Gibson writes: "Lots of people feel understandably hamstrung after the midterm elections. It's obvious the Republicans don't represent anyone but the billionaires who bought their seats for them, and everyone is sick and tired of Democrats taking bribes from those same billionaires, and curling up in the fetal position to get kicked around without putting up a fight."
Carl Gibson appearing on MSNBC to discuss the Affordable Care Act. (photo: MSNBC)
ALSO SEE: Ranked Choice Voting Could Break the Hold of the Two-Party System
How to Scrap the Two-Party System in Three Steps
11 November 14
ots of people feel understandably hamstrung after the midterm elections. It’s obvious the Republicans don’t represent anyone but the billionaires who bought their seats for them, and everyone is sick and tired of Democrats taking bribes from those same billionaires, and curling up in the fetal position to get kicked around without putting up a fight. As a matter of fact, 42 percent of Americans identify not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Independents. Even though the media doesn’t make it seem that obvious, we really are the majority.
But on the flipside, everyone is afraid to vote for Independent candidates who actually propose real solutions and refuse to be compromised by big money. So how do we get around that? It’ll take three steps. They aren’t easy, but if we can accomplish these steps by 2020, our country may start to finally look like a real democracy.
1. Pass Ballot Initiatives Demanding Instant Runoff Voting
Instant runoff voting is great, because it allows you to rank all candidates in order of preference, rather than having to choose just one. If there are five candidates from five different parties, each of them get ranked one through five. At the end of the day, the candidate with the most "1" rankings is the winner. It may seem confusing at first, but think of it like scoring a golf game. This puts Socialists, Greens, and Libertarians on the same playing field as Democrats and Republicans. And the two parties will no longer have a monopoly on our political process and will actually have to work hard for our vote.
While it may seem like an impossible task to pass at the federal level in a two-party-owned Congress, the people can put pressure on Congress by passing ballot initiatives to do it in their own states. Currently, 24 states allow for statewide ballot initiatives and popular referendums. And the initiative process yielded surprisingly progressive results in the last election, even in the reddest of states. And having more candidates to choose from on the ballot is something that everyone can get behind.
2. Pass a Constitutional Amendment to Say Corporations Aren’t People and Money Isn’t Speech
When 42 billionaires can fund a third of all political ads, there’s something clearly wrong with our democratic process. And when looking at voter turnout trends, there were more voters in 2008 than there were in 2012, despite 2012 being a multi-billion dollar election. In 2014, when $4 billion was spent, voter turnout hit a historic low, with only 36 percent of the electorate participating. One could argue that the more money there is in politics, the less motivated people feel about voting. To make our political process accessible to regular people again, we have to stop the torrent of money infecting our politics. Most would say we need to overturn the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, and point to a failed attempt by the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment a few months ago that would’ve done that. However, Citizens United is actually a distraction. The core problem is over a century old.
Since the Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad case of 1886, when a court reporter inserted a few sentences about the court asserting that corporations have the same constitutional rights as people into the header of the case filing, corporations have been treated as legal persons by the court. While Santa Clara was just a tax case, it’s been used as the precedent for corporate constitutional rights ever since. In the Buckley vs. Valeo decision of 1975, donations to political campaigns were ruled to be the same as free speech. And the First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti Supreme Court case in 1978 allowed corporate money to be used as free speech not only for political campaigns, but for any issue campaign. The floodgates have been open ever since. Citizens United and the McCutcheon vs. FEC decision of 2014 just made a bad problem even worse.
However, Move to Amend’s We the People Amendment stating that only human beings have constitutional rights, and that money is property and not free speech, has already been passed in over 200 communities. An additional 400 communities have passed amendments with similar language. And no matter how red or blue that community is, every time the amendment has been brought up for a vote, it has passed. In this past election, 12 Wisconsin communities passed the We the People amendment. After communities pass the amendment, it puts pressure on state legislators to pass the amendment in the statehouse. And after enough statehouses pass the amendment, it puts pressure on Congress to act. Then we can finally rid our elections from the influence of billionaires and corporations.
