Albuquerque Ryan Archive

Starting off with the only universal election changes to cover elections at all levels, time. Campaigning for any election or elected position is not allowed more than six months before that election. Any violation of this rule would result in limitations being placed on that candidate's campaigning later on in the race. I think this would be a rather popular change among the people and is intended primarily to force as much as possible any person running for reelection or a different office than the one they currently hold to continue to actually perform their current job.

One other change to timing is that lame-duck sessions will not exist. Any elected position will be replaced with the winner of an election within 24 hours of that election's results becoming official. Additionally terms of that position will start counting from that time with the next election scheduled for the proper time after that (i.e. four years later for president and so forth).

Moving on to what I will keep primarily the same, local elections and positions will be handled almost exactly how they currently are, aside from the changes already mentioned. People will be able to run under whatever political party they like for local offices such as city or county positions in a way that would not be fundamentally different from our current system. The differences come about higher up in the government system.

State level government elections will be handled and determined at the state level, individual states can choose to follow either the local model which is similar to our current system or the new federal election model.

And speaking of the federal election model, that is where there will be many differences. First off, all candidates for any federal office must be full citizens of the country. This would limit these elections to people who have gathered certain specific experiences or knowledge that I feel should be required for such positions. In essence it would be a way to be sure that the people governing over the nation are hopefully actually qualified to do so.

Additionally the super citizen designation is required for anyone to be eligible for the offices of president or vice president. This basically holds a more strict requirement of those people who wish to control our government.

Another major difference will be that all federal elections (president, vice president, and house of representatives) will be a simple two horse race (how that will be accomplished will be covered later). However, each race will have a third option on the ballot, 'none of the above'. The winner of each race is the person who receives the most votes (through a modified electoral college system that will be discussed later in the case of president and vice president). In the case that less votes are cast for either candidate than are cast for 'none of the above' two new candidates will run for the office and another election will be held in three months time. Any candidates that lose to 'none of the above' may not reappear on the ballot until after the position has been filled (the only exception being when there are no additional potential candidates who have not already lost to 'none of the above'). In the case of neither candidate achieving more votes than 'none of the above' the current person in office will continue to hold that office until a replacement is successfully elected, with the exception of enough time having gone by to fulfill an additional full regular term in the position, in that case that person will be relieved of duty and the seat will either be vacant or filled by the normal order of procession.

Now, how are these races always controlled to be between only two individuals? Well that is handled because the candidates are selected in an entirely different fashion. Instead of our current system allowing individuals to self identify as candidates for these important offices all eligible citizens are entered into a lottery type system for each office. This system selects (six months prior to the election) two individuals who are then the two candidates for the specified office. In the case of president and vice president these are super citizens from any state and the two offices are elected separately as opposed to our current party ticket system. For the case of the House of Representatives the lottery system includes all citizen residents of the particular region being represented. Current and previous holders of government office are given no special treatment (for or against) in the lottery system.

This system obviously greatly diminishes the power of political parties while relying very heavily on the ideas of citizenship and government being a public service that one performs when their country asks them to do so instead of something that is searched out specifically be career politicians. I'm not sure how you might feel about these aspects but personally I think they would be a major improvement.