would be new to the district in every election.
National accountability makes suggestions such as Gadarene’s 50 “at large” senators attractive. (Although I’m picturing 25 national senatorial campaigns every three years and my brain is getting numb…)
Lemur866: Valid points. I think they speak to the heart of the political advertising question. Are political ads absolutely protected speech, or should they be subject (as we know they are already) to restrictions in the interest of fair elections?
Jeff_42, 2sense and Everyone else: Thanks for the great discussion; please continue.
Xenophon - I agree completely with what you said about gov’t employees. Also with better and more accountable managers. What I’m thinking is that we really only get a say at the very top level of this management. I’m not proposing that we start making cabinet posts and so on elected positions; just that we also should be thinking about the upper and middle management and not just the top. I’ll try to come up with some ideas and throw them in here.
Here is information on declared strategy voting. (This isn’t the first page of this site, but is the first to provide a useful description.) This page gives a quick summary of the same author’s work, with an example of how it works. DSV is similar to both preference voting and approval voting, but still retains “one person - one vote”. In a declared strategy system, voters don’t cast a vote, they cast a strategy of how their vote should be counted after calculating all the strategies cast by the other voters. I might cast the following strategy: “Assign my vote to the socialist candidate if and only if at least 20% of the other voters also assign their vote to her; otherwise, assign it to the liberal one.” Advantages: voters can name their true preferences without feeling their vote is wasted, (an advantage of preference voting); voters can “disapprove” of unwanted candidates by not selecting them at all in their strategies, (an advantage of approval voting.) Disadvantage: complicated and more difficult for the voters to understand.
The Center for Voting and Democracy that Kimstu linked to also has information on proportional representation.
Gadarene:
I think that while a mixed Senate would be better than what we have now, it would not be as good as a Senate that was elected entirely on a national basis. I am uncomfortable with the assumtion behind the phrase: “The Senator from the great state of California”. The legislators in a national government should represent the entire nation, not just those people in his/her district. The interests of all citizens should be the primary concern of elected officials. After all, everyone could be affected by the politician’s actions.
I should note that I believe that NO Senate would be better than your mixed Senate. I am unconvinced of the superiority of a bicameral system; however, I would certainly support electing the House on a national basis.
I have a copy of Daniel Lazare’s book. I find it both enjoyable and frustrating. While I learned a lot of stuff from it that I was unaware of ( Country vs Court, Jeremy Bentham’s misplaced support of the Constitution, et cetera… ), a lot of his arguments are insufficiently supported:
Phil_15:
I do not favor term limits.
They restrict the voice of the people.
– While I do not advocate a pure democracy, I do think that the burden of proof is on those who favor curtailing it.
They eliminate the “good” politicians with the bad.
– When ( or if ) a worthy representative is found, this rare gem will soon be thrown on the scrap pile with the dross.
Hi Opal
Knowledge is power.
– If power inevitably corrupts those who wield it, then a term limit does nothing to check this. If all of the elected officials are unschooled in how to do their jobs then they must rely on those who do have the knowhow. The power to enact laws would then devolve on these profesionals who are not subject to the oversight of the people.
How would we then rid ourselves of them when they inevitably became corrupt?
2sense said:
But isn’t the purpose of the House of Reps to provide representation for specific districts within the states? This is why we have two houses; the Senate is supposed to provide balance. Bills are passed through the House, undergoing examination and voting from representatives of differing localities, and then they are passed up to the Senate for approval. This is why the Senate is not proportional to population; it’s supposed to be a more nationally focused body, and to provide penultimate approval to laws which have been written with the viewpoints of each congressional district represented.
Now, you may argue in favor of doing away with local representation at all, but you’d have to illustrate why this would better represent all Americans than does the present system.
xenophon41:
My understanding is that the Senate is not technically an upper house. Bills can originate in either house and then be sent to the other but usually are introduced into both houses at the same time and if they are passed in both then representatives get together to iron out the amendments ( read: pork ) that have been added in each.
My personal reason for wanting national representation is that if the “honorable” Senator from Texas can use his/her power to pass laws that affect me then s/he ought to be concerned about my vote. Also, I feel that local representation is divisive ( our Senator ) and leads to pork ( as in bringing home the bacon ).
