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In the 21st century, elections should use the modern technologies that are available to help the election process (Electronic voting with paper trail, TV, Internet Campaigning, Direct Elections of representatives and President, Accountability, Transparency etc).
Every citizen above the age of 21 or everyone that has lived in a Country for more than 15 years and above the age of 21 should be eligible to vote and should vote in elections to choose the various representatives of the government (Like Head of Nation, Representative from their region for the nation, Head of state, Representative from their region for the state, Head of local/Municipal government and Representative from the region for local government etc)
The Election should be open for a month (people can send / caste their their vote for a period of one month) and the final day Election should be a paid holiday to ensure that every one eligible to vote can actually vote.
Everyone that is eligible to vote and voted should get a $1000 Tax Credit and those that did not vote should pay $100 non-voting fine (This is to ensure 100% participation).
Among the list of candidates seeking public office, the first entry should be "No Confidence in any Candidate" to facilitate a disapproval on all the candidates that seek public office at that election for that office.
Note:
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At present (From 1900 until 2009) in majority of the democratic nations, in the best represented elections only about 60% of the eligible population vote and in that the winning candidates get about 49% percent of the cast vote which means a person with less than about 25 to 30% of the peoples approval, governs 100% of the population - Isn't that a great irony to call this person as the people's choice - This is just a minority governing the majority by an indirect / less obvious trick!
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Elected Representatives
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Please review the diagram below that indicates a representative Interest curve.
It basically shows that when a person starts or gets involved in an activity the individual is highly motivated and interested in the beginning and his/her interest oscillates up and down and stays high for sometime and then the interest in the activity goes away overtime.
Note: Also as mentioned in another post in this Blog, the rich, middle class and poor have completely different interest and problems. So politicians who come to cover, no matter from which ever class, over a period of time gain power and influence and go to the upper middle or rich class (except a very very few rare exceptions) and loose touch with the original group that they wanted to represent when they were first elected.
So all elected officials and heads of departments should have term limits.
As reasonable term and term limit will be:
President (Head of government of a nation elected through direct election with popular majority vote):
Option 1: 2 Terms, with each term being 4 or 5 or 6 years (Each nation can choose the duration of a term as 4 or 5 or 6 depending on what may suite the nation depending on economy election cost affordability, amount of work to be done)
Option 2: One single term of 7 or 8 or 9 years.
Members of Elected Representation (Representatives as Congress men and women):
3 Terms, with each term being 4 or 5 years.
Members of appointed Representation (Similar to Senators - but different from the current US Senators as these positions will be appointed and not elected as current US Senators):
2 Terms, with each term being 6 or 7 years.
Supreme Court Judges: One time appointment for a single term of 25 years - Age should be above 50 during the appointment.
Heads of Departments, Public Corporations and Public companies: No more than 12 years as Head/CEO.
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-Suresh
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