After The Election: A Wishlist

After President Hillary takes office in January, I think her first orders of business should be:

• Make election day a national holiday
  
• Make registering to vote easier, mandatory even
  
• Work toward public financing of campaigns, and a short (2-month?) campaign season
  
• Term limits for Senators (12 years) and Representatives (8 years)
  
• Somehow make gerrymandering illegal (not quite sure how, but districting needs to be by geography -- maybe some combination of county & % of state population)
  
• Create a brick wall between public servants and lobbyists, preventing public office holders from lobbying for 5 years (or more)
  
• Re-enact the Fairness Doctrine
  
• Fire James Comey
  
• Appoint the youngest most liberal SCOTUS judge she can find
  

You forgot:

• Federal laws governing voting in all states.
  
• Get rid of all voting suppression laws.
  
• Shoot Donald Trump.
  

I have never been sure about public financing of campaigns or term limits.

Growing up in England, I was used to elections involving "party political broadcasts", which were typically 15 minutes of talking heads saying what a great bunch the Tories or Labor or Liberals were. They were few in number, maybe 3 or 4 for each party (I forget the details), and I can't remember whether they were shown on both networks at the same time (only 2 or 3 channels, remember). The main sources of information to help you decide who to vote for were newspapers, radio talk programs (nothing like current American talk-radio, more similar to NPR), and a few (very few) discussion programs on TV. Fundraising was never an issue: in fact, politicians accepting chunks of money was called bribery and corruption. All the discussion revolved around policies, unless one of the tabloids dug up a juicy scandal.

But that was then, and in a different culture and technological environment. Certainly the most egregious instances of money in American politics have to go: the Citizen's United fuck-up has to get fixed. I'm not sure about completely going over to public financing unless abominations like Fox News and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber can be brought to heel. Democracy needs an informed electorate, and propaganda outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh prevent that from happening. (Studies show that people who get their news from Fox know less about current affairs than people who don't watch TV at all.)

What he said.

Okayyyyyy......

Let's retool this prediction. After President Trump takes office in January, I believe his first orders of business will be:

• Overturn Roe v. Wade
  
• Repeal Obamacare, throwing 20M people off insurance
  
• Open a Congressional inquiry in Hillary's emails, to find something different than the FBI found
  
• Impose tariffs on imports, causing the economy to collapse
  
• The stock market will already be less than half its peak
  
• Pyongyang will find a small radioactive crater at 39°0'56"N 125°44'43"E
  
• Democratic senators and representatives will find themselves locked out of meetings and negotiations
  
• Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagen will be pressured to resign immediately
  
• The White House will be painted gold and branded
  

And let's finally do this: Get rid of the god damned electoral college.

If we can't get rid of it, modify it by removing votes for Senators to make it more representative. The twenty lowest population states have about the same number of people as California, but they have almost twice the number of electorate votes. That's just not right.

I looks as thought Clinton may wind up with the majority of the popular vote.

I'm sticking with my addendum to your original wishlist post.

I'm not convinced Pence would be a better choice.

_Howard wrote:

I looks as thought Clinton may wind up with the majority of the popular vote.

Yep, 59,814,018 to 59,611,678, or 202,340 more votes for Hill (0.169%).  

For comparison, in 2000 Gore outpolled Bush by 543,895 votes (0.536%).

The WORST result of the Trump presidency will undoubtedly be his appointment of two or possibly three troglodyte Scalia-like justices.  That will skew the court's makeup for a generation.

• Women's reproductive rights
  
• LGBT rights
  
• Unrestrained 2nd Amendment
  
• Money in politics
  
• Corporations' human rights
  
• Rights of protest
  
• Whistleblower rights
  
• Rights to organize
  
• Immigrant rights
  
• Intellectual property rights
  

If Trump is convicted of racketeering, can he be president from jail?

If he thought he could get away with it I have NO DOUBT Donald would attempt to repeal the 15th and 19th Amendments.