A Manifesto For Government Reform Part 1 of 4

This is the first of a four-part article to be serialized over the next 4 days.

Corruption in politics is nothing new to the United States. In fact, our country’s long and sordid history of back room, wink and nudge, quid pro quo politics has become so ubiquitous to our understanding of the political process that it has become largely cliché. From the Tammany Hall scandal in the 1800’s to the infamous presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, corruption in politics is as American as steroids in baseball. As a result, American’s have become desensitized to the buying of influence and votes in Washington while simultaneously outraged to an extent unprecedented in recent history.

Admittedly, some of you may be thinking that we’ve witnessed many political reforms in this country and you would be absolutely correct in doing so. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, better access to education, labor involvement, the grass-roots political movement, student protest and many other factors have brought previously disenfranchised groups into the political process for better or worse (depending largely on where your political allegiance lies). But once you’ve had fresh, frozen never tastes quite as good. People who finally become a part of the process only to later feel disconnected from it are going to be a lot more upset than if they never felt empowered to begin with. It is perhaps for this reason that the recent actual or perceived rise of political scandals, big money lobbying, ethical breaches and electoral problems have left a particularly sour taste in the mouths of so many Americans. So the question becomes, are we finally, like the anchor Howard Beale in Network, "Mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore"? Is this the beginning of true government reform? One can only hope. The U.S. political system is broken to the point of embarrassment. What is so remarkable, though, is how easy the system would be to fix with a little bipartisan cooperation. Are we, as a nation ready to commit to such a task?

A Few BIG Problems
There are a myriad of problems with our legislative and electoral system and some of them (like the electoral college) are unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. However, I've isolated 3 or 4 big problems that would be relatively easy to fix, moving us a long way toward taking money, fraud, voter apathy and disproportionate representation out of national politics.

Problem #1: Redistricting Redux
One of the biggest and easiest-to-fix problems in our political system is the fact that the electoral process, for reasons so obvious they don’t bear outlining, should be completely bipartisan, fair and unbiased. If you are like me, you probably naively thought it was - until the 2000 election made us all instant experts on just how partisan, party-driven and inconsistent the whole process of electing our leaders really is. A feature of many U.S. electoral maps has been the gerrymander: electoral districts drawn, sometimes ludicrously, to favor one party over another. This is a defect in the electoral system that both parties have taken advantage of. Gerrymandering is hardly new, I've included a cartoon that pokes fun of the ridiculously serpentine district map of Massachusetts in 1812.

Over the past 8-10 years, Republicans have reaped the benefits of partisan redistricting on the national level, winning consistent majorities in congress and two successive terms in the White House. On more local levels, partisan redistricting has allowed many states, counties and municipalities to keep one party in power for generations. Earlier this month both California and Ohio had hugely unsuccessful election reform initiatives to make the drawing of district maps more bipartisan. This doesn’t bode well for future reforms in this area but stay tuned. The fact that this previously obscure topic is now in the forefront of national consciousness is a very positive sign. Here the fix itself is pretty easy, its actually getting it implemented that is the real challenge.

To Be Continued...