Instead of voting for a new temporary king every 4 years, the voters select how they want the issues dealt with from a large menu showing all the challenges facing the country and proposals on how to deal with them.
A voter might fill out his card:
Immigration: Allow everybody in and put them all in welfare immediately. Then ship them home with a participation trophy.
Gun rights: Take all the guns away from people with an odd number of letters in their first name and distribute them to those with an even number of letters.
Taxation: Raise everybody else's taxes, lower mine.
Issues would win, not a candidate. A presidential panel would be appointed and judged by how effectively they carried out the wishes of the voters. If they had anything less than a 90% success rating, they'd be out of office. If they fulfilled the voters wishes satisfactorily, they get to stay in office. There would be a head president and a panel of minion presidents each assigned to deal with the individual issues on the ballot.
This presidential panel would be selected for their ability to carry out voter's wishes without personal prejudice. If they didn't properly carry out the job they were charged with, they're fired and somebody else is put in their place. If they did a great job, they get to continue, theoretically getting better every year. Their personality, hairstyle, etc wouldn't matter because they'd be judged solely on their ability to carry out the people's wishes for that election period.
How would you select these people? Draft them. Anybody who wants to be a politician is unfit to be a politician in my opinion.
And that stupid "Hail To The Chief" song would be replaced by "Like A Boss".-- doctorremulac3, Aug 19 2015 Rant...-- normzone, Aug 19 2015 Isn't this just "representative democracy" [-] under another name ?-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2015 //Rant...//
No, it's a suggestion that a ballot be about issues rather than people and their hairstyles. A rant would be an observation or series of observations without an idea attached to them. Sort of like mindlessly posting "Rant".
//Isn't this just "representative democracy" under another name ?//
Yes, but with more specifics. Rather than vaguely promising to "Send a message to those fat cats in Washington" or "Clean up the mess that those other guys caused." this would clearly lay out specific jobs that would be done.
There was a radio personality in New York that ran for mayor saying he would simply do one thing then pass the job over to a more qualified person. The one thing was to have work being performed on the streets be done at night so as not to interrupt traffic. A pretty good idea. I think he was ahead in the polls until they wanted him to disclose his tax info and he bailed out.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 19 2015 // Yes //
"And therefore by his own admission, Your Honour, we contend that the case of the People vs. [doctorremulac3] is proven beyond reasonable doubt ... "-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2015 In California, USA (and possibly other states, but most famously in California), it is possible for a simple petition, if it acquires enough signatures, to become an issue for voting, on a statewide ballot. To the extent that this Idea resembles the existing situation there, I would say it is "thoroughly baked", if not so WKTE that the author of this Idea might have heard of it.-- Vernon, Aug 19 2015 I probably didn't explain this idea, good or bad, very well.
Yes, there would be similarities to ballot initiative votes but for ongoing issues, all the issues you'd want a president to handle. Immigration, taxation, social issues, war, peace, the environment etc. The ballots might be very similar every vote. Rates of taxation and who gets taxed for instance would be on the ballot every four years.
Think of it as programming for your president. You use this as a punch card to design the perfect leader in your eyes. Then the "proxy", for lack of a better name, president simply acts according to the majority votes on the ballot.
The idea of this is to break away from the team A vs team B mentality that quickly gets caught up in tribal "Four legs good, two legs bad" kind of debate that gets away from the issues. This term's president might be tasked with balancing the budget, supporting gay marriage but limiting immigration to citizens that pass some kind of minimum means test like many countries do. (don't want to start a debate, just saying as an example) I think this non-polarized president might get a lot done with this more direct form of democracy.
You'd have a president that really was giving the people what they wanted in a very direct fashion.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 19 2015 yeah, 'cuz it's not like they'd do a number of polls, promise whatever the polls said then, after being elected, do pretty much what they wanted. WKTE-- FlyingToaster, Aug 20 2015 They're not elected, that's the point. They're appointed to carry out, with great specificity, the exact instructions of the voters on specific issues.
If they deviate in any manner, they're fired. They're not politicians, they're facilitators hired to do exactly what they're told.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 20 2015 Smells a lot like California Proposition System, but on a National Scale.
or maybe an Earth Wide Proposition 13 ?-- popbottle, Aug 20 2015 No, just a individual issue based ballot rather than a ballot to select people.
Nobody's commented on replacing "Hail To The Chief" with "Like A Boss".
Now come on, there's no legit argument against that.
If you haven't heard the song, you can Youtube it but it's, well... very NSFW.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 20 2015 random, halfbakery