From a conversation with my parents over Thanksgiving dinner today came the following list of recommendations for government reforms. If they make sense to us (my largely conservative mom, my self-professed non-political dad, and yours truly, the self-professed progressive avenger), then I'm guessing they'd make sense to a lot of regular people all over the country.

• Ban all monetary gifts to legislators from lobbyists and PACs (because money isn't speech, and those with money shouldn't have greater access than those without)
• Ban all private money in elections (for the same reasons, and to level the playing field to allow true diversity of positions and background in candidates)
• Restrict campaigning to the two months leading up to elections (to eliminate the absurdly high costs of running for office and help keep elected officials focused on real business for a larger percentage of time)
• Implement instant-runoff voting in all state & federal elections

These of course are only a few of the vast number of reforms our elected government is desperately in need of, but these things alone would make a spectacular difference. If we're truly interested in perpetuating our ideals of a representative democracy, these proposals aren't so radical at all.

Labels: Politics