DENNIS DURBAND

Pull the Plug on Clean Elections and Finish Re-Districting Madness Before 2010

By Dennis Durband, Editor
Nov. 22, 2006

Things we’d like to see in the future:

A ballot initiative pulling the plug on the Clean Elections Commission. This boondoggle has wasted millions and millions of taxpayer dollars and put the state directly in control of elections. This is called “socialism,” and it has no place in a representative republic. The Clean Elections Commission boasts about making it possible for more people to run for public office. But what does it matter to the state how many people run for public office? It should not matter a wit. Quantity and quality of candidates are two different animals. Clean Elections has taken the work ethic and the grassroots fundraising efforts out of election campaigns. It has punished those who are successful at raising their own campaign funds. Two years ago, an initiative was qualified for the ballot, but a liberal judge threw it off the ballot for violating the single subject rule. A simplified text would help the next time around, such as: By a vote of yes, the citizens of Arizona elect to render null and void the Clean Elections Act and the resulting Clean Elections Commission.

A ballot initiative amending Arizona’s constitution to defend existing marriage law. This initiative will merely identify the current law restricting marriage to one man and one woman and add it as an amendment to the state constitution. And this time the sponsoring committee needs to make fundraising strategy from the start of the process. This will allow TV and radio advertising at the start of the campaign season – before hundreds of thousands of voters have already cast their ballots. That was a big problem this year with Prop 107, as the Protect Marriage Arizona coalition was unable to run radio and TV ads until five days before the election season ended.

The growth of a huge conservative organization in Arizona that will bring conservatives together to work for common sense public policy, including fiscal responsibility and an awareness program on social issues. The American public is largely ignorant about economics and social issues and has bought into liberal cliches and falsehoods. This needs to be reversed. This organization should have a very aggressive public relations program to educate the public on which public policies work and which public policies don’t work.

Genuine education reform. The templates for education need to be deeply examined and those that are not bearing fruit need to be abandoned. Schools need to be forced to return to the basics so that well-educated graduates can be fed into colleges and the work force. The answer is not money; it is demanding quality teaching and learning and an education program that can compete with the academic achievement of other nations. Other nations that are currently outperforming the U.S. education system. During election seasons, virtually every political candidate speaks about reforming education. Nothing significant ever really results, and our education system continues to perform at an alarmingly low level. This includes K-12 and state colleges and universities. Taxpayers must demand better results for the price they pay for education. If a foreign power took over our education system and achieved these dreadful results, we’d be marching on the schools. The number of school districts in Arizona needs to be drastically cut, preferably to 15 county levels, to cut down on wasteful bureaucracy.

An end to the madness of politically correct/racial profiling in state re-districting efforts. There is only one more election remaining in this decade, but the Arizona Independent Re-Districting Commission – hamstrung by political correctnes and impossible demands – is still struggling to get its legislative and congressional boundaries for the current decade accepted. The Department of Justice saddles all re-districting efforts with nonsense. The Arizona re-districting efforts have also been thwarted by legal action. The whole thing is a mess. Emboldened by DOJ requirements that re-districting consider “communities of interest” without crossing numerous boundaries extending down to the township level, minority interest groups have consistently tied up re-districting efforts in the courts. Re-districting efforts are also required to make districts “competitive” – something akin to herding cats across a river. It should be the responsibility of political parties to assure their competitiveness in each district – not the re-districting commission’s responsibility. And leave it to the government to create a bloated bureaucracy complete with a demographer profiling voters' race. Following the DOJ’s logic, each district’s make-up, would assure that Libertarian, Republican and Democratic candidates all tie in each and every election. The people and the democratic process have been subverted by social engineering, racial profiling and political correctness. Stop the madness.

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