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[Pyru]

Pyru

Keeping elections honest

I'd like to propose some (extra) rules for keeping elections - all elections - honest. I'll try to give all of my examples related to the US elections, for the ease of the American users of the forum. Obviously these would be "extra" rules to elections, above and beyond normal rules.

First and foremost, the election would work on a "strikes" system; every time a rule is broken, that is "one life lost", so to speak. With three gone, the party or candidate automatically "loses" the election; THIS is the motivation to keep them honest.

1. Budgets - the campaign budget would have to be strictly monitored. Each campaign would be allowed around 50 cents per citizen that the campaign was aimed towards (this would be adjusted yearly by inflation), giving each presidential campaign around $150 million. Every $100,000 over budget would be a "strike".

2. Donations - any and all donations would have to be declared, regardless of size. Any donations over the budget must either be returned, or kept for the next campaign, with the amount kept/returned to be declared, to all the donation givers, party members, and the government. A party would have to turn down any donations that it had reason to believe would lower the integrity of the election, such as donations from shareholders of any companies that produce voting machines, etc. Breaking any of those conditions is a "strike", and strikes for this rule accumulate.

3. Lies - untruths, in any form, whether it's in the form of "I think I heard that someone", rather than "It is is known" or whatever, that can be proved as untrue, to the extent that a court of law would require, are disallowed. Each lie or untruth would be a single strike.

4. Promises - each promise made by a candidate or party would have to be fulfilled if they win the election and complete their term. This means, if a candidate states, categorically, that they will make gay marriage unconstitutional, then they had better do it. Any numerical targets will be given a small margin of error - if a candidate declares the economy will grow by at least 2% in each year while president, but only grows by 1.9% in a single year, this will be allowed. Each broken promise is a single strike against the next election by the candidate or party.

5. "Late" discovery of any strikes - if, after the election, the winning party is found to have committed three strikes, they will be removed from power, and replaced with the next most popular party not to have committed three strikes.

Sorry if it's badly written/doesn't quite make sense/whatever. Just thoughts off the top of my head. Might add a few more.

[TheDarkJay]

TheDarkJay

Re: Keeping elections honest

The sad thing about most elections is that, lets face it, a comedian could run, just tell jokes 24/7 on the stand, and probably win the damn thing.

a) People would actually watch it
b) Because he's a comedian no matter what he says people will like it.
c) Because he's a comedian, he can say offensive/unoffensive things and get away with it.

It's when like cakefarts said "You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig" (And was in fact merely quoting John McCain). That's only offensive if you are a pig that wears lipstick and claims to be a goat. The only way it could be possibly be offensive to humans is if you follow the following chain of thought:
Pigs are eaten by people.
Some people are celebrities.
Celebrities are also known as 'stars'.
The Sun is a star.
The Sun is a newspaper which famously shows female topless models on page three.
Female Topless Models are female, like Sarah Palin.
Ergo, he just called Sarah Palin a pig!

It's so !@#$% logical!!!

Now, if cakefarts was a world famous comedian (then again, aren't all politicians...ZING!) he'd get away with saying it.

And then you have McCain, a man who never talks about his time as a POW...unless you ask him completely unrelated questions! Seriously, I bet their list of 'accepted questions' basically is "How can you ask John McCain about <noun that is bothering you>. When he was a POW, he didn't have <noun>!"...

...boobies...

So, how many houses do you have?
Let me just tell you, when I was a prisoner of war, we didn't have houses, we didn't even have kitchens.

This is practically a word-for-word of at least five interviews I've seen him in so far.

What. The. !@#$%.

In short, the only possible solution is to declare me supreme overlord of the universe.

Or, for now, you Americans could let us Brits interview your politicians. We'd give them a run for their money by actually...you know...demanding answers to the !@#$% questions instead of letting them dance around it like the question is a !@#$% maypole!