We should try a little democracy for a change

This election has gone on far too long for human sanity, and now degenerates into petty feuding at a sixth grade level. We should abolish the whole wagon load of 19th century anachronisms: primaries, caucuses, delegates, conventions, and especially the two-party system, which is nothing but a front for the corporate cartel that owns our Congress and White House.

Political parties are not part of our Constitution. Our founders eschewed them. George Washington warned that parties would become “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.”

Instead, every citizen should be automatically registered to vote as a right of citizenship. Publicly funded elections without a penny of private money should enforce a maximum four-month election, ending in electronic voting with a run-off if no single candidate wins over 50 percent. Then politicians could stop being fund raisers and do their jobs.

But of course that would be too clear, too simple, too democratic. And the last thing Republican or Democratic party elites want is a democracy.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 3:05 PM with the headline "We should try a little democracy for a change."