2sense: Yeah, Lazare’s opinions on majority rule–and the proposed reforms based on those opinions–are certainly the weakest part of the book. It’s valuable overall, though.
Kim:
I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss the practicality of donor anonymity just because it’s likely people could find ways around it (and you’re right; it is likely). Instead, I’d find a strong enough constitutional base for the ‘black box’ to render such–what’s the opposite of ‘anonymity’?–nonymous transactions illegal. And stick it to the transgressors. There’s no legitimate reason, within the auspices of our democratic system, why politicians need to know who their donors are…after all, from listening to the opponents of campaign finance reform, I know that no influence-peddling takes place right now. :rolleyes: I just wanna call their bluff. grin Admittedly, this is probably more of a thought experiment than anything else; if stringently enforced (like I said, think attorney-client privilege or doctor-patient confidentiality) it’d bring campaign finance to its knees, and very few people in power really want that to happen–no matter how much they rail against corrupt ‘special’ interests.
That being said, I like your idea–kinda like the assessment fees charged by non-profits on received donations–but I think it runs into more constitutional issues, actually, than ‘black box’-mandated anonymity. To me, it’s less violative of someone’s First Amendment rights to say, “You can give whatever you like, but in the interest of preempting corruption they can’t know it’s from you,” as opposed to “The more you give to the candidate you like, the more we’re going to make you give to the candidates you oppose.”
Truth be told, I’m just enamored of the idea of the politicians not knowing who to thank–and what that would do to the electoral process. There are justifiable concerns, I think, about making it illegal for someone to tell someone else that they made a donation; it smacks too much of suppression of speech to me, and while I know a rationale exists to forbid people (for example) to make threats against the president, I’m unsure whether the public would buy a similar argument made about a much more indirect threat to the health of the republic. But I can’t see how the ‘black box’ would work without legislated anonymity. Little help here? 
Kimstu and Jeff: Okay, the mixed-Senate plan. I’m not trashing Rhode Island here; hear me out! grin I appreciate the need to guard against tyranny of the majority, but I think that what’s been institutionalized via equal representation in the Senate is itself dangerously close to tyranny of the minority. Let me explain.
These united states of ours are wildly disparate in population, to a far greater degree than was the case when the Constitution was framed. The population ratio between the most and least populous state now is sixty-six to one; in the 1790s, it was ten to one. Yet each state is accorded equal representation in Congress’s upper house.
This is problematic because, as I’ve said, states with perhaps 20 percent of the aggregate population represent over 50 percent of Senate votes–unsurprisingly, states with large urban centers (California, New York, Illinois, Florida) are given far less representation per person, proportionally, than states like Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, or the Dakotas. Thus, whatever interests the populous states share which conflict with the interests of the less populous states are likely to be voted down or buried in the Senate–bad news for Californians, for example, trying to get a national health care bill passed, if Alaskans value their tax dollars over the minimal additional coverage such a bill would give them. Kimstu, this ties in with your thought about the need for a greater number of representatives to better serve a large population: if California’s population, for example, was instead divided equally between four separate states, it would have a much easier time achieving policy successes which were proportionate to its need. Do you see what I mean by tyranny of the minority? By virtue of being vast empty spaces (or small, sparsely populated spaces), certain states have the ability to wield power in the Senate (the more powerful of the two houses) far out of proportion to their population.
In fact, speaking of California splitting into four states (something which is expressly forbidden in the Constitution without the approval of–two-thirds?–of the union), Michael Lind once made an intriguing, and wholly impractical, proposal that the U.S. be redistricted into states containing populations of no more than 1 million people–that, in essence, every concentration of 1 million people deserved to be a state of its own. He wound up with a count of, I think, eighty-four. Imagine that flag.
Anyway, xenophon touched on a more compelling argument for a nationally-elected senate: national accountability. In fact, Jeff, you kinda brushed by this one:
By this logic, wouldn’t a deliberative body whose constituency was the country at large take an even longer and broader view of the national interest? Shouldn’t there be some politicians in the legislative branch who, as 2sense says, represent the entire nation first, without thinking about the benefits to a particular state?
