Lessig Equal Citizens Exploratory Committee

"A Referendum President" >

2:51 video from August 11, 2015.  [a, b, c]


[Music]

Lessig: Most Americans think the way we fund campaigns in America is crazy corrupt.

Did you know the number of relevant funders in campaigns today represents a tiny fraction of 1-percent of the population?

The consequence of that system is a democracy that's responsive to those funders only.

Congress however has done squat little to fix this corrupt system.

They whine a bunch about it, but Congress has not voted on a proposal to change the way campaigns are funded in more than 20 years.

A representative democracy is supposed to represent us, but sometimes it can't.  Sometimes it gets stuck and can't hear us.  Sometimes it needs an intervention.  They're stuck in a corrupted and unequal system.  They need an intervention.

[Music to SFX  And that's why we're going to have to hack the system to intervene.

[Music]  Imagine someone ran for president with the single promise to remain as president until Congress acted to end this corrupt and unequal system by enacting fundamental reform to fix it.  And when that happened, this referendum president, really just a trustee for the people, would step aside and the elected vice president, a kind of president in waiting, would step in.

That referendum president would have the clearest mandate to fix this corrupted system that's possible within our constitutional system.

A regular president, even one elected with a landslide, has a divided mandate.  He or she was elected for five or six different reasons, but the referendum president would be elected for just one.

That single purpose would put overwhelming political pressure on Congress to do what the people have demanded.  They couldn't pretend not to hear this. 

Now that's not a guarantee, but it may well be the only way we've got short of storming Capitol Hill with muskets, to build the political power necessary to take on this death star they call DC.

So that's the ?hat.

And as I look around to the various options that reformers have described, I increasingly think this is our best shot at fixing this corrupt system and giving us back a democracy that represents us equally, a referendum so clear that even Congress would hear it through a president with the mandate to make Congress act.

This is how we could reclaim a democracy.  Help us make it happen.

Notes: This is one of the videos Larry Lessig used to launch his exploratory committee.  [a, b, c]