Green Party of the United States - National Committee Voting

Home	Vote	Results	History	Contacts	Admin
	National Committee Voting

Login

Proposal Details

Proposal ID	1089
Proposal	2022 Platform Amendment: Chapter I, Section A, 1 Electoral Reform
Presenter	Platform Committee Sponsor: Green Party of California
Floor Manager	Garret Wassermann
Phase	Closed
Discussion	07/18/2022 - 08/14/2022
Voting	08/15/2022 - 08/21/2022
Result	Adopted
Presens Quorum	32 0.6666
Consens Quorum	67 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) last substantially updated its ‘Political Reform’ section of its platform in 2012, via proposal #676 (https://gp.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=676). Since then, several major changes have occurred in the right to vote, the influence of big money, voter choice, and ballot access:

– The U.S. Supreme Court has greatly weakened the Federal Voting Rights Act – Sections 2 (disproportionate impact) and 5 (pre-clearance) of the Federal Voting Rights Act; and ruled in McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) (https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/mccutcheon.php) to remove aggregate limits for individual donors giving to candidates, political parties and PACs – expanding the role of big money in elections.

– Ballot access laws in some states have been made more onerous, making it harder for the Green Party to gain/retain ballot status, and in others, ballot access was already onerous.

– In 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR1, which has a clause in section 5202(a) of the bill’s campaign finance section that would make it highly unlikely that any Green presidential candidate could qualify for federal matching funds (https://greenpagesnews.org/how-hr1-s1-entrenches-the-duopoly/); and by removing that source of funding – that is traditionally used to gain ballot access for the party in many states – would mean the Green Party could disappear from the ballot in much of the country (https://greenpagesnews.org/ballot-status-and-presidential-primary-matching-funds/).

– At the same time, momentum has grown in support of long-time Green Party priorities of proportional representation and ranked choice voting. And in general, interest in structural electoral reform has grown in the U.S. as the diminishing returns of the duopoly electoral system become increasingly apparent.

This proposal would respond to these trends and others in the elections and political reform landscape, including the need to promote greater ethics in government. In so doing, this platform amendment would more aggressively promote proportional representation and ranked-choice voting, substantially enlarge the U.S House (together with electing it by proportional representation), address gerrymandering via enacting proportional representation, eliminate the U.S. Senate, and enlarge the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given the evolving nature of laws affecting many of these trends, including the possibility of federal legislation occurring while the proposal is under discussion, this proposal may be updated in response.

Proposal

Amend Chapter I, Democracy, Section A, Political Reform, Subsections 1 and 2 to read:

1. Electoral reform.

Enact proportional representation voting systems for legislative seats on municipal, county, state and federal levels. Proportional representation systems provide that voters are represented in the proportion their views are held in society; and are based on dividing seats proportionally within multi-seat districts, compared to the standard U.S. single-seat, winner-take all districts. Forms of proportional representation include ranked-choice voting (RCV) (candidate-based), party list (party-based) and mixed member proportional (MMP) voting (combines proportional representation with district representation).

Enact Ranked Choice Voting for chief executive offices like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat offices including U.S. Senate. Under Ranked Choice Voting, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference (1,2,3, etc.) Ranked Choice Voting ensures that the eventual winner has majority support; and eliminates vote-splitting, allowing voters to express their preferences knowing that supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help their least favored candidate. Ranked Choice Voting thus frees voters from being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, allows them to vote their hopes, not their fears, and saves public funds by eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.

Substantially expand the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives together with electing the House from multi-seat districts by proportional representation – both by Federal legislation – to help make the House far more representative of the nation’s population and rich diversity. Towards this end, amend or repeal the The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 (https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-Permanent-Apportionment-Act-of-1929/), which limits the size of the House; and amend or repeal and replace the 1967 law (PL 90-196 (http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=526) that mandates single-member districts for the House and replace it with one that mandates multi-seat, districts elected by proportional representation.

Enact elections by proportional representation from multi-seat districts on federal and state levels, with enough seats in each districts to eliminate the possibility of unfair representation produced by gerrymandering, because in such multi-seat districts, even small political minorities do not waste their votes and are able to elect their fair share of representatives. Until such proportional representation elections are enacted and even after they are, to guard against gerrymandering, establish independent and transparent non-partisan citizen-redistricting processes in every state, to determine the boundaries for whatever districts that are employed (winner-take-all or proportional). Enact federal legislation requiring that Congressional districts be determined by state-established independent citizen-redistricting commissions. Provide federal funding for these state processes, with the goal of establishing national consistency in procedures.

Abolish the US Senate by constitutional amendment. Until the U.S. Senate is abolished, enact state laws requiring that all state U.S. Senate seats are elected by ranked-choice voting. Amend the U.S. Constitution to require that all vacancies in the U.S. Senate be filled by ranked-choice voting special election, rather than appointment.

Abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct national election of the president by Ranked Choice Voting. As a step in that direction, support National Popular Vote legislation which would guarantee the Presidency to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and the District of Columbia), which would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes -— that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538).

Create a new publicly-funded People’s Commission on Presidential Debates, and open its presidential and vice-presidential debates to all candidates who appear on at least as many ballots as would represent a majority of the Electoral College and who raise enough funds to otherwise qualify for general election public financing. Any candidate who refuses to participate in such debates would lose general election public financing for their candidacy. Amend federal law to remove the non-profit tax exemption status that allows corporations to fund the existing Commission on Presidential Debates and other such exclusive privately controlled debate entities.

Reinstate public funding of presidential conventions, and establish the percentage of the presidential popular vote required for a new party to receive public presidential convention funding at 1% for its candidate in the previous general election

Include the option to vote for a binding None of the Above (NOTA) on all party primary and general election ballots. If NOTA receives the most votes in a single-seat, winner-take-all primary election, no candidate from that contest advances to the general election. If NOTA receives the most votes in a single-seat, winner-take-all general election, no candidate is elected and a new election must be held.

Support the right to initiative, referendum and recall at all levels of government. Enact signature gathering standards that empower volunteer collection efforts and financial disclosure requirements that identify the sources of funding behind paid signature efforts.

2. Voting Rights.

Enact a national “right to vote” law and a constitutional amendment, so that every citizen of the United States who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides. (https://www.fairvote.org/right_to_vote_amendment) Establish, through state and federal legislation, same-day registration and and universal automatic voter registration , along with fail-safe voting procedures, so that eligible voters whose names are not on the voter rolls or whose information is out-of-date can correct the rolls and vote on the same day. Give people more choices about where and when they vote, without undermining the ability to vote in the local community where one resides.

Amend the Federal Voting Rights Act to enact a new Section 5 pre-clearance provision to ensure that state governments do not enact laws restricting the right to vote. Clarify that Section 2 provides for a board understanding of ‘disproportionate negative impact’ upon protected classes. Ensure that proportional representation elections are considered valid remedies for Voting Rights Act cases, in both Federal and

State Voting Rights Acts.

Make it easier to meet the goals of the Federal Voting Rights Acts, by expanding the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in combination with elections from multi-seat districts by proportional representation, because more seats – and more proportionally-awarded seats – means fewer conflicts among multiple traditionally under-represented groups competing for too few winner-take-all seats.
Establish, through state legislation, the preregistration of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds and provide educational opportunities for them to practice voting as part of the preregistration process.
Allow felon voting while incarcerated. Restore full citizenship rights to felons upon completion of their sentence, including the right to run for elected office. Enable greater enfranchisement of overseas voters.

Make Election Day a national holiday and/or have weekend elections.

Enact statehood for the District of Columbia. Ensure that citizens of the District of Columbia have the same rights and representation as all other U.S. citizens

3. Ballot Access

Eliminate all ballot access laws and rules that discriminate against smaller parties and independents, and otherwise place undue burden on the right of citizens to run for office – including high filing fees and petition signature thresholds, and unreasonably short qualification periods.

Enact a ‘right to the ballot law’ establishing national readily achievable baseline standards for state party and individual candidate ballot access petitions. Include a party qualification option by voter registration, for states that offer voter registration-by-party.

Establish national readily achievable baseline standards for retaining ballot access by political parties. Include the opportunity to retain ballot status via achievable percentages of the vote in any statewide race, not just for governor or president and only require this at a minimum of every four years.

4. Campaign Finance Reform

Provide full public financing of federal, state and local elections, including free candidate statements in official government voter guides, and free and equal radio and television time on the public airwaves for all ballot-qualified candidates and parties.

Amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to change the percentage of the presidential popular vote required for a new party’s candidate to receive first time General Election public funding from 5% in the previous General Election to 1%;

Amend the U.S. Constitution to unequivocally define that money is not a form of free speech; that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights; and that full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending be allowed by law. Such an amendment would overturn Citizens United v. FEC (2010), McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and Buckley v. Vallejo (1976). Amend the Constitution to authorize the regulation of election contributions and spending to eliminate undue influence of money in our political system, and to protect the rights of all Americans to free speech, political participation, and meaningful representation in government. Together these reforms would address campaign finance transparency of dark money while ending independent campaign expenditures by the corporate rich. Until such amendments in enacted, prohibit corporations from spending to influence elections, as a condition of receipt of a corporate charter by federal chartering of corporations.

Pass strong campaign-finance disclosure laws in all fifty states that require full transparency for campaign donations, including from 501(c)(4) organizations and LLCs.

