Five Steps to Fixing American Politics

In no particular order:

- Single Term Limits - If a politician has no hope of being re-elected then hopefully his attention will go toward fulfilling the needs / desires of those who elected him, rather than pandering to lobbyists or getting distracted by the next election. I could see going to a setup where politicians could return after a certain number of years off, or perhaps where they could work up through positions but never run for the same one again (representative -> senator -> governor, for example, but never able to have more than one term in each category).

- Instant Run-off Elections - Moving to a system where we could have multiple candidates without it being a detriment to any given group of people, and where recounts could be eliminated, would be a great improvement. Check out this website for more info.

- Transparent Voting - I know it is taboo to suggest this in the US, but I think all voting should be made public. This would allow independent verification of results, rather than needing to trust whoever is in power and in charge of the election process. Imagine each of us being able to visit a website and see that they did indeed record our votes correctly, rather than just assuming that there were no 'hanging chads' or not-quite-filled bubbles that got miscounted.

- Limited Number of Laws - Institute a limit to how many laws can be on the books, and require that for any new law passed after that number is reached an old one must be removed. Done properly this would help ensure that the lists of laws don't get out of hand, and would force clean-up of out-dated laws that otherwise just sit on the books.

- Legally Require a Balanced Budget - Make it a requirement that each year's budget cannot exceed the income of the previous year, in order to help avoid budget overruns and debt. Using a past year as the budget limit helps avoid over-estimation of the current year's expected intake. There could also be provision for exceeding the budget in time of war, but only contingent on an actual declaration of war (not simply a presidential action or other use of military forces).

I'm sure there are other good ideas out there too, and many of the best (including some on this list) would require a major overhaul of our existing laws and such. Given how far into the red we are going, though - both monetarily and socially - I think that is overdue. Revolution 2.0 anyone?