Solve American Gridlock

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Learn the reasons how and why we got our Combative Congress - right down to the root causes. Understand the pivotal changes badly needed. All in less than three hours with 37 color illustrations. Ages 16-90 and now on Amazon. Click

COMBATIVE CONGRESS: Your Power! Your Voice! COMBATIVE CONGRESS: Your Power! Your Voice!

Surgery for Congress
“The dangerous condition is chronic electoral systems disease.”

Tom Mast, founder Solve American Gridlock
January 2023

PROBLEM
• Congress is quite ill, dating from about 1967
• Various ineffective medications have been tried
• This disease has caused a long list of symptoms that are resulting in great anguish to people dependent on the patient
• The symptoms include:
- Failure to solve our immigration issues
- Failure in fiscal matters including budgeting, deficit spending, timely attention to money matters, and high
percentages of overall spending on autopilot
- Failure to provide for the fiscal viability of major programs including Social Security and Medicare
- Failure to develop a professional, comprehensive, and long-range plan for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, the
largest project America and the world have ever faced
- Failure to use regular order and procedures that worked well in the past
- Failure to allow fair competition from more than two parties
• The dangerous condition is chronic electoral systems disease
• It is time for surgical intervention

OBJECTIVE
• To correct by surgery the electoral systems that have caused the major symptoms and many more. This will lead to a recovery in legislative procedures, resulting in a Congress whose existence and total focus is on solving problems for the country and its people

THE SURGERY
• Clear the obstructions to having more than two effective parties. These obstructions have been systematically created by the two parties in power, many at the state level. Twenty-one other important countries have an average of 3.9 parties. They benefit from forming coalitions around each piece of legislation, enjoying more civility and a wider range of viewpoints.
- Outlaw closed party primaries
- Institute open primaries from which a fixed number of candidates advance to the general election, perhaps five.
- Use ranked choice voting where practicable to ensure winning candidates have a majority vote
- Return to multi-member districts, eliminating the single-member districts created by Congress in 1967 that have
made over 80% of House seats “safe” for reelection
- Consider four-year terms for members of the House so they aren’t constantly running for election
- After the electoral systems surgery, have rules in Congress focused on effective and timely, legislation.