3. Pass a Constitutional Amendment That Makes Voting an Inalienable Right and Election Day a Holiday
After removing the corporate cancer from our elections, we need to remove all current barriers that get in the way of voting and prevent any future barriers from being built. These barriers include cumbersome voter ID laws allegedly aimed at stopping the mythical problem of “voter fraud” – which actually only occurs 31 times out of every 1 billion votes cast – as well as restrictions on early voting and people being forced to work and go to class on the first Tuesday of November. A new constitutional amendment could fix that for good.
This new amendment needs to explicitly state that voting is the inalienable right of every citizen, that every vote cast will be counted, that citizens will only vote on paper ballots, and that no election will be called for any candidate until every last vote is counted. The second part of the amendment will state that Election Day is a federally-recognized holiday, that all schools will be closed, and that no business can force their employees to work on that holiday.
By default, all the laws passed requiring citizens to get a photo ID with their current address, which often costs more than the unconstitutional poll taxes of the pre-Civil Rights era, will be rendered unconstitutional. All the restrictions on early voting passed in states like Ohio and Florida will be undone, and everything will be closed on Election Day except for polling places. All electronic voting machines, like the voting machines that somehow tallied -16,022 (negative) votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Florida, in the 2000 election, will be removed and all votes will have a paper trail.
Can you imagine an election cycle without a constant barrage of negative attack ads funded by anonymous billionaires? Can you imagine all voters having ample time to vote, with no cumbersome and bureaucratic obstacles to jump through just to be able to cast a ballot? Can you imagine an election decided by paper ballots, in which work or school is no longer a barrier between you and your polling place? Can you imagine having multiple parties on the ballot, and being able to vote for someone who isn’t a Democrat or a Republican knowing they have an equal chance to win?
That’s what democracy looks like.
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Seriously, the man is right, 100%. Will US citizens get the message they have the power, but only if they take it?
Big corporations are nothing more than many people owning something and choosing someone to speak for them, the President of the company. Most of the evils we all dislike come from the banking community, not the Adams Corporation which happens to own the local garden shop.
Fuckin' Badger-Pucky (is your other name "Roland" perchance?).
My wife and I own a small business and are neither a Corporation nor do we feel like we have any kind of voice.
It's small businesses who take it in the chops every time a large Corporation, often with Federal "Welfare" backup, monopolizes another branch of Industry, Communications or Food Production and distribution and their "Voices" are bag-carrying (carrion?) lobbyists whizzing though the ever-revolving doors of most alleged "representative s" who are getting rich in office and who'll eventually become a revolving door purveyor of corporate lucre in turn!
Absolutely. Every time a large business wiggles out of paying taxes or gets a boost in market share through legal maneuvers or political influence, guess who pays the freight instead? These strategies are not available to the bulk of small business owners.
Lately I have noticed over the last 25 years I have been self employed, how my overhead has increased, and raising my rates results in less work. Ma & Pa businesses are no longer in charge of much of Main St.
And it's a 1.5-Party system.
As always, the devil is in the details, of how we organize even at the state level to pass any of this sort of legislation against the onslaught of the billionaires. Perhaps we should start calling what they advocate "Billionairism, " Since the other appropriate terms have such unsavory connotations for so many people!
1. Break up the banks
2. Break up the media monopoly
3. Cut the militry in half--its draining America
4. Use that money to eliminate the debt
5. Start an emergency national program to deal with climate change. (See VW's car that hovers, their 300mpg production vehicle.
So much more.
On the matter of an election to choose a representative, we must demand that at least half of the registered voters vote for the election to be valid. This last election under 40% of the people bothered to vote. Those non votes should mean the election must be done over with NEW CANDIDATES. Such rules would make bribing the elected official not to effect the election. The official must vote as the people direct. That is direct democracy. The official is a servant of the people and the vote is not up for sale.
Party loyalty is a tool of tyrants and a shortcut to tyranny.
Historically, the Republican Party grew out of the need to constrain the spread of slavery in the American West. If jungle primaries had been used in the 1850s, we would quite possibly now have a political system dominated by Democrats and Whigs.
We have no problems with voter fraud, and no one is complaining about early voting. Mailed ballots also solve the problem of needing a national holiday for voting at a polling station.
The one problem we still need to solve is late arrival of mailed ballots. Our law only requires that the ballot be postmarked by election day, and we should change to requiring that the ballot arrive at the county election office by election day.
That would be a great start.