Anyway, I’m tired and likely rambling; I hope I’ve addressed some of the questions y’all had.
I’m debating whether or not to introduce my idea about replacing the House of Representatives with a citizen’s assembly drawn by lot. (Seriously.) It’s certainly not practical, but it’s intriguing and maybe worth consideration. Oh, what the hell, this is too long a post anyway. Here’s a thumbnail:
My Wild Idea of National Governance
Quasi-parliamentary system, bicameral legislature
The Lower House:
[ul]
[li]200 seats – 100 allocated by state, 100 at-large[/li][li]Representatives are citizen appointees; there are no elections. Instead, any majority-age citizen having met civic competency requirements (demonstrated knowledge of constitution, history, current events, basic political theory–prep courses available for free) may submit their name to a candidate pool, to be eligible for appointment to the House.[/li][li]Appointments are drawn by lot; representatives serve two-year non-renewable terms. After leaving office, they may become eligible again in four years.[/li][li]Representatives are paid an income approximately equivalent to their actual vocation, with a $30,000 floor. (i.e., the annual stipend is no less than $30,000, even if the appointee’s usually homeless in a ditch)[/li][li]Terms are staggered; half the appointed representatives will always have a year of service under their belt.[/li][li]Representatives are given an intensive month-long tutorial/internship to become acquainted with the practical mechanics of political office.[/li][li]Each state is guaranteed two representatives drawn from their pool; the rest are completely random.[/li][/ul]
The Upper House
[ul]
[li]100 seats–50 by state, 50 at-large[/li][li]Career politicians[/li][li]‘Black box’ campaign finance for elections[/li][li]Party-list preference voting[/li][li]Votes of ‘no confidence’ possible for each representative[/li][/ul]
The Executive
[ul]
[li]Grand coalition representing each prevailing party[/li][li]Members appointed by citizen’s assembly from within citizen’s assembly.[/li][li]Rotating chairmanship[/li][li]Terms are indefinite; serve until vote of ‘no confidence’–en masse or particular–by any two of: the lower house, the upper house, the public at large.[/li][/ul]
The judiciary is largely the same as it is today.
It still needs some fleshing out. Go ahead, though–have at me. 
2sense:
You’re right. Although the Senate is not an upper house in the sense of approval of bills (I must’ve had too much to think when I wrote that), all revenue raising bills originate in the House and are then passed to the Senate.
Doesn’t having two senators from each state promote federal thinking, in the sense that (as Jeff_42 pointed out) they are more remote from their constituents? I can’t say positively that this was intended by the framers, but clearly one intent was to allow the states equal voices in legislative policy while allowing proportional influence over specific leglislation. Originally, senators were to be chosen by each state legislature rather than popularly elected into the Senate. The 17th Amendment changed the wording to “elected by the people thereof” in 1913.
In any case, I’m not arguing against less pork and better national focus; I’m just saying I believe that this inhomogeneous country has such disparate interests to be represented, the idea of doing away with congressional districts is disturbing.
Gad:
That’s some house, that Lower House. This is gonna take some chewin’ on. Initially, I’m not too happy about the loss of the citizenry’s voice in choosing their representatives in the Lower House. Perhaps if qualified candidates were elected into the candidate pool from each existing district… And I still think it would be unwise to do away entirely with proportional representation.
xeno: Hey, what could be more democratic than randomly elected representatives from a pool of qualified citizens–especially a pool into which everybody can submit their name? As for proportional representation in the lower house, I gotta believe that it would take care of itself: the 100 at-large appointees are going to be drawn from the national population; it’s more than likely that they’d compose a representative sample of national demographics. (Or at leat a representative sample of citizens who’ve submitted their names for consideration.) More populous states would have a greater chance to have their residents chosen for at-large bids.
OK, lets go back to the OP.
All these schemes for throwing out the constitution are all very well, but are totally impractical. You won’t be able to do that without starting another civil war. I’m serious. Yes, the constitution isn’t perfect, I agree that it can be changed. But you’ll repeal the constitution over my cold, dead body. And I’m not alone…hell, I’m an atheist, but do you have any idea how many people in this country regard the constitution as a sacred document? Amend, yes. Repeal, no.
