WHTT Political Reform
One of the areas in which natural rights are routinely denied to citizens of America is the political arena. Voters are apathetic because they have been almost totally conditioned to expect politicians to lie before elections, and to ignore promises after the election is over. Voters know they are powerless to punish politicians who after an election is over, do precisely the opposite of what they swore they would do only days before the election. True, the voters can remember the transgressions, and vote against the rascal in the following election, but that would be a hollow revenge, since the alternative candidate would undoubtedly be just as unlikely to keep any promises either.
A Political Promise Is A Binding Contract
Instead, voters need to have two protections to empower their political will. The first is an obvious extension of common law. When any person makes a promise to do a specific thing in exchange for something of value, that promise becomes a contract enforceable by law. A politician's promise, in an attempt to gain valuable votes, should be considered to be a binding verbal contract with the voters. Just as with any other contract, politicians who later break their promises should be subject to legal action to compensate the voters for damages caused by the broken promises. Specifically, voters should be empowered to file class action lawsuits against any politician, including candidates for the Presidency, who, after winning an election, break promises made during the campaign. No politician is forced to make promises before an election that cannot be kept. If a politician chooses to make specific promises to get votes, and then does not give the voters what was promised, then that politician deserves to be personally subjected to a class action lawsuit for abrogation of a verbal contract with the public trust.
Let The People Vote On Government Budget Levels
The second protection voters deserve is a simple extension of an idea already practiced by one of the western states. The ballots in that state routinely list "Abolish this office" as one of the choices along with the list of candidates the voter may select. Some political jobs have indeed been abolished by popular vote, but that option has limited utility. Voters couldn't abolish the offices of Governor, state or federal Congresspersons and Senators, or the Presidency of the nation. Voters need another alternative to express their will. Every ballot for each local, state, and federal office should include an option to increase taxes and the budget for that office by 50%, or to decrease taxes and the budget by 50%, or to keep taxes and the budget unchanged. The resulting weighted average of the vote for each specific office would be binding on the subsequent budget level that office could implement. Since the ability to spend money directly translates into political power, being able to vote for more or less spending would give each individual voter some say in how powerful each political office would be. For example, there has been a raging debate for decades about how powerful the national government should be, and how big a budget the government should have to spend. Every two, four, or six years, political candidates more or less take positions on whether the level of government spending should increase or decrease, and the voters decide which candidate will be elected. Then, almost inevitably, the amount of the national budget, and the political power of the national government, increase regardless of how the people voted!
This proposal would be a binding referendum on political power as defined by how much money each office could spend. If twenty percent of the voters wanted to increase a budget, and thirty percent voted to decrease the same budget, while fifty percent wanted to maintain the current budget level, then plus twenty percent minus thirty percent equals minus ten percent. A net of one tenth of the voters want to decrease the budget by 50 %. That would mean a mandatory net reduction of one tenth of the 50% change voted pro or con. The final result would be a modest reduction of 5% in the amount of that budget, and a corresponding reduction in the amount of political power in that office. The candidates, and other interested parties, would be free to campaign for either an increase of a decrease in the budget for each office. The winner of each election would be responsible for setting priorities, within the framework of campaign promises, for how to implement the budget increase or decrease mandated by the voters. But ultimately, each individual voter would have the final and direct decision over whether government should grow or shrink.
Some readers might doubt that this proposal would work because all the poor people who receive government services would vote to increase spending, while only the smaller number of taxpayers would vote to decrease it, so government would always grow! As shown in the discussion of taxes, however, any increase or decrease in government budgets and spending would be directly paid for by each citizen in the form of higher or lower energy taxes.
Email the author: 
Optmst@Gmail.Com