However, every citizen has the "right to vote". there's nothing wrong w/ having to prove someone is a citizen in order to vote. You had to prove your id to get your driver's license and you have not written an essay against that.
for the purposes of taxation, a corporation (corpus = a body) is regarded as a person in order to get more revenue for governments. You'll be hard pressed to get that one through.
Good essay, thank you. Another reason that I, as a Conservative, support RSN.
implementing new Jim Crow laws. OK? Democrats have simply not publicly made their case to effectively communicate to the citizens of the U.S. how the Republicans are so gripped with fear that they will do whatever they can to destroy Democracy. Until Democrats get a handle on this matter, that is mass protests in the streets, picketing the Supreme court, citizens will suffer the new Jim Crow laws. Only in America. Or, as the Republicans say, "the greatest country in the world." All Fairy Dust. Frankly, the biggest issue that is not usually talked about:Republica n and Democrat campaigns are financed by the 1 %. Until that changes, this country "ain't go'n no place."
#2 is great, #3 is great and consider mail-in ballots to build turnout, works in oregon
RE: Your article, How to Scrap the Two-Party System in Three Steps
The "We the People Amendment" is risibly incompetent. Worse, it would destroy the ordinary citizens’ interests that its proponents would seek to protect. See HOW NOT TO OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED, http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/24423-how-not-to-overturn-citizens-united
Stop plugging that dangerous idiocy.
Your brain lives in your knee-reflex.
Likely your knee-reflex did not encounter the article my comment cited. Likely also, if your knee-reflex encountered any of the article, its neurons could not even sense the content.
BUT THIS IS RIGHT THINKING !
AND WE THE FORUM -
NEED TO HELP CARL FINE TUNE AND PERFECT THIS KIND OF THINKING !
AND WE ARE DOING IT
THANKS TO READER SUPPORTED NEWS
THINGS ARE BECOMING CLEAR !
"BILLIONIARISM" IS BECOMING OBVIOUS
PLUTOCRATS IS ANOTHER
THE EMPERORS CLOTHES ARE SLIPPING
IT IS GOING TO BE A PEACEFUL REVOLUTION THIS TIME HOWEVER MOSTLY -
BECAUSE WE ALL REALLY WANT THE SAME THING
EVEN THE PLUTOCRATS -
I AM LOOKING FOR A KING ASHOKA AMONG OUR BILLIONARE PLUTOCRATS
ANY IDEAS ?
THANK YOU
I also think every Board of Elections should have ongoing classes in government and civics. These non-partisan classes would consist of educating people to the structure of their government, all of the then existing parties, what each party stands for, who the politicians are, their voting records, what the candidates stand for and their backgrounds. This way, the average person gets up to speed and is ready to vote.
Mandatory voting would eliminate redistricting problems, no turn out problems, voter ID problems and supression problems. We are supposed to be a representationa l government. We can't know who truly should represent us with all of the criminal conduct going on with voting, and we can't know who truly should represent us if people don't vote.
People don't vote for one of two reasons:
(1) bc they don't understand the process or the differences between candidates; therefore are intimidated by the process, and
(2) be they blow it off and don't bother.
Mandatory voting would address both reasons and we'd get a better picture of things, to say nothing of better leadership. We can't go on operating in a vacuum.
Couple that with publically funded elections, making voting day the first full weekend in November with the following Monday a federal holiday... three days to vote. This first tuesday in November thing is crap.
I would like to add to this new amendment that all laws are only 1 page long and written in English not legalese so it cuts down on all the "riders" that get passed with a law. Also that any candidate or elected official that takes anything from a lobbyist has written his/her resignation letter. I also think elections should be limited to say one month before the election date - declare as a candidate, campaign, then vote. This would save time and money and elected officials could spend more time doing what they need to do rather than campaign.
I also agree Citizens United needs to be eliminated.
Chomsky says that people know so much about sports and so little about politics because the latter is of no consequence to them, and they are powerless to change anything. He notes that folks bring a great deal of knowledge and insight to their sports discussions, but not their political dialog.
Still, I'm optimistic that voter turnout will improve if there are more choices.
Oh yeah, and...
Step 4: A law requiring legislators to read every page of every bill they vote on. Maybe then we won't have these impenetrable 2500-page bills that are passed without being read. Unconscionable in a democracy.
Step 5: TERM LIMITS.
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