Here’s the trouble with repealing the Senate, or changing the way Senators are elected. In order for there to be a constitutional change, an amendment must be passed by 3/4 of the states. Why would the smaller states cut their own throats? I don’t see how this can be accomplished under the rules for amending the constitution. Which means it can only be acomplished by extra-constitutional means…that is, at the point of a gun, civil war.
Now, how about increasing the number of representatives? Well, fine. But the reason our representatives have the largest number of constituents of all the capitalist democracies is that we are the largest capitalist democracy by a factor of two or three. There are 250 million people in the US (which makes for 250 states under Lind’s scheme, not 80). How many representatives can we have before the system crashes to the ground? If anything, we need to cut the number of representatives…
Political Speech. Yes, I can see that political speech is not an absolute good, it is a means to a good. But that doesn’t mean that we can just discount the consequences of restricting political speech, organizing, advertising, and petitioning the governement for a redress of greivances. You can’t ban all this and maintain a democracy. Political freedom is the cornerstone for all the other freedoms.
Why the big push for the repeal of federalism? Are you really so sure doing away with the states is such a good idea? At least now a congresshuman is beholden to his district and his state. With at-large elections they are beholden to the national parties. I realize that our system is different from most other modern democracies, but we are also a much larger, more diverse, more contrary bunch than they are. Again, how do you repeal federalism by constitutional means? We’re back to civil war again.
Look, maybe I’m biased in favor of the bill of rights. I’m an atheist, and if it were put to a popular vote I bet you could find 50% of the populace who’d be happy to crush me like a bug. The constitution is my protection against them. Some things are not open to popular vote. “Congress shall make no law…”, ah, the most beautiful words in all the Constitution, all the more beautiful because they are used so many times…
Well, Lemur, I think all of the posts take as a basic assumption that amendment of the Constitution would be the path to reform. I happen to agree with you that most of the Senate reforms mentioned would be quite unlikely to pass muster with 3/4 of the states. However, it’s entirely possible that some of the ideas expressed here could, through discussion and revision, be modified into practical, acceptable and useful reforms.
OK, I’m all in favor of hearing political reforms that might work and might have a chance of being enacted. I agree, let’s define “have a chance of beign enacted” as coming either from legislative action or constitutional amendment. But we can see that cutting the representation of smaller states can never happen by constitutional means, since it would require a constitutional amendment and that requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. So disenfranchising the smaller states isn’t a practical reform, it is a pipe-dream.
So are all the proposals to change our government to a parlimentary system, like everyone else has. Yes, I think a parlimentary system could work, there’s no real problem with it, if I were designing a country from scratch I’d probably want a parliamentary system. But that is not what we have, and to change it means scrapping the constitution. And everyone knows that we will never scrap the constitution unless there is a crisis so severe that we cannot imagine surviving any other way. We have a system that works…maybe a parliamentary system would work better (or perhaps not) but we are not going to change.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I get worried when people propose scrapping the constitution, and that’s what most of these proposals would require. If you want to propose a change to the constitution, tell me what the amendment would be…I’d favor a balanced budget amendment, maybe someone has a good proposal. But remember it’s an amendment, not a rewrite!
Hi Lemur866,
You are being too generous about the possibility of changing the make-up of the Senate. It would take more than 3/4 of the states to agree. Article 5 of the Constitution ( the amendment clause ) states that no state will be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. Therefore if 49 states agree that eliminating the Senate is a good idea but North Dakota balks at it, bingo- no change without extra-constitutional means. ( Actually there are arguments about amending the Constitution without reference to article 5. See my and Gadarene’s posts in this thread. )
Your comment that radical change was not the intent of the OP is right on though. Perhaps Gadarene could propose his government in a new thread.
I would be interested to know what type of practical change you would like to see. I think that a balanced budget amendment would not be a good idea. I believe that if people want a balanced budget ( I do ) then they should vote out the legislators who don’t encourage this. Creating a system that is even more rigid than the 1 we have would just lead to more stretching and twisting of the words of the Constitution than we already have.
