Who's competing? Who decides what's competitive? How can you assure no bias by those on whom there is tremendous pressure for bias?
Speaking to more than a dozen people at a time costs money. If you're going to try to persuade 50,000,000 people to vote for you (about how many voters needed to win a US presidential vote), that's going to cost a LOT of money. If your message is a tough sell, it will take even more money to sell it.
Your example proves my point. Precisely because regulations exist to limit political speech, those seeking to fund more speech than allowed have to launder campaign money thru Super PACs et al; those who hit the regulatory limits on political speech but don't have the huge sums available for such "laundering" are stuck. The more you try to tighten limits on political speech, the greater the cost to bypass those limits - and the greater the rewards to those who do, seeing their competition impeded by regulation. And those limits WILL be bypassed, as there will ALWAYS be some way, given enough money, to bypass them.
Libertarians are primarily for less governance, removing barricades erected where there is no need for them in the first place. There is no need for regulatory accountability in political speech if the regulations exist for oppressive purposes: restore liberty by removing the regulations, and there is nothing to account for. No need to make barriers open, transparent, and accountable if you remove the barriers entirely.
Sure, you have to use your real name when petitioning the government. When citizens speak to other citizens, it's not the government's business.
It's a three way cage match between the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. No holds barred. We all decide by TXTing to vote while watching the pay per view live telecast.
Serious question. Take a contentious branch like the "tea party": much of the political spectrum view them as marginal nutcases with no chance of winning and a dangerous threat if they do ... but win they do, and those "deciding who's competitive" may be motivated to see to it they can't.
Voting and election reforms must be partisan neutral. To better serve the voters, vs serve the parties.
Currently, districting carves out safe seats. Part of the horse trading that goes on. Serves the existing parties, but not the voters.
Competitive in Wyoming means taking the partisan index for the state and dividing it down the middle (per Durverger's Law). The most "liberal" elected in Wyoming is probably far more conservative than the "conservatives" in California. Which is okay. The people deserve representatives that reflect their values.
The point of fair redistricting is to ensure that all of these campaigns, no matter where, are competitive.
Right now, the only serious challenge to many candidates, both Ds and Rs, come during the primaries, which are low voter turnout elections. So the candidates have become ever more extreme.
I have no problem with any extremist position, eg Tea Party, so long as it reflects the will of the people. The People should get the government they deserve.
Maximal competitiveness in FPTP elections inherently means maximizing the proportion of citizens that are maximally dissatisfied with the representative of their district, by maximizing the proportion of the population who are represented by a member of their least-favored major party.
Which illustrates the "there are no good districting methods in FPTP" issue, and why focussing on how you draw FPTP district lines is a waste of time.
Maximal competitiveness means making elections closer, outcomes more uncertain. Every election race should be a knife fight. (A side effect of this will be to boost voter turnout, increasing the legitimacy of the elections.)
My views are informed/inspired by the lessons learned BC's Citizens Assembly on Election Reform's efforts.
I've been following your other comments re FPTP vs proportional. Good stuff. While I support proportional representation for assemblies (eg council, House), it conflicts with my support for direct democracy, which I haven't fully reconciled yet. I'm sure you understand.
> Maximal competitiveness means making elections closer, outcomes more uncertain.
Yes, it does.
That also means, in FPTP, maximizing dissatisfaction with the outcome.
> Every election race should be a knife fight.
I disagree. Every election should produce effective representation of the electors; FPTP elections -- metaphorical "knife fights" or otherwise -- do not do that, and engineering them for maximal competitiveness invokes one failure mode (maximal general election dissatisfaction) in order to minimize another (the failure mode wherein the general election is non-competitive, so the real choice is made in the process which selects candidates for the general election.)
> While I support proportional representation for assemblies (eg council, House), it conflicts with my support for direct democracy, which I haven't fully reconciled yet.
Direct democracy is proportional representation taken to one extreme. I don't see why supporting PR for what representative offices exists should conflict with a preference for direct democracy.
My first concern is about precincts which straddle demographic voting boundaries. If you'll look at fine-grain voter maps, you'll see a bright line delineating urban vs rural voters, with the urban voting dominantly Leftist (they're not liberal by any means) and rural voting conservative; by drawing that boundary to include about 45% rural and 55% urban, you can "maximize competitiveness" in a way that assures the outcome will be almost always Leftist, while subjecting the dissenters to that outcome. Heck, make it 50/50, knowing that redistricting is rare and urban populations grow, and the distribution is allegedly fair and competitive...but with an assured political result.
Maximal competitiveness.
down a grid and subdivide quadrants by population
aka red lining
Campaign finance reform, as commonly understood as you describe, is anathema to the fundamental right of free speech.
Money != speech.
Any attempts to regulate, limit, and document facilitation of free speech will be subverted.
Laundering campaign money thru Super PACs et al is a form of speech?
I thought you libertarians were all for open government, transparency, accountability.
Regardless, freedom of speech != right to privacy. When you petition the government, you have to use your real name.