Stray Thoughts

Election Ideas

* The voting age should be reduced from 18 to 16.

* More radically, parents who have children too young to vote should get an extra vote for their children. Perhaps mothers would get an extra vote for their minor daughters and fathers would get an extra vote for their minor sons.

* Felony disqualification from voting should end everywhere.

* More radically, lawful permanent residents should have the right to vote.

* Voter registration barriers to voting should be eliminated.

* Early voting by mail should be an option for everyone who wants to utilize it.

* Voting Rights Act provisions targeted at election administration abuses should be reinstated.

* The ballot should be shorter. 

** Judicial retention elections could be screened in some reasonable manner so that only genuinely contested judicial retention elections make the ballot. 

** We don't need to have elections for posts like CU-Regent, State Treasurer, Secretary of State, Coroner, County Treasurer, County Assessor, and Clerk and Recorder. Instead, we need many positions like that to be appointed via a meritocratic civil service system.

** Some of the fiscal decisions now made by voters should be left in the hands of elected officials instead.

Public Law

* Judges should have the right to order the agencies have to fix illegal policies systemically, both retroactively and prospectively, when one person's case brings an illegal policy to light.

* Judges should have the power to remove public officials who have engaged in misconduct in a case from office as one of the remedies available to them.

Federal Court Private Law Jurisdiction

* Diversity jurisdiction in cases that do not involve international disputes should be abolished, except for special statutory exceptions for class actions and interpleader actions.

* Generalized federal question jurisdiction in cases involving only private parties should be abolished except in cases where there is a specific statute such a Section 1983 or intellectual property laws that authorize bringing a lawsuit in federal court. For example, private sector employment discrimination cases arising under federal law should be the exclusive jurisdiction of state courts.