When cities in the U.S. incorporate they now have 4 different kinds of governmental structure to choose from, strong mayor/weak city council, weak mayor/strong city council, etc... It might be time to add a 5th. Politicians these days are elected more on the basis of cash, charisma, and cronyism than on their ability to solve the problems at hand. We should take away those factors so everyone who wanted to run for office would do so on a level playing field. Here's how this form of government would work.
There would be two voting periods, a primary and a runoff.
In the primary, anyone who wanted to run for an office would submit a list of 5 problems and their solutions to those problems to the elections commission, which would then print them on a ballot without naming names. (The problems could be anything the candidate thought was important.) Voters would vote for the whichever set of problems and solutions they thought were best.
In the runoff election, the top 5 winners from the primary would be revealed and allowed to campaign for office. Making their identities public at this stage would let people consider the past histories and sanity of the candidates in their decision-making process. Whoever won the runoff election would then not only have the chance to implement his or her own solutions, they'd also have all those other problems and solutions from the election to use as a resource for making their community even better
I agree
No opinion
I disagree
Add your comment
Interesting idea on reform.
I like that your idea would encourage the voters to select the candidates prior to the actual election, based on their proposed solutions to existing problems.
It runs into a serious snag when you consider that many social and civic problems have multiple causes and conditions. To get a grasp of any one of them requires long periods of study and a lot of data, which the average candidate will probably not have.
As an adjunct to your idea, you could take it one step further, eliminate party politics altogether.
In ancient times, few governments were split into party systems. It wasn't until the 17th century that party politics came into being with the development of Parliaments, modern Senates and Houses of Lords, to give a few examples.
Removing polarizing ideologies may help solve problems faster with less fuss. It may work only if the government in question forms steering groups that would work on individual issues.