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A major step toward improved government was thwarted
last week when the Colorado Senate State Affairs Committee
voted 6-3 to kill the bill which would have put None of
the above
on the ballot.
Sen. Tilman Bishop, a Grand Junction Republican,
sponsored SB 195, which would have required a new election
if None of the above
won. He argued that it would
give disenchanted voters a chance to go to the polls and
show that,
rather than just staying home or refusing to
vote in those
hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils choices
that always appear on the ballot.
But a majority of the committee disagreed, and so it won't appear on Colorado ballots.
Now, Cuba is run by a tinhorn despot. In its National
Assembly elections Wednesday, there was only one candidate
for each of the 589 seats. But if that candidate didn't get
at least 50 percent of the vote -- that is, if none of
the above
won -- then the party is supposed to produce
a new candidate and another election. (Except for the
second election, it sounds markedly similar to the way we
select judges in Colorado.)
Thus one of the world's last Communist dictatorships gives its voters more options than our great democracy. But maybe Bishop's bill failed because it didn't go far enough.
In many contests, there are things we find appealing and
appalling about all the candidates. Why not an All of
the above?
If All
wins, the listed candidates
would rotate day-by-day in office: A Republican on Monday,
Democrat on Tuesday, Socialist Worker on Wednesday,
Libertarian on Thursday, a Prohibitionist on Friday, La
Raza Unidista on Saturday, etc.
Beyond a welcome variety in government, this would make politics interesting, and the citizenry would pay active attention when our offices held something other than rich white guys in suits -- C-SPAN would quickly draw better than MTV and the Compulsive Shopper Enablement Channel.
The concept should be applied to ballot initiatives, too. If you think that limitations on the pocket-picking and harassment powers of government are a good thing in general, but the specifics of a Douglas Bruce proposal to make the world safe for real-estate speculation are hard to swallow, should you be stuck with his personally tailored amendment?
Not if Part of the above
was on the ballot, and
you got to pick which sections to enable. Fiscal
conservatives are always praising the line-item
veto
; give us the same choice.
This expansion of ballot options is actually more
important the None of the above
lever in statehouse
races, because our General Assembly has managed to make
itself irrelevant to the business of governing
Colorado.
Almost daily I read that some group has tried to negotiate a new wording for Amendment Two with the unelected stalwarts of Colorado for Phantom Values, or that unelected Douglas Bruce is treating with a school board.
Such compromise and negotiation used to be the legislature's job, but now anyone who can wave a petition is power broker. We still have representative government, more or less, but we don't get to elect the representatives.
What went wrong? Our legislature brought it upon itself
with various betrayals of public intent, such as using
lottery money for prisons instead of parks. Nobody trusts
the legislature, the power flows elsewhere, and so it's no
wonder most of them are scared to run against None of
above.
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