You can make 3 permanent changes to the way your country is run--which 3?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Do you want Trump for six years?
How about a two year time, and a person may be elected three times?

22

First of all, the current system incentives Presidential candidates to mostly ignore any state that isn’t a battleground, regardless of size, since the people living there can’t impact the outcome of the election with their vote. Whereas, with a one-person, one-vote system, any state can potential provide enough votes to put a candidate over the top, so every state matters.

Furthermore, I think this assumes that those large states will vote as monolithic units, or at least that it’s easier to win over large portions of a state than to win over large portions of a demographic group that is spread across the country. But this is false, particularly in the age of modern media where a candidate’s speeches can be transmitted live to the whole country.

If, for example, Trump won white male farmers in Texas and white male farmers in California, how come he only gets to count the ones in Texas? If Clinton won non-white city-dwellers in Texas and non-white city-dwellers in California, how come she only gets to count the ones in California? And so forth.

That’s the whole problem with the electoral college in a nutshell. It supposedly serves to prevent the majority from dominating the minority (at least, that’s the only half-way decent defense of it I’ve ever heard), but it’s only effective at preventing California and Texas from dominating over Wyoming and Vermont, while actually helps cement the political dominance of white Americans over minorities. It ignores the actual political divisions and the actual inequalities in our country, in favor of protecting us from some imaginary monolithic California or monolithic Texas. We’d be better off without it.

23

Parliamentary question time with questions from the public gallery…
'that measure isn’t really going to benefit the average tax-payer, is it?" “why yes, it is” POOF! member disappears. Yep, that’d work. :smiley:

24

Term limits for House, Senate, and SCOTUS Justices.

25

I should add that my initial reaction to the OP, before reading any of the responses, was “Ditch the Electoral College, and I don’t even need the other two changes.” I consider it a serious fundamental flaw in our democracy. (I probably wouldn’t actually ditch the option to make two more changes, but the choices there are less obvious to me. Maybe some sort of campaign finance reform?)

There are a lot of problems with what’s happening in this country that don’t have a simple fix. Such as people being willing to believe the President’s lies and his demonization of the mainstream media, because he takes their side on cultural issues, and his own party being unwilling to call him on it when they know he’s lying, because to do so is political suicide. If too many people stop believing the press when it reports the truth, then we lose a critical check against abuse of power by our political leaders. But hell if I know what to do about it. I can’t wave a wand and make people care about the truth.

For what it’s worth, I think there are plenty of Republicans (outside of politics) who do care when the President lies, and on the flip side there are plenty of Democrats who would be too trusting of a dishonest President who spoke fiercely in defense of their cultural viewpoint. But the people in power have an incentive to say nothing to preserve their own power. I’m not sure how to make our democracy more resistant to a demagoguery. Maybe if there’s enough of an eventual backlash against Trump, politicians will be less willing to go along with it next time. I don’t know.

26

Not giving this a lot of thought, but here goes:

  1. Abolish EC
  2. 5-10 year terms for judges, including USSC. No lifetime appointments
  3. Replace 2-per State rule for Senators. Make it 2 per state, minimum, then +1 for every, say, 3 million people. (3 million is a guesstimate… haven’t done the math on this yet, but go with the general idea.)
27

Arkansas always votes Republican for President, despite sometimes electing Democrats to the House, Senate, and state positions.

28
  1. Abolish the Electoral College.
  2. Federal term limits for every office, including judges.
  3. People have already hit a number of my choices, so how about a 10 year ban on working for, representing in any way, advising, lobbying, speaking to, etc. any group, firm, company or organization that lobbies the Federal Government, either singly or as a group. Part Two of the change would be the reverse: no person who has ever worked for, etc. can be appointed/elected to a Federal position unless they have been clear of said association for 10 years.
29
  1. 15 year term limits for SCOTUS judges
  2. No more unrelated riders in bills. You want money for pet project X? Develop a bill that is encompasses it, not stick it in a bill for raising disaster relief funds because you think that bill is more likely to pass
  3. The US joins the rest of the world and mandates paid maternity and paid sick leave. If all but two other countries can figure out how to pay for maternity leave, we can too. Ditto sick leave
30

I have long felt we should have some sort of national referendum, such that any representative (Senate/House) must pass approval of the other 49 states for any terms beyond their first. If a state insists on electing a reprehensible (to the rest of the country) representative, the national referendum overrides them, and they must do without representation in that seat until the next scheduled election.

I also feel that we should take a person’s income or net worth into account during crime sentencing. I’ll note here I’m fairly well off, so this could have a considerable negative effect on me. I argue (at a regular poker game) that if those of us in the top [small single digit %] feel we’re entitled to and are worth those rewards from society, then society has every right to demand behavior from us that matches that level. If Joe average screws up on his taxes, he should get a reasonable fine. If one of us screws up, the response should be draconian and severe. If we’re that much smarter/better, then we damned well ought to prove it. If a CEO receives 300 times the median income, his sentence for a crime should use the same multiplier. I realize there needs to be a ceiling and a floor to this. We don’t want a destitute homeless guy fined a quarter for murder, nor do we want a billionaire CEO executed for an illegal lane change. But it seems like we should tie expected behavior to net compensation.

