[Chewbaccus]

I was going to post all this earlier, but when I hit the "post" button, the notorious Pitternet hiccupped and lost all my thoughts. Yes, it took about eighteen hours to reconstruct them. So what, it took a millennia to reconstruct the world after Rome fell. I think I made good time. Anyway:

Originally Posted by alphageek31337

1) Voting is compulsory.

This scares the ever-living fuck out of me, ask anyone I've gotten into this debate with. Personally, I love low voter turnout. Love it. Love it. Can't get enough of it. If I could, I'd make it mandatory that CBS premiere every new season of Survivor on the first Tuesday of November, with a day-long marathon preceding it. And that's only because I can't control the weather. Yet.

Yes, low voter turnout means 15-25% of the country is deciding who's running things. But at the same time, when that 15-25% go into the booths, odds are that they know what they fuck they're doing. If you take the time to vote in today's political climate, you're more than probably educated on the issues and are making an informed decision - like we're all supposed to. When you ratchet up voter turnout, you get more and more people like one friend I know whose primary reason for voting for Bush was that when throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day, he threw a strike. No more, no less. Is it sad a quarter of the country is making the calls? Yes. Will we look on it nostalgically after a political torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mob take to the polls thinking "The Republicans sent around that big ass semi with the plasma screens and the Xboxes, so they must be the right choice?" I like to think so. Forcing someone to make a choice, I've found, ensures that they make the expedient choice of the moment, rather than the beneficial in the long-term choice.

2) Soft money must go.

Agreeable, but tricky. I forget if it was the FEC or the Court, but somewhere down the line, someone with a nice enough hat decided that money was speech, and as such, snuck in under the First.

3) Eliminate/severely limit mass media advertising.

Again, tricky. Probably the best thing I can think of is to apply the truth in advertising laws (I'm operating on the principle they don't), otherwise you have someone screaming "They're trampling my right to speak to the people!" and some such.

4) Limit the time that can be spent actively campaigning.

Now here we might have something. You cut the window down to a month or two (for the gen. election phase - the rage that front-loading is in the primary phase these days, I don't see how it'd work), then you have the cut in funds required and consequently, a cut in the contributor hooks that a successful candidate has to carry around in office.