Also, what happens if we get into a major war and need money right now?
I for 1 am well aware that many people consider the Constitution sacred.
Lemur: *Now, how about increasing the number of representatives? Well, fine. But the reason our representatives have the largest number of constituents of all the capitalist democracies is that we are the largest capitalist democracy by a factor of two or three. […] How many representatives can we have before the system crashes to the ground? If anything, we need to cut the number of representatives… *
Lemur, I don’t think you read my post carefully enough. It was pointed out there that most other mature democracies have lower houses with 600 or more members, and their governments are not exactly “crashing to the ground.” Yes, we will probably always have the largest citizen-to-rep ratio because we’re so populous, but there’s no evidence that increasing the number of reps into the 600’s or thereabouts, as proposed in the arguments I cited, will present insuperable logistic difficulties. And what on earth would your rationale be for cutting the current number?
*Political Speech. Yes, I can see that political speech is not an absolute good, it is a means to a good. But that doesn’t mean that we can just discount the consequences of restricting political speech, organizing, advertising, and petitioning the governement for a redress of greivances. You can’t ban all this and maintain a democracy. Political freedom is the cornerstone for all the other freedoms. *
Bear in mind, Lemur, that nobody is suggesting banning any kind of political speech, which as you rightly say is the kind that needs most protection. Attempting to stifle someone’s political message would indeed be unconstitutional. What we’re talking about is restraining the tidal wave of political advertising from candidates with lots of money that tends to stifle other candidates’ political messages. Bear in mind that all the suggestions for restricting campaigning also provide for publicly funded (and in most cases, some privately funded) fora to guarantee that the candidates’ views will be expressed.
To use a homely analogy, while it would be unconstitutional to prohibit you from speaking in a public assembly, if you brought in a megaphone and kept yelling through it so that it was hard to hear anybody but you, it wouldn’t necessarily be unconstitutional to take your megaphone away. Freedom of speech doesn’t imply freedom to drown out all competing speech, and expensive advertising blitzes are mostly a way for candidates with more money to drown out their opponents.
Gadarene (on making the Senate more representative): *I appreciate the need to guard against tyranny of the majority, but I think that what’s been institutionalized via equal representation in the Senate is itself dangerously close to tyranny of the minority. […] These united states of ours are wildly disparate in population, to a far greater degree than was the case when the Constitution was framed. The population ratio between the most and least populous state now is sixty-six to one; in the 1790s, it was ten to one. Yet each state is accorded equal representation in Congress’s upper house. This is problematic because, as I’ve said, states with perhaps 20 percent of the aggregate population represent over 50 percent of Senate votes–unsurprisingly, states with large urban centers (California, New York, Illinois, Florida) are given far less representation per person, proportionally, than states like Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, or the Dakotas. Thus, whatever interests the populous states share which conflict with the interests of the less populous states are likely to be voted down or buried in the Senate […] By virtue of being vast empty spaces (or small, sparsely populated spaces), certain states have the ability to wield power in the Senate (the more powerful of the two houses) far out of proportion to their population. *
No argument on those points, but this implies, as I noted earlier, a very heavily federalized attitude towards national government. You are speaking of Senate representation as being useful or fair only insofar as it proportionately reflects the population as a whole. But we’ve always had a somewhat anti-federalist, “confederation”-type view of the states which attaches importance to their maintaining a good deal of autonomy and meeting on an equal footing in the upper chamber as co-participants in a union, not just as arbitrary provincial subdivisions of the federal state. To argue successfully for changing the Senate, you will first have to make a convincing case for “de-anti-federalizing” the position of the states, which I’m quite willing to listen to.
We don’t really need North Dakota anyway, do we
:: ducks from the debris being flung by North Dakotans everywhere::
Zev Steinhardt
No we don’t.
We get along just fine without North North Dakota ( AKA Canada ). 
