A huge benefit of uniquely identified votes: VOTE RESCINDING!!!
The ultimate in being accountable to your voters, plus another rule to stop lying liars from getting into office.
Today I set up paid subscriptions for the first time. I wanted to offer $3 per month but $5 per month is the minimum Substack allows, apparently, so that’s where it is. I hope you will consider becoming a paid subscriber so that I can continue offering my commentary long term.
To make it worth your while, I plan to offer certain posts with commentary I haven’t seen anywhere else, and so perhaps something most people who see these posts haven’t seen either. To set up this post you need to have seen part 2 of stopping voter and election fraud.
In political campaigns at all all levels today, the voter has two big problems. First, he or she does not know exactly where all the candidates stand on certain issues. Second, he or she has no guarantee that the candidate that they vote for will end up acting in accord with any campaign promises that they did make. So how do you solve this?
If it were up to me, I would have two new amendments to the Constitution. First, all candidates at all levels would be 100% REQUIRED to answer policy questions put to them. And in fact they would be required to answer the questions as directly and as briefly as possible with pretty much ZERO time spent on any meaningless talking points.
Official Q and A sessions would be set up at least once per week for a while, and in addition to the questioner there would be a panel of moderators making a determination of whether the candidate was actually answering the questions asked. If the candidate got to 3 strikes, as in 3 instances where the panel of moderators felt they failed to answer questions and/or tried to throw in meaningless talking points, the candidate would receive a warning for being evasive. If the candidate had another Q and A session where they failed to answer questions, they would be immediately disqualified from the race and given a hefty fine.
So for example if a candidate were asked “What is the maximum percentage federal income tax rate that you support for those with high incomes?”, the candidate would be required to give a specific number of 40%, or 45%, etc. The candidate attempting to deflect or distract with a discussion of FICA taxes would be immediately shut down with a strike, since the question was NOT about FICA taxes. Ditto for discussions of fairness, “equity”, etc. Any candidate anywhere has ample to time to speak free form and talk about whatever they want, so official policy Q and A sessions would be strictly controlled to avoid the meaningless and non responsive answers that are given the majority of the time now when candidates are interviewed or even in debates. Questions about the specific maximum tax rate the candidate wants can be answered in less than 5 seconds, and they should be.
In addition to the official Q and A sessions, every candidate would have to have a website where their positions on each and every one of all relevant policy questions would be spelled out in writing. It would essentially be a contract with voters to do exactly what the candidate said he or she was going to do, and every issue raised up until election time would be covered.
And those positions would have to be set starting at primary time. There would be ZERO tolerance for telling your core party people some things during a primary campaign, but then “moving to the center” or moving anywhere else during the general election such that you betray your primary voters. Not one iota.
If the candidate won the race, he or she would then be legally bound to stand by those positions. If the candidate broke those promises, there would be a formal process to have them removed from office very quickly, and any votes they cast or actions they took that were in conflict with what they promised would be null and void. So for example if a candidate stated that they were opposed to all abortions other than for rape or incest, but then they tried to allow a bunch of other exceptions in a bill they voted for, they would be out of office and their vote for that bill would not count.
This rule eliminates the “I’ll have more flexibility after the election.” moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mgQaFlo_p8
Now what if issues come up that weren’t clearly defined or known prior to an election? What if a sleazy candidate finds way to just skirt the rules in order to not be removed from office? What if new information about a candidate that can be fully verified (as opposed to various smear efforts like “Russian Collusion”) comes to light?? With the next amendment I suggest, using uniquely identified votes, voters can go to election centers and RESCIND THEIR VOTES!!!
Now of course you would have to require the same iron clad ID measures as at the polling place listed in my previous post linked above, and the voter doing the rescinding would have to give a specific reason or reasons for rescinding their vote. Mean tweets or comments they found to be offensive would pretty much never be acceptable grounds for the serious act of rescinding a vote. Claims of repressed memories, personal conduct from decades ago that was just brought up for the first time, etc. would never be grounds. It would have to be specific policy issues and/or actions that the voter found to be in conflict with what the candidate ran on. Again, voting is serious business and anyone voting needs to be well informed and well prepared.
Once the candidate’s vote total went below his or her opponent, or below some fixed percentage of total votes cast such as 50%, the candidate would be removed from office and a new election would have to be held. There would always be a rule for less than the opponent, and there would always be a lower % limit, and if either one were reached the candidate would be out of office. So if a candidate won with 55.0% of the vote to one other candidate with 45%, if the winner lost 5.01% of his/her votes due to vote rescinding, they would be out. No there would not be a mechanism for the loser to assume office. There would always have to be a new election.
Obviously the rules for and process of rescinding votes and removing office holders would require a good deal more thought and development, but think about the benefits!! No more will candidates be able to tell potential voters a load of horse manure, knowing that they will not honor many of the claims they make during the campaign. No more will politicians in office be able to disregard voter sentiment. Think about all those dead weight Republicans and full on RINOs now who are doing nothing to stop the left wing destruction of this country. They would be out of office in short order. This HUGE benefit is worth the time and effort needed to perfect a system of vote rescinding.
This rule also negates big business influence. While of course businesses need to be barred from funding campaigns like I said before:
But this rule rips the power away from big business to a large extent even if they’re in bed with politicians. One question that federal level candidates would ALWAYS have to answer is “Do you support allowing US based companies to export jobs to communist China or elsewhere in Asia?”. There would be related follow on questions as well, and you can bet that anyone admitting a pro China bias would be extremely unlikely to win. If they hid their pro China agenda (based on payoffs from big business) during the campaign but then tried to act on it once in office, their actions would be nullified and they would be out. Whatever dollars and other sleazy kickbacks from big business would just be wasted!!
Speaking of sleaze and useless RINOs, think of Jack Sellers on the Maricopa County Board of Clowns who claims he’s a Republican. He would have been out of office nearly a year ago as he would have had 50% or more of his votes rescinded. Or he would have acted completely differently with the election audits at least because he had no choice, and thus would have been acting in accordance with those who voted for him.
Any rule, system, or process which makes political office holders more accountable to voters is going to help.