My Plan to Save America: Presidential Election Reform

It should be noted at the beginning that I don't believe in democracy; it very rarely works in my opinion* but since we're stuck with it** I decided it should be improved and so this plan was inspired by a variety of reasons.*** First the idea of a regional primary, which has been floated around, would kind of let each candidate focus more in depth on areas of concern specific to each region, cut down on the insane travel and carbon emissions and immense stress and strain that flying from Iowa to new Hampshire to Nevada to South Carolina and back again must cause, as well as not letting a few small**** states always having the opportunity to shape the race. Especially in a year like this when every primary moved up so severely so that there are only 5 days between Iowa and New Hampshire, those two traditional starting points, which leaves no time for momentum to change or develop more.

The public financing stems directly from a something that either Barack or one of his staffers said regarding their view that John Edwards isn’t viable because he hasn’t raised $100 million, which just seems like a horrible way to judge relevance and to determine the next “Leader of the Free World” not on ideals or issues really but on whether they have raised an absurd amount of money (perhaps from questionable sources.) And so candidates won't spend so much time begging and pandering for money that may compromise their integrity. This way anyone who “deserves it” will not be shut out but actually have a louder voice, which should contribute to a more diverse set of ideas and voters won't be necessarily swayed by whose face is seen most often.
And the tiered voting plan came from***** the idea of earned citizenship******, that you should have not only some stake but experience before you are allowed to help decide the history of the world. Being born in America and contributing nothing then being allowed to vote doesn’t really work for me.
(hopefully everyone recognized the hyperbole and exaggeration in the above words)

And so here are the sketches for whatever ill informed plan I have

• Candidates can announce their candidacy and start building staff and organization (drumming up support) after the newly elected congress is sworn in. They will have until Sept 30 to qualify for public financing, which entails getting 100,000 more signatures than is required to get the candidate's name on the ballot and they must reach this threshold for all 50 state's ballots to be considered viable.
• A Federal Election Committee (Fair Election Bureau*******), will give 50 million to each candidate who qualifies.
• There will be 4 regional primaries
• The West Region: Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah
• The Midwest Region: North Dakota, Minnesota Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota Nebraska
• The South Region: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, SC, NC, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia
• The North East Region: Maryland, DC, Delaware, NJ, NY, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, RI, Vermont, NH, Maine
• These primaries will be held on January 15th, February 15th, April 15th, May 15th of the Election Year (regional primaries order of occurrence will rotate with each election cycle; i.e. 2012 the order would go West, Midwest, South, North East; 2016 Midwest, South North East, West)
• In each primary all state delegates will be pooled together into a Regional Delegate Poll and will be distributed in proportion to what percentage of the total vote each candidate receives (get 45% of the total vote, receive 45% of the delegates and so on)
• At any point after the first Primary candidates can throw their support and their remaining money behind any other candidate that they choose to endorse once they drop out.
• National Conventions will be held in June and July, the latter date being for the convention of the party in power.
• After the convention each nominee will receive 75 million in additional funds from the FEC (FEB) plus they are free to receive money from their National Committees and other outside donors.
• The Electoral college is to be dismantled
  
• All unused Federal money (from each candidate) should be returned to the Bureau
  

Tiered Voting Plan

• Either you can vote for an office once you're eligible to run for that office yourself (35 to be President or Vice President, 30 to be a Senator, or 25 to be a Representative. 18 for all state positions.)
• Or those 30 and older may vote for president
• those 25 and older may for Congress
• and those 18 or older can vote for all local and state positions.
• Age verification will be done at the polling stations with specific ballots being handed to those who qualify
  

Perhaps there should also be a compulsory two year service to either the Military or a program like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps to give a greater sense of the world and America and to engage in and demonstrate some civic concern and responsibility-earn your vote more or less********.

And yes I realize this would disqualify me for voting for President********* but that's a small price to pay for the good of America.

*perhaps I’m just bitter because there’s not an election, on any level including high school and college, I can remember that I was totally happy about
**Until the Coming Glorious Revolution
***stemming from my current frustration and opposition to Barack
****and honestly insignificant
*****my disgust with young voters who before I didn't mind because I was either with them or they were too apathetic to matter
****** really I'm sure that they're are so many "illegal immigrants" who've contributed so much more to the world and they can't vote while I , just be virtue of being born like 200 miles north of an imaginary border can enjoy all these "magical privileges;" seems horribly unjust
*******perhaps a Special Sub-Committee of House Appropriations or a Special Committee of the Committee on House Administration
*******so you know people won’t actually be dumb and have some experience in the world before their allowed to decide who runs it.
******** But it would also exclude a lot of morons. And as Jay told me, because it make sense, there should be some sort of Literacy requirement; if you can't read then you're probably not qualified to judge who should be President

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