:: ducks even heavier batch of debris ::
Regarding size of the Congress, a site on design of electoral systems (for emerging or reforming countries) includes a reference on appropriate parliamentary size
http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/es/esc03/default.htm
in which the author examines actual houses around the world, arrives at a simplified rule that is # of members = the cube root of raw population (If US population is 280 million, this makes for 654 members); and then he/she refines it to a more fine-tunedcount, the cube root of [2*(the working-age population)*(the literacy rate)] which I guess would go to six-hundred-something, too.
[ul]
[li]Presidential Debates - Statute mandating a series of debates for all candidates able to get onto the ballot in, say, 30 states. This might require a constitutional amendment, in view of separation of powers issues.[/li][li]Ballot Access for Presidential Election - Need a Constitutional Amendment standardizing the requirement for appearing on Presidential election ballots so that the big parties can’t create byzantine rules to keep third (or fourth or fifth) parties off the ballots in individual states. Let’s say a candidate who can get x% of registered voters in each state to sign a petition is automatically qualified to appear on the ballot. Period.[/li][li]Runoffs in Presidential Elections - Expensive, but worth it. If no candidate wins a majority, there is a runoff between the top two vote-getters. This would allow people to truly vote their conscience in the first round. Let’s bend reality and say I’m a big Nader fan, but am afraid to vote for him, because it might allow Bush to win the election with a plurality of votes. In this system, not a problem. I can vote for Nader in the first round, and then, if need be, vote for Gore in a runoff with Bush. Of course, this would require…[/li][li]Elimination of the Electoral College - Or else, the Electoral College would only come into play in the second phase of a two phase election process.[/ul][/li]I believe the above changes would assure that new parties get access to the ballots, without allowing them to skew the election in such a way as to allow a candidate with 35% of the vote win a Presidential election.
OK, why don’t I agree with increasing the size of the house? Well, because it is a non-issue. Sure, maybe it might be better, maybe not, but it is not going to improve government…or if it does it will only be a marginal improvement. If I were going to list the political problems facing America today, the ratio of representatives to electorate would be #73,472, right after replacing the broken stop sign on the corner of 4th and Elm streets in Ogden Utah.
Let’s see…what’s a very simple idea that can be easily explained and easily implemented that would have a major impact on people’s lives…How about increasing the standard deduction on income tax from ~$5000 to ~$10,000? It’s crazy that people making minimum wage have to pay income tax that early. Smooth, easy, seemless, fair…I like it. And we will lose only a few pennies in tax revenues, help low income workers without subsidizing them…the more I think about it the better it sounds.
Wait, I thougt of a few more things. First, changing the constitution. Well, we do have a provision for radically rewriting the constitution…holding a constitutional convention. I can’t quite recall what it would take to hold a constitutional convention, I believe that all it takes is ratification of 3/4 or the states and suddenly all bets are off…we can turn North Dakota into a penal colony or whatever if enough states ratify the new constitution. The problem arises when some of the states denounce the new constitution as the work of Satan and declare they will never knuckle under to the criminals who wrote it. What then…civil war?
I seriously think this would be a recipe for disaster. There will be a sizable minority in the country who would never consider the new constitution to be legitimate…imagine the militia movement hundreds of times stronger…well, depending on what the new constitution said I might have to join them. And I hate wandering around in the woods, I hate loud noises, and I hate missing meals. So maybe it’s for the best if we skip it, OK?
And one last thing…political speech. I’ve got a better idea than public financing of campaigns. We have thousands of public radio and TV stations in this country right? Well, what makes them public? I say, every candidate who collects X signitures from Y states by Z time will be given several hours of free air time on public broadcasting to put out whatever they wish. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that anyone will watch.
It also annoys me people think that if only we could change the financing laws or tweak the rules then their pet causes would triumph once we defeated the special interests. Maybe those pet causes never win because the majority of people in this country don’t agree with them. For instance, conservatives are convinced that a majority wants to repeal abortion and if only we could change the supreme court we could do it. But that wouldn’t happen, even if we overturned Roe v. Wade because suddenly all the politicians who used to support enacting anti-abortion laws suddenly evaporate…either they will shut up or be voted out of office.
The point is that the process isn’t the problem. If enough people want a change it will happen. The fact that we don’t have change doesn’t mean the process is broken, it means that most people don’t want change.