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I’m tired of the word “Change.”  Both the Democratic and Republican candidates for President both claim to have the secret potion for “Change.”  Yet nothing will change come November, nor when the next President is sworn into office.  Why?  Because a vote for a Republican or a Democrat is not change; it’s more of the same thing.

There’s an oft-forgotten movie called MOON OVER PARADOR in which Richard Dreyfus is an actor persuaded to replace the dictator of a fictional country when that dictator dies unexpectedly.  This actor does such a good impression of the dictator that even the dictator himself is impressed.  It’s not the story that makes me think of the U.S., nor the form of government in the story that makes me think of the U.S. government.  It’s a small scene in the movie where two guys on the street are debating which color of dictator they should vote for: red or blue.  The candidate for the office of dictator is the same either way; the difference lies in the choice of color.  “Hey, at least we get a choice!” they opine.

The U.S. elections are a lot like the dictator vote for color, where you get a choice between what you had with the last President or with the President of nine years ago.  This is not change.  When a country alternates between two political parties, you do not get real change…you get a political pendulum that alternates between conservative and liberal, and hopefully, you get what the country really needs in-between candidates.  This is not really change, this is insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result).

Voting for a candidate in a two-party only system is not a real vote.  It’s not a real choice.  Both parties have such clout and so much infrastructure that it is almost impossible to effect real change by electing some other party to the Presidency.  And when it comes to the Presidency, the U.S. seems content to let this person reflect the majority of the voters’ desire for either conservative or liberal values.  If you could vote for everyone, no one would know who to vote for.  So U.S. voters are lazy and major political parties are more than willing to take advantage of it.  Quite sad.

People are content to let both their President and their Congressional representatives vote along their respective party lines (it keeps them from having to think too much).  This is fine for the Presidency; for Congress it is not.  The President of the United States needs to have an opinion and a conscience; that’s the hallmark of his office.  The framers of the Constitution knew that power instilled in an individual had it’s place in good government, but the person which such power cannot be an elected king (hence the check and balances).  The place where opinion and conscience has absolutely NO place in is in Congress.  Why?  Originally, Senators and Representatives were meant to represent the will of their constituents.  Do they do so today?  No.  They represent their respective parties.

Members of Congress are elected based on their party affiliations and what those parties stand for.  This does not bode well for the concept of representing the will of their constituents; it bodes well for the will of the party the member belongs to.  And the people of the U.S. enable this system: they don’t want to have to vote on every little issue that comes up before the entire Congress, so they have a majority of people vote for a party’s candidate, so that that person will vote along those lines.  It’s a way of instilling generality into a decision-making process that needs to be more specific more often.  I propose that this is utterly wrong, and it is what is truly wrong with this country.

I love this country, and I would never want to see it fail.  But in order to prevent it from going the way of the great empires of old, we need REFORM, not change.  Change is too vague and all-encompassing; reform is specific.  We need election reform.  We need to have candidates for Congress that vote our consciences, not their own.  Impossible?  Well, more people vote for American Idol than vote in a general election.  Doesn’t that tell you something?

But wait, you say, when people vote on American Idol, they vote multiple times.  So what?  Where in the Constitution does it say that one person equals one vote?  They way I figure it, the more times you vote for a particular candidate, the more you are showing your support for that candidate.  Why shouldn’t emotion be a part of a individual’s right to vote?

Then you say, but this is not an impartial way of measuring the will of the people!  Well, politics is inexorably tied to human feeling.  That’s why your politics or religion are never wrong; they are how you feel about things, and how you feel about things is not wrong.  It is also why politics and religion are not subjects for polite company: they always hurt someone else’s feelings.  If votes are tied to a person’s politics, then by transition votes are tied to peoples feelings.  The results of an election are ultimately the results of how people feel.

I’ll give you and example.  I personally don’t like Obama for President, but I’m not that thrilled with McCain either.  Under the current system of voting, I only get one vote:

Under my election system, I get as many votes as I want:

Now, let’s pretend my preferred Presidential candidate, Libertarian Bob Barr, is on the ballot in every state (highly unlikely under the current system). Let’s see what the votes look like:

Now you see what I mean.  You can clearly see my excitement for this particular candidate.

Now, here are a few examples of how it would have worked during the last election for most Democrats under my system (this is assuming this particular voter feels like a Democrat I know very well during that election: “Well, he’s our guy”):

This is how the ballot would look like for a Democrat during this election:

And if Clinton had won the nomination:

Note the smaller amount of votes for Hillary .

I also see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to spread around your votes. Under that rule, my votes would look like this:

Then you can clearly see that I’m all for Barr, but I would pick McCain between McCain and Obama.  This would work for systems like Instant Runoff Voting.

You may ask how does a Senator or a Representative accurately represent the will of their constituents, especially in large urban areas? Scientific polls. People love to take polls. I don’t see why some polls shouldn’t count. Make them compulsory, and give them multiple ways for people to make their voice heard. And have lots of them. Does this mean more work for the representative? You bet it does. But hey! Now they are really acting like public servants now, aren’t they?  Get them to earn their ridiculous government salaries, and have them keep in contact with the people they purport to represent: you!

No, this system isn’t perfect, but I argue that the spirit of this system is more in tune with the real will of the people. If we are truly a government “of the people, for the people and by the people” then the government should truly reflect what the people want.