(001) - Put "None of the
Above" on the voter ballot.
(002) - Change the requirements
for President.
(a) Require prospective
candidates to take an extremely hard civil service exam.
(b) The top 100 scores
of the exam move on to participate in the "Prezolympics".
(c) The top 10 winners
from the olympics become canidates and are entitled to campaign.
(d) The winner of the election
becomes President.
(e) Gets a device implanted
in their brain that explodes if they tell a lie.
(003) - Eliminate the office
of President and hire a Ribbon Cutter.
(a) Money saved on elections
is used to pay off the national debt.
(004) - Declare election
day a holiday.
(a) I got this from We
The People. There are more there.
(005) - Tie election participation
to jury duty. - (from Doug Chatham - dchatham@utk.edu)
(a) Let ONLY those who
can vote but don't, be placed on the jury rolls.
(a) Topical essays on "Psycheocracy", "Childmind", "Criteria
for Credibility" and "Rules of Colloquy".
(007) -
Campaign for Digital Democracy
= currently not responding!
(008) - Somebody Responds
- (from Stephanie Yanik - skyU2@concentric.net)
Dear NOBODY, the SOMEBODIES you're looking for are in the Libertarian
Party. EVERYBODY can call +1 (800) 682-1776 for more information and
see for themselves. EVERYBODY is at fault for not giving these SOMEBODIES
a look. You want lower taxes? We call for the abolition of the IRS. You
want less crime? We call for the abolition of the Second Prohibition.
You want SOMEBODY to do something? Then ANYBODY can look us
up on the web at: www.lp.org and check
us out.
(009) - Dan Wilcox - wilcox23@juno.com
- Sent in the following poem:
Nobody for President
Nobody for Mayor
Vote for Nobody
Because Nobody Really Cares!
(010) - David Hobbes - cal4hobbes@yahoo.com
- Has a Calvin & Hobbes for President 2000 site.
It is located here,
where you can vote for Nobody.
In case this link would 'go away' here is what it says (quoted from
the above 'point'): 'None of the above' wins Puerto Rico referendum
by David Halton WebPosted Sun Dec 13 21:39:49 1998
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - Millions of Puerto Rican voters cast their votes
in a non-binding referendum on Sunday to decide what future they want their
island to follow: outright independence, a limited form of independence,
full US statehood, or the status quo, also known as 'none of the above'.
And the voting trend puts the 'none of the above' option out in front.
With 95 per cent of the vote counted 'none of the above' had garnered 50.2
per cent and 46.5 per cent for statehood. The remaining few votes went
to the other options. It means that voters want to keep their association
with the United States unchanged.
This is the third time in less than 30 years voters on the Caribbean
island have been asked to decide what their future relationship with the
United States should be. At present Puerto Rico is officially a commonwealth
of the US. Residents enjoy US nationality, but are not allowed to vote
in US elections, nor do they pay US taxes.
Supporters of the statehood option saw it as an opportunity for Puerto
Rico to gain political equality. They were buoyed by Sunday's vote totals.
Charlie Rodrigues, the president of the Puerto Rico senate said the island "is
on an irreversible path toward statehood."
More than 2 million people were registered to vote.
Puerto Rico became a US possession 100 years ago, at the end of the
Spanish-American War. Before that time it had been a colony of Spain for
400 years. - David Halton reports for CBC TV
(012) - Beamer submitted
REQUIREMENTS FOR PREZ, 2004
1) All candidates must be willing to have nude photo taken
on bear-skin rug. (makes future press conferences a lot
easier to handle).
2) Must be able to say "My mother really doesn't know how
to cook turnips" in Tagalog, Urdu, AND Hindi.
3) Bowling average of 125 (and can PROVE it).
4) Had a MINIMUM of three moving violations in his/her life.
5) Must mow the White House lawn with a push-mower AT LEAST
twice during presidency.
Hell, make it an event: National Mow Day.
(014) - Apathy
wins! 72% fail to vote By Beth Barrett, Staff
Writer
Nearly three-fourths of Los Angeles' 1.47 million registered voters
sat out Tuesday's mayoral election, allowing Antonio Villaraigosa to make
the runoff with the backing of 8 percent of those eligible to vote and
James Hahn with just 6 percent.
The dismal turnout - 100,000 fewer voters than in 2001 - allowed Hahn
to come in second with less than 90,000 votes and left pundits and politicians
grappling Wednesday with this question: Did the Hahn campaign successfully
suppress the vote with its negative attack ads and other tactics, or are
the city's voters so apathetic that they just don't care?
"In a sense, we get the democracy we deserve," said Tom Hollihan, a
professor and associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication
at the University of Southern California.
"It's a real tragedy citizens don't get engaged. We proclaim we're building
democracy in the Middle East and show so little regard for it here."
