Political Whispers: A Look Into Today's World of Dark Politics

CLEAN ELECTIONS REFORM COULD BE THE TONIC WHICH AILS THIS NATION

By Schuyler Thorpe
Author and Political Activist

Be it for me to watch something on PBS last night (on NOW), which got me to thinking: What would be the result of such clean elections?

How could this nation of ours–plagued by corruption, big business, special interest groups, and dirty money funneled to traditional candidates–benefit from such a change in the status quo?

Well, for one thing, clean elections allows the people to choose their candidates through a process by which relies solely on public funding (much like our schools), and has a limit to what a candidate can accept through token contributions. This process also eliminates the traditional way of funding a candidate: Dumping huge amounts of money and pushing him through the ranks in order to get him or her elected; no matter where the money comes from.

This also gets rid of big business and all those special interest groups who enjoy blowing wads of money on a steak dinner–just so they can have their needs met, instead of the people their candidate is supposed to be representing.

Though you have to get enough signatures to get on the ballot, the people would be able to choose their candidates through a different process of elimination, but would still be able to afford a clean election–without the partisan sniping that we now see saturating today’s political landscape.

And the chances of corruption, mismanagement, and errors through a clean election process shows in states like Maine and Arizona (where it had become law state-wide) have been marginalized to a degree that now California is trying to put the issue on the ballot. And even though it looks like it is going to fail (not enough support), it doesn’t mean that the measure will be dead forever.

Changes like these will take some time to take effect in this traditionalist-run nation of ours.

But if we can launch such measures as these clean election initiatives have done, we can effect real change in how we elect and manage our candidates. Instead of putting career-minded politicians in office like we have done for generations, we can start putting those ordinary Joes and Betsy’s that we have in our communities–people who don’t have a whole lot of political experience, but have years of community experience.

People who know what ticks and what doesn’t.

The clean election propositions and ideals lie with us.

And the only way we can make this work is if we start reforming the way we elect ourselves to public office.

Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1@yahoo.com

posted by Schuyler Thorpe @ 2:12 PM