what if we could vote every year to renew the president's contract?

[burninatortech4]

Congressional term limits are a better place to start.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

As bad as Obama is as he's a 'As the wind blows' type of President (look at his stance on same sex marriage) it'll get 10x worse if you have President that has to go through a vote of 'no confidence' every year from the general public.

I would like to see a more European type of government. Once a threshold is reached then "no confidence" votes kick in. Annual elections should not happen, but recalls, maybe, once some to be determined metric of public discontent kicks in. Parties and their elected members are far to unaccountable IMO. Start a baseless war? No problem! It's not like the next guy is going to hold you accountable.

 

[sportage]

People are way too fickle. It would never work. You'd just have a constant swinging door. Not to mention no stability. And besides, its not a contract, the presidency.

 

[piasabird]

I think the 8 year limit is still most important. I like having 2 distinct terms of 4 years each. I could go for a retention vote every year similar to how we do judges. I would also go for the same thing on the supreme court justices and every member of congress. If the public votes no confidence then they cant ever run for that office ever. We should also do this for the head of the FBI, CIA, NSA, EPA, HLS, etc.

I really think the voting age should be changed to 30.

I think some sort of term limits for congress are a good idea. However, I wish all terms for the house and the senate were all 4 years and they all could be voted out of office all at the same time. Then the in between election every 2 years could be retention votes. So if some elected official had 2 years and was a total loser we could get rid of them.

We could just have a poll and if your approval ratings drop below 50% you are out of there. Who needs to vote?

 

[piasabird]

We could just hire some Mexicans to run the government.

 

[boomerang]

We could just hire some Mexicans to run the government.

I'm thinking they could produce the same quality or work for less.

 

[RickBean]

It's kind of anarchy u know?
Of course we haven't got an ideal government and there are many i̶d̶i̶o̶t̶s̶ officials who can't do their job right.
And imagine what will be with our country, if these we will re-elect "officials" every year...

 

[blastingcap]

Does anyone remember Civ IV and how inconsistently the computer civs would act? That's because each turn, the AI civs start from scratch: they look at what they have on the map and decide what to do based on that one snapshot in time. There is no possibility of long-term strategy or anything. And that's why they suck as AIs and why they need help in production bonuses and such, at higher difficulty levels to make up for the bad AI.

If you want a federal govt that has about as much strategy as the Civ IV AI-controlled civs, and which spends EVEN MORE of its time fundraising, then by all means, make Congresspeople and the President have 1-year terms.

 

[DrPizza]

The average voter is an idiot. They're very uninformed, and lack any real knowledge of foreign policy, economics, etc. I would much rather that our politicians have more time to do what's in our best interests, rather than what's in their best interests to be re-elected. Unfortunately, some pander to their idiotic constituency for four straight years. (And, even worse, many pander to their donors for 4 straight years.)

 

[piasabird]

Make all donations illegal unless they are registered voters. What is going on is more and more people are donating unlimited funds to a political party and that party decides who gets the money. If you don't strictly follow in lock step with the party policies they don't give you the money to run on. That is not democracy.

It doesn't make sense to limit what a citizen can donate to a federal campaign, and then let political parties have unlimited donations.

Maybe we should tax all donations a candidate receives from political parties or other non voting entities like PAC's, Lobbyists, Unions, churches, or other organizations.

 

[yllus]

You need longer terms, not shorter. Elect people to something like six-year terms and no more than three of them and you'll cut out a ton of the need for your politicians to kowtow to special interests (the people who fund their campaigns).

 

[nickqt]

Instant Runoff Voting or a Parliamentary system would be a lot better than what we have now, but we have to stick with what we have, because otherwise

 

[lamedude]

If we get the circus primaries every year then yes.

 

[boomerang]

Maybe we should tax all donations a candidate receives from political parties or other non voting entities like PAC's, Lobbyists, Unions, churches, or other organizations.

You know, I kind of like that in a superficial way without putting any thought into it. Some politicians are really enamored of taxing us, let's turn the tables on them. Now how do we, as a people institute a tax like this? Nevermind, mission unpossible.