Others suggested that the public showed it was disengaged from the city's
political life because of the deliberate strategies that were employed
that played on cynicism and indifference and spread confusion.
Former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, whose surge in the polls left
him less than 6,000 votes short of knocking off Hahn for the second spot
in the runoff, blamed the barrage of negative ads thrown at him in the
campaign's closing days for suppressing the turnout he needed to win.
Hertzberg, who ran a campaign on what he called "big ideas" to address
the city's major problems, said voters have lost their faith that government
can do anything for them "because it's not." As Hertzberg's campaign took
off with unconventional ads aimed at those civic issues, he said the negative
ads launched by Hahn cooled turnout.
"It suppresses turnout; that's a bad thing, a bad thing. You want to
do everything you can to get people to turn out."
Voters were largely uninspired to go to the polls despite a smorgasbord
of five legitimate candidates who spent months and millions of dollars
sparring over civic issues while Hahn was on the defensive over local and
federal investigations of possible corruption in his administration.
Studies have shown that negative campaigning - such as the ads on television,
in mailers and through telephone calls during the final days of the mayoral
campaign - further depress voter turnout in general. In some instances,
they can be be used to target an opponent's stronghold, while a campaign
concentrates on its own get-out-the-vote operations, consultants and political
experts said.
But Bill Carrick, Hahn's media consultant and strategist, called it
a "ridiculous concept" that negative ads blunt turnout, attributing Tuesday's
low voter participation instead to "residue burnout" from the November
presidential election, and the confusion caused by a multiplicity of candidates
and debates.
He predicted that the May 17 runoff between Hahn and Villaraigosa, like
four years ago, will bump turnout up significantly.
"It's one of those overplayed theories," Carrick said. "The truth is
you can't run enough negative advertising to impact the turnout in the
way that would have had the dramatic drop-off we had in this election."
Counting provisional and mail-in ballots, less than 28 percent of registered
voters went to the polls Tuesday - just over 408,000 out of 1,474,186.
No council district in the city had a voter turnout of more than 30 percent.
Only two mayoral primaries since 1977 had lower turnouts - former Mayor
Tom Bradley's 1989 re-election primary against Councilman Nate Holden with
a 24 percent turnout, and former Mayor Richard Riordan's 1997 re-election
primary against Tom Hayden with a 26 percent turnout.
Other recent mayoral primaries - from a 66.2 percent turnout in 1969
when Bradley first challenged then Mayor Sam Yorty - mostly fluctuated
between turnouts in the mid-30s to low 40s.
Academics, voter organizations and political observers said voters across
the nation are becoming passive and making excuses for not voting - a form
of civic victimization winning out over civic responsibility.
The California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization
in Davis, just concluded a survey of statewide voter behavior that confirmed
Los Angeles County leading the way in voters giving self-interested reasons
for not going to the polls.
The No. 1 reason: "Too busy."
Kim Alexander, the foundation's president, said those who don't vote
at all or infrequently say they've grown cynical that special interests
control local politics even as they often might express shame for not casting
a ballot.
"Two-thirds (of those surveyed) said one reason they don't vote in every
election is because they believe politics is controlled by special interests.
That is a widely held perception across the state," she said. "More and
more voters are responding to that perception not with outrage, but with
apathy.
"I think people feel powerless in the political process. It becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you tell people over and over again they're
powerless, they believe it and use it as an excuse for apathy."
The vast size of Los Angeles city and county as well as the mobility
of the population - much of it immigrant - largely preclude the electorate
from having a direct relationship with those elected, she said.
Others said there has been a steady retreat among eligible voters into
private concerns where they can have more control but at a potentially
high cost to the broader quality of civic life.
"People don't believe politics matters, that it doesn't matter who they
elect, that no one in politics is looking out for their interests," said
USC's Hollihan.
As more voters stay away from the polls, they might also start to disengage
from other civic responsibilities, from willing participation on juries
to respect for civic institutions.
"It's a warning sign of danger for society at large. If people don't
participate in organized politics, how does that translate into other behaviors
in civil society?"
The threshold for participation has increased so much that voters might
only go to the polls if they perceive "their own ox will be gored" should
their candidate, or position lose.
Party affiliations have grown weaker and more voters say they're political
independents.
"It often doesn't mean independent in seeking information, but tends
to mean passive independence that's often rooted in self-interest, or disinterest.
Increasingly people who are independent are not engaged enough to have
an opinion," Hollihan said.
Michael Dear, the chairman of the University of Southern California's
Department of Geography who also studies urbanization and the future of
Southern California, said disengagement from the public process puts the
region at risk of losing its civic vision as the public conversation between
the populace and its leaders erodes.
"We depend on our leaders, formally and informally, to articulate what
the society we want is becoming ... It is also the responsibility of the
people in articulating ... how we develop as a city and as a people."