Third, I despise dynasties. I’ve long claimed we will never truly be free until the last Clinton is strangled in the entrails of the last Bush* – and in their death throes they collapse onto the grave of the last Kennedy. I would change the laws such that no one can hold a federal or state elected office (Senate/rep/Potus/etc.) if any relative closer than cousin has held office at that level. Marriage or blood – doesn’t matter.

*Apologies to Mr Diderot for this.

31

  1. All elections are fully publicly funded.

  2. Medicare for all.

  3. All Income over $500 Million is taxed at 90%.

32

  1. The (Australian, but this would work in the US too) Senate is turned into an actual representative house of review. That is, instead of being elected, Senators are chosen by lot from the available applicants. The application process consists of “get the signatures of 50 adult citizens to nominate you”

  2. The constitution is amended such that it is illegal to deny any person the right to seek asylum in this country, to intercept them in international waters for the purpose of preventing them from seeking asylum, or to deport or detain them until a decision (whose grounds must be clearly outlined to the applicant, and must be applied impartially) has been made

  3. Australia becomes a Republic under the minimalist model (no change apart from removing the “Queens’ Representative” position). The position of Governor General is replaced by a council of Elders, one from each State or Territory, appointed by the Indigenous communities of each state. The Council has the same powers as the current GG - ie, 99% symbolic

33

[ul][li]Balanced budget amendment to the Constitution - the budget must be in balance except by two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.[/ul][/li]
[ul][li]Line item veto for the President, which can be overridden by the same two-thirds majority in both houses. [/ul][/li]
[ul][li]The death penalty for first- and second-degree murder or attempted murder, forcible rape or attempted rape, arson resulting in death or serious injury, second offense drunk or impaired driving resulting in death or serious injury, and telemarketers. [/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan

34

  1. Universal basic income

  2. Minimum budget for Health and Education it can never go below

  3. Proportional Representation Government

35

I’ve never understood the love for term limits. Being an effective politician is just as much a skill as any other, and people get better at the longer they do it. I know America has a myth of the ‘citizen legislator’, but it hasn’t really worked out much. Trump, Ventura, Carter to some extent - you need people who know how to do the job, and the job of a politician is different than the job of a CEO, lawyer, plumber, etc. And of course, the GOP has already turned most of the writing of legislation over to ALEC, Heritage and other completely unaccountable outside groups - that would only get worse.

My three:
[ol]
[li] Electoral college gone/reformed in some way. Empty land doesn’t need to vote. Reform possibilities: [/li][ul]
[li]Increase the size of the House [/li][li]set a minimum population size for states (merge the Dakotas, create Wytah (WY/UT) [/li][li]set a maximum population (split CA, TX, maybe NY or FL).[/li][/ul]
[li] Some sort of Federal judge limit. 10/20 years, retire at 75, not sure what.[/li][li] Public funding of elections. Get some not too-easily attainable number of signatures, you’re in. Everyone gets the same dollars, except the incumbent who receives something less (she is running on her record, that should count for 10-50% of the funding).[/li][/ol]

36

I’m surprised no one from the US has mentioned an independent electoral system across State and Federal levels. The fact you allow politicians so much leeway in how elections are held/mapped/determined is stupefying.

37

For Spain:

  1. More federal. We’re actually headed that way but it’s kind of a “don’t look here” way, I think it should have been done openly from the start. The negotiations and “devolving of management” involved might have been somewhat cleaner that way.

  2. If any of the regions does things which make it harder to share and share alike with the rest, they get the book thrown at whether the specific piece of idiocy was specifically banned or not. I’m thinking of things such as providing cards for the UHC system which don’t include the bearer’s UHC number, or public schools at different levels refusing to provide transcripts in Spanish.

  3. Those golden pensions politicians get? Remove them. Highest pension someone can get from the universal pension system should be the same whether they’ve been such an incredibly good street sweeper they actually had a good salary, or president of the government. And you can’t start getting it until you’re retired from everything else. And it’s treated like any other income: if you were an MP from age 20-30 and retire at 65 from being a post office package sorter, your pension gets calculated on your last N years (whatever N happens to be at the time, they keep changing it), which yeah, in this case would mean it gets calculated on the salary of a post office package sorter. And if you retire from everything at age 30, well, the usual pre-retirement penalties apply! (Hope you like small percentiles).

38

If I may propose something from the peanut gallery, try electoral districts which are linked to other administrative areas. End gerrymandering (that’s what it’s called, I think? The constant redrawing of districts to manipulate results?).

39

  1. I would make it illegal to profit from certain types of business. So you can make weapons,but you have to be a not-for-profit company. The same restriction would be placed on healthcare and pharmaceuticals. So you can run a commercial company and be a government contractor, but you can not subject killing or life-saving technologies to the pressures of a profit making enterprise.

  2. I would create a public fund to be divided equally among all candidates for public office. All outside spending on political campaigns would be strictly forbidden. Not dark money either, and no “PACs” (nominally unrelated organizations which advertise for the candidate or their issues,or against the competition.)

  3. Insist upon plain-language laws,written to be understood by the average person. All such laws to be presented for public review at least 60 days before they can be voted on by public officials at any level.

40

In PA our current districts were designed by the courts and we’re looking at a more California system which is fairly independent so things are changing and in flux right now. If it hadn’t been for that I may have made it one of mine.