Replace the Federal Election Commission with a vigorous watchdog empowered to enforce federal campaign finance laws .

5. Election Integrity

Establish guarantees that every citizen’s vote is counted , and that all U.S. voting systems—including electronic ones—are verifiable, transparent and accurate.

Develop publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability; use verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results. Establish a National Elections Commission with the mandate to establish minimum national election standards and uniformity, partner with state and local election officials to ensure pre-election and post-election accountability for their election plans, require nonpartisan election boards, and depoliticize and professionalize election administration across the United States. Enact federal legislation to protect election workers from partisan interference,

6. Reducing Corruption and Good Government

Expand the Freedom of Information Act to apply to Congressional records. Create a Congressional Records Act to prohibit the destruction of potentially important documents. Establish an independent records office for each chamber of Congress, with duties similar to the National Archives and Records Administration and executive agency Freedom of Information Act offices, so that individual Congressional member offices are not deciding which documents to preserve; and

Require Congressional member offices to proactively disclose records of lobbyist and visitor contacts. To address potential conflicts of interest, Prohibit all individual stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses. Require that members divest interests in closely held businesses (including family businesses). Prohibit members and senior aides from owning individual interests in companies, and instead require them to hold only publicly traded index or diversified mutual funds, U.S. treasury bonds, or other similar assets.

Ensure the public can easily identify financial interests that might present conflicts for Congress members and senior staff. Require that Congress members file more detailed financial disclosure reports and provide more information about their potential financial conflicts of interest to the House and Senate ethics committees. Require all members and senior staff disclose any financial interests they hold in any company or industry that is related to or impacted by matters before any committee on which they serve or work. Require that, prior to any hearing featuring any person representing any corporation, entity, industry group, or other interested party, committee members and committee staff release a statement documenting any interest, financial or otherwise, that is reasonably related to the witnesses.

Empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to conduct insider trading and other securities investigations of Congress members and staff who are privy to material nonpublic information. Empower the Internal Revenue Service to conduct yearly audits of member finances, as a strong disincentive against members trying to hide financial interests, while simultaneously giving the public confidence that members are playing by the same financial rules as everyone else.

Prohibit members of Congress, Governors, state legislators and their staffs from accepting for their own personal benefit any gifts of any amount from lobbyists or the general public.

Require outside counsel to investigate ethics complaints against members of Congress, and toughen punishments within the congressional ethics processes for corruption, abuse of power and other wrongdoing.

Expand revolving-door lobbying “cooling off” periods for members of Congress and their top staff to at least two years.

Strengthen ethics requirements for Supreme Court judges and other federal jurists, including to address financial conflicts of interest and other forms of influence that are damaging to the courts’ independence and impartiality.

Substantially increase the size of the Supreme Court so that filling any single vacancy would have less impact on the ideological balance of the Court, so that the larger size would limit the ideological bias of individual justices, and so that the larger size could better represent the diversity of experience in society and inform the Court's decision-making. Substantially increase the size of the Supreme Court to enable the Court to expand its capacity to hear more cases. Replace lifetime appointments with term lengths, so that all appointees to regular terms serve terms of equal length. Establish term lengths so each presidential administration would have appointments to make. Consider term limits and a mandatory retirement age for justices.

Promote experimentation with citizens’ assemblies to enable the public to interact directly with Congress
Increase the number of polling places, and increase the pay for poll workers.

Strengthen “sunshine laws” to provide citizens with all necessary information and access to their political system.

Ensure that all important federal, state and local government documents are on the Internet, especially texts of bills, searchable databases of voting records, draft committee and conference reports, and court decisions.

Reinvigorate the independent investigative agencies, such as the General Accounting Office and the inspectors general.

Enact tough new federal anti-bribery and gratuity laws to stop corporations and the wealthy from purchasing government action, and vigorously enforce of anti-corruption laws by the Justice Department.

Support the ability of cities to establish elected police commissions with the power to set hire and fire police chiefs, set policies and budgets, and independently investigate and discipline police misconduct, with a budgeted a support staff, including legal support.

Resources

Approval of this proposal will amend the 2020 GPUS Platform.

Contacts:

Tarik Kanaana, tkanaana@mtu.edu
Noura Khouri, right2return@gmail.com

References

Current language:

1. Electoral reform.

Enact proportional representation voting systems for legislative seats on municipal, county, state and federal levels. Proportional representation systems provide that people are represented in the proportion their views are held in society and are based on dividing seats proportionally within multi-seat districts, compared to the standard U.S. single-seat, winner-take all districts. Forms of proportional representation include choice voting (candidate-based), party list (party-based) and mixed member voting (combines proportional representation with district representation).

