GOVERNMENT REFORM
PLAN OF ACTION
Reign In Presidential Power. Restore Checks & Balances.
Thoroughly investigate the secret and extraordinary emergency authorities given to the president. At a minimum, require transparency and establish strict congressional oversight.
Pass legislation to limit presidential trade authority. The law should require a congressional review whenever a president invokes Section 232 and should be retroactive for two years.
Automatically terminate an emergency declaration within 30 days unless Congress votes to extend it. Impose strict reporting requirements on the Executive Branch.
Require written justifications from the president for pardons involving close associates.
Extend federal safeguards against conflicts of interest to the president and vice president.
Pass legislation to protect special counsels and inspectors general from improper removal.
Erect a barrier between the White House and the Justice Department. Do not tolerate political interference in any way.
Require all communications between the White House and Justice Department be made available to the inspector general.
Pass legislation to enforce the safeguards in the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Fix the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to prevent presidents from cutting the Senate out of the appointments process.
Take concrete steps to streamline the nomination and confirmation process.
Reform the White House security clearance process.
End the power of the electoral college. Encourage states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact while we push for a constitutional amendment.
Demand that partisan gerrymandering end.
Encourage states to use an independent, bipartisan commission to draw voting maps.
Modernize the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Create a new framework to determine which states and localities are subject to preclearance. Rely on recent evidence and examples of current suppression and discrimination instead of historical patterns of behavior to address the U.S. Supreme Court’s concerns.
Allow Americans to sue to block voting laws and practices they believe to be intentionally discriminatory, or if they believe their constitutional right to vote is being infringed upon.
Absolutely, positively do not allow earmarks. Ever.
Propose a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Shine a Bright Light on Dark Money
Significantly restructure the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to guarantee strenuous, NONPARTISAN, and fair enforcement.
Demand that any entity that raises more the $10,000 in a federal election disclose its donors.
Tighten rules to ensure that super PACs are truly independent of candidates.
Extend last-minute major donor reporting requirements to Super PACs.
Pass legislation that modernizes campaign finance laws to account for online political advertising, expanding the regulation of TV and radio ads to internet ads. The legislation should also increase election advertising transparency by allowing the public to see who bought an online political ad, regardless of its origin.
Initiate the process of increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices to 19.
Pass legislation requiring the Supreme Court to provide a formal, signed and publicly justified opinion for any emergency order that alters a lower court’s ruling. The law should also require recorded votes, meaning the votes of individual Justices on emergency applications should be made public.
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket, referred to by many as its “shadow docket,” is the mechanism the Court uses to address urgent matters as quickly as possible, especially in cases where lower courts have issued orders that parties want to challenge or stay (Justice Alito has publicly objected strongly to the term “shadow docket,” calling it unfairly “sinister”).
This emergency docket is controversial because the Court issues orders and summary decisions outside its normal procedures, allowing the Justices to make decisions without the deliberation and transparency that is usually achieved through full briefings, oral arguments, and/or written opinions.
Many people – including 1787 – say this undermines the rule of law because the public often gets little to no explanation of the reasoning behind the decisions. This includes cases involving immigration, abortion and voting rights – all issues that have a significant impact on the lives.
Significantly Curtail Current Lobbying Practices
Demand complete transparency and accountability in all lobbying activities.
Create an independent enforcement agency that demands the strict compliance of lobbying laws and ethics rules.
Require the registration of lobbyists and their clients. Create a database that is easily accessible to the public.
Enact a five-year ban on lobbying by presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress, and federal judges.
Enact a five-year ban on federal employees from lobbying their former office, department, or chamber of Congress after they leave the government.
Place stiff restrictions and disclosure requirements on the “revolving door” between the private sector and public officials.
Simplify legislation. Support new rules for bringing proposals to the floor of the House of Representatives. Retain the filibuster, which is a healthy check on narrow partisan majorities in the legislature.
