"Here is a step outside the box. Have America empower a committee of independents, of non-partisans, from industry, from the communities, from academia and think tanks, from citizenry of all walks of life, to collectively consider these issues. Have this committee selected through an online, transparent, democratic process. This is not a forum to hammer out a "bi-partisan compromise." Its mission is to formulate an approach from outside the standard political alignments, one that gives support to the President to govern outside the partisan grid. That way, the process of dealing with such a problem notably chips away at the institutional arrangements which sustain special interest control of policy making. One final note: it would give Obama a freer hand to advocate for his most important constituency, the American people."
MICHAEL HARDY is counsel to the National Action Network and Reverend Al Sharpton.
HARRY KRESKY is general counsel to IndependentVoting.org and the country's leading legal advocate on behalf of independent voters.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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4 comments:
Chicago's elections are entirely non-partisan. New York city's are entirely partisan. I tend to think New York city is better governed than Chicago, don't you?
Nebraska has non-partisan legislative elections and I don't see that Nebraska is significantly better governed than the average state.
Here in NYC there are 1 million registered voters who are not able to take part in the candidate selection process. So some form of non-partisan candidate selection is our battle.
Any New York city voter may participate in the candidate selection process. Every registered voter is free to sign a petition to place an independent candidate on the ballot.
It is very hard. I am an elected independent official in the state but I still can not go to the street for petition sigs. I have to first call, get their approval, and then go to their door for their sig.
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