[EM] Lincoln; Big money, gerrymanders, rotten EC, etc.

[Adam Tarr]

>DEMOREP writes :
>
>"NO apologies to the late Prez A. Lincoln --- see his unreality speech at 
>Gettysburg, PA, Nov. 1863. --- taking note that his minority rule 
>gerrymander election in 1860 helped produce about 620,000 dead in the 
>1861-1865 Civil War."

Joe takes issue with this line in a larger sense, but allow me a much smaller, 
somewhat semantic correction.  The term "Gerrymandering" describes the 
re-drawing of district lines in order to engineer "safe" districts and 
artificial legislative majorities.  While the Electoral College certainly 
distorts the results on an election, I don't think it can be considered 
"Gerrymandering" in the traditional sense, since nobody drew the lines in an 
effort to give one group or region an artificial majority.

Later on, Joe writes:

>I despair of easy solution, but one new (for me) tack continues to urge 
>itself:  reduce or eliminate the role of PERMANENT or anyhow 
>PRE-IDENTIFIABLE power centers - parties, bosses, small office-holding 
>elites.  We may thus reduce or eliminate incentives and pathways for 
>big-money infusions and for gerrymanders.
>
>One part of the overall mechanism would be to reduce the role of usual 
>elections altogether - at least for choosing office-holders as vs resolving 
>issues.  Maybe choose legislatures as we choose juries - by lot from voter 
>rolls - or anyhow choose candidates by lot, followed by speedy PAV election. 
>  Maybe also fill by lot executive and judicial positions, or anyhow thus 
>get candidates (with speedy election by AV), from among those who pass 
>suitable qualifying exams. (Yes, OK, unavoidably maybe, there might well be 
>some litigations as to which proposed exams were truly suitable.)  Make 
>terms just long enough to enable necessary business to get done.

Issues like these are where electoral reform starts to blend into politics, so I 
don't want to get into a protracted debate on these issues over the list.  But I 
do want to point out that legislation is a far more involved process than jury 
duty, and it would be a pretty significant strain on society if you forced 
people of all walks of life into periodic legislative duty.  If part-time 
legislators of the type the forefathers envisioned are a priority for you, then 
I still think it needs to be moderately self-selecting, i.e. only those who want 
to take the exams.  Or perhaps draw from certain industries, e.g. you have to be 
on call for legislative duty to practice law in a given city/state/etc.  But in 
the end, these sorts of policies don't seem realistic on the national scale, and 
I doubt they would have a huge impact on the local level.

In my opinion, we can effectively curtail perty power and monetary influence 
just by properly designing our electoral systems to improve access and 
accountability.  For example, if congressmen were elected out of 7-seat PAV 
meta-districts in stead of one-seat FPTP districts, independents and small 
parties would have a more equal shot against the major parties.  This reduces 
the power of the large parties, which reduces the incentive of big contributors 
to try and spread the money around, since they could end up losing their 
investment if their guys don't get elected.

-Adam

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