I have a crazy idea. I know what you’re thinking; Bitchy, most of your ideas are crazy! You would be correct, but at least I’m consistent!
I was listening to last night’s episode of Maddow and she said something that sparked a crazy thought in my mind. She said that in Nevada, voters have the option of voting for “none of the above”. I looked up the statue and it’s real! It’s been in place since 1976. But it has a major flaw. Here’s how it works; Nevada voters can vote for one of the candidates or for “none of the above”. The candidate with the most votes wins. That last part is problematic.
This would be a great (and useful) law with a little tweaking. This law could combat the Citizen’s United ruling by the Supreme Court, which opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on elections.
Here’s what I think should happen. We should collectively get state by state ballot initiatives together to include “none of the above” as an option. But instead of the candidate with the most votes winning, the option with the most votes should win. So if “none of the above” gets the most votes, none of the candidates wins. If it’s a primary, any party that gets a majority of “none of the above” votes, must run a new set of candidates. If it’s a general election, then both parties need to go back and do better. Oh, and a candidate that lost to “none of the above”, couldn’t run for that seat again until the next election cycle.
If you think about it for a minute, you’ll realize that I’m not entirely batshit crazy. My idea solves a myriad of problems.
“None of the above” would spare each of us the pain of having to choose the least shitty candidate ever again! Look, the republican party have nominated the village idiot to be in the white house three times in a row now (Quayle, W, and Palin). I refuse to believe that there weren’t a significant number of republicans that didn’t hold their nose to cast a vote for the idiot, despite knowing they were an idiot. I know that when the presidential election came around in 2004, I held my nose a little. I knew I was voting for the best option, but I wasn’t voting for the best candidate. So this solves the problem of feeling dirty after casting your vote.
I mentioned Citizen’s United. Imagine how much fucking money corporations would flush down the toilet, having to finance campaigns over and over again, for candidates that keep getting shot down by voters. The cost of a winning senate seat used to be (pre-Fiorina) 6.5 million dollars. Citizens United and rich, entitled asshat candidates will bring that number way up fairly soon. Imagine what would happen if we had the power to say, “Not having it. Try again.” Corporations and rich fuckers would have to spend double what they’re spending now, if we forced them to do just one do-over. If corporations are going to buy the elections, we should do what we can to make it as costly for them as possible! If we keep rejecting the bullshit candidates that are obviously in the back pocket of the corporation that financed the run, maybe corporations will be forced to rethink their strategy. If nothing else, they will have to budget significantly more for the “buying politicians” allocation of their petty cash reserves.
And if we can get congress to pass the bill they’ve been talking about; the one that would force corporations to get shareholder approval for political spending, voila! Problem solved! Or at least mitigated.
As it stands now, both candidates running in any given race is a corporate shill. We should have the option of voting for neither candidate and forcing a more palatable option.
What do you think? Am I coo coo for cocoa puffs?