Stop allowing continuing resolutions, omnibus spending deals, and debt-ceiling hikes to substitute for a real budget. It’s out of control.
Demand Ethical Conduct and Government Accountability
Reform the Office of Government Ethics so that it can better enforce federal ethics laws.
Never allow presidents to use the autopen to sign substantive documents, including pardons and legislation.
Require family members of the president to disclose all business dealings with foreign entities.
Properly enforce the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 (STOCK Act) and strict pay-to-play restrictions on government contracts.
Prohibit government officials from holding or trading stock when they might be influenced by their agency, department, or actions.
Demand complete transparency in all government contracting activities.
Pass legislation requiring agencies that perform scientific research to articulate clear standards for, and report on, how political officials interact with career researchers.
Enact legislation requiring proactive disclosure of government research and data.
Pass legislation that specifically prohibits political campaigns from accepting help from foreign countries (it is unbelievable that this must be written down somewhere).
Extend Congress’ sexual harassment law to include discrimination of any kind.
Secure Whistleblower Protections. Implement severe penalties for revealing the identity of whistleblowers, and/or for threatening them in any way.
Close the loophole that allows FEC commissioners to decline to pursue a complaint citing “prosecutorial discretion.”
Guard Against Voter Suppression
Pass legislation that protects our elections from voter suppression and partisan sabotage.
Endorse a national standard for voter identification requirements.
Expand access to the ballot, to include early voting, mail voting, automatic voter registration, online voter registration, and same day voter registration.
Strictly prohibit – and establish severe penalties for – the dissemination of false and misleading information designed to dissuade eligible voters from voting.
Establish federal criminal penalties for deceiving voters and increase existing penalties for voter intimidation.
Require local election offices use .gov domains.
Encourage all states to count their mail and absentee ballots before Election Day to avoid confusion.
Encourage Congress to pass legislation to set minimum early voting requirements for states.
Expand the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to include automatic, permanent voter registration laws.
Eliminate ballot gathering/ballot collecting. Only allow family members, household members, or caregivers to return ballots on behalf of someone else.
Restore federal voting rights to formerly incarcerated citizens upon their release. Encourage states to establish consistent laws among one another to replace the confusing patchwork of existing state laws.
Establish federal requirements for state ballot design using best practices developed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and its chosen partners.
Require states to ensure that voting lines last no longer than two hours.
Protect voting access for Americans with disabilities.
Strengthen and empower the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Safeguard the entire electoral process.
No Internet voting – EVER!
Provide federal funding for critical updates to our election infrastructure immediately. Make the “critical infrastructure” designation for election systems permanent.
Provide federal funding for election administrator and poll worker training.
Provide federal resources for state and federal agencies to conduct regular threat assessments to our election systems.
Establish a bug bounty program for election systems (bug bounty programs offer a way for independent security experts to identify potential vulnerabilities and lawfully report them).
Require states to conduct transparent postelection audits that follow clearly defined and transparent rules and procedures.
Require states to replace old, paperless electronic voting machines with voting systems that provide voter-verified paper records.
Prohibit wireless components in all voting systems that record and tabulate votes.
Require election administrators to routinely assess the integrity of voter registration databases and the integrity of voter registration databases connected to other applications.
Back up election/voter registration databases regularly and establish failsafe measures for Election Day, including having enough ballots on hand.
Highly regulate and vet election vendors.
Toughen the penalties for destroying or altering ballots and other election records.
Increase protections for local election administrators and pass a federal law preventing them from being removed for partisan or political reasons. Increase federal protections and remedies against the intimidation of election workers.
Limit access to critical election infrastructure to only election officials and those they specifically give written permission to.
Prevent flawed, inconsistent procedures for purging voter rolls while ensuring states accurately maintain their voter registration lists. Require states to notify a voter at least two weeks prior to the voter being removed from the list, along with the reason for their removal and ways they can contest the decision.
Require all states to participate in a system of cross-state matching of voter registrations.