Enact Ranked Choice Voting for chief executive offices like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections. Under Ranked Choice Voting, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference (1,2,3, etc.) Ranked Choice Voting ensures that the eventual winner has majority support and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help their least favored candidate. Ranked Choice Voting thus frees voters from being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and saves money by eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.

Provide full public financing of federal, state and local elections, including free and equal radio and television time on the public airwaves for all ballot-qualified candidates and parties.

Prohibit corporations from spending to influence elections, preferably by constitutional amendment abolishing granting corporations constitutional rights guaranteed to natural persons, or as a condition of receipt of a corporate charter by federal chartering of corporations.

Eliminate all ballot access laws and rules that discriminate against smaller parties and independents, and otherwise place undue burden on the right of citizens to run for office.

Abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct national election of the president by Ranked Choice Voting.

Create a new publicly-funded People's Commission on Presidential Debates, and open its presidential debates to all candidates who appear on at least as many ballots as would represent a majority of the Electoral College and who raise enough funds to otherwise qualify for general election public financing. Any candidate who refuses to participate in such debates would lose general election public financing for their candidacy. Amend federal law to remove the non-profit tax exemption status that allows corporations to fund the existing Commission on Presidential Debates and other such exclusive privately controlled debate entities.

Amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to change the percentage of the presidential popular vote required for a new party's candidate to receive first time General Election public funding from 5% in the previous General Election to 1%; and change the percentage of the presidential popular vote required for a new party to receive public presidential convention funding from 5% for its candidate in the previous general election to 1%.

Include the option to vote for a binding None of the Above (NOTA) on all party primary and general election ballots.

Support the right to initiative, referendum and recall at all levels of government. Enact signature gathering standards that empower volunteer collection efforts and financial disclosure requirements that identify the sources of funding behind paid signature efforts

Enact a national "right to vote" law or constitutional amendment to guarantee universal, automatic, permanent voter registration, along with fail-safe voting procedures, so that eligible voters whose names are not on the voter rolls or whose information is out-of-date can correct the rolls and vote on the same day

Enact statehood for the District of Columbia. Ensure that residents of the District of Columbia have the same rights and representation as all other U.S. citizens.

Restore full citizenship rights to felons upon completion of their sentence, including the right to vote and to run for elected office. Enable greater enfranchisement of overseas voters.

Support strong enforcement of the Federal Voting Rights Act and, where applicable, state voting rights acts like the California Voting Rights Act.

Make Election Day a national holiday and/or have weekend elections.

Amend the U.S. Constitution to require that all vacancies in the U.S. Senate be filled by election rather than appointment.

2. Reducing corruption

Develop publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability; use verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results.

Establish guarantees that every citizen's vote counts, and that all U.S. voting systems—including electronic ones—are verifiable, transparent and accurate.

Establish a National Elections Commission with the mandate to establish minimum national election standards and uniformity, partner with state and local election officials to ensure pre-election and post-election accountability for their election plans, require nonpartisan election boards, and depoliticize and professionalize election administration across the United States.

Establish independent and transparent non-partisan redistricting processes to stop partisan gerrymandering and protect minority rights and representation.

Increase the number of polling places, and increase the pay for poll workers.

Strengthen "sunshine laws" to provide citizens with all necessary information and access to their political system.

Ensure that all important federal, state and local government documents are on the Internet, especially texts of bills, searchable databases of voting records, draft committee and conference reports, and court decisions.

Reinvigorate the independent investigative agencies, such as the General Accounting Office and the inspectors general.

In addition to allowing members of Congress to send mail to their constituents for free, letters from citizens to their members of Congress shall also be free.

Enact tough new federal anti-bribery and gratuity laws to stop corporations and the wealthy from purchasing government action, and vigorously enforce of anti-corruption laws by the Justice Department.

Prohibit members of Congress, Governors, state legislators and their staffs from accepting for their own personal benefit any gifts of any amount from lobbyists or the general public.

Require outside counsel to investigate ethics complaints against members of Congress, and toughen punishments within the congressional ethics processes for corruption, abuse of power and other wrongdoing.

Replace the Federal Election Commission with a vigorous watchdog empowered to enforce federal campaign finance laws.

Expand revolving-door lobbying "cooling off" periods for members of Congress and their top staff to at least two years.

Allow any member of Congress to require a floor vote on any congressional earmark, to stop wasteful spending.

Support the ability of cities to establish civilian police review boards to increase understanding between community members and police officers, provide a public forum to air concerns on policy matters and to ensure public oversight and accountability of their local police department.

Questions about this system?
Contact the Voting Admin.
The Green Party of the United States voting system is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
You can download a copy here.
To independently verify a ranked choice vote, or for information about how that works, go to Jonathan Lundell's Voting Page and upload the ballot file from the ranked choice vote result page. JL's ranked choice module is licensed under an alternate free software license.

Green Party of the United States