Election Reform, Anyone?

The Ugliness, Dumbness, Stupidity and Hopelessness of the election that we just completed here on Guam has led me to believe that there should be a serious change in the way that elections are done. From the very beginning, where the candidates let the world know that they are “seeking public office” right through to the swearing in, there are some serious problems with the process. The system its own self is broken, and must be fixed in order for the people of Guam to get the kind of leadership we deserve.

Being the helpful kind of guy that I am, here are some suggestions that I think should be implemented.

Shorten the Campaign Season
Both camps running for governor campaigned for nearly two years. Two Years. By the time the election rolled around, most of us were really sick of all of the bullshit and just wanted to get it over with. Under my new rules, a candidate could not declare himself until May 1st, and not a day sooner. That means no commercials, no signs, no glad-handing, nothing. Zip. Nada. You get the six months and that’s it, period.

Limit Advertising in the Media
By the middle of September, it seemed like every time you turned on your television for a little mindless entertainment, you had Brother Eddie and Uncle Carl and their relatives on the screen beating the shit out of each other. My rules would limit the number of commercials allowed on the airwaves to 1 30-second ad per hour per campaign, maximum. Print ads in the paper would be limited in size to one quarter page in any given issue. The only people allowed to appear in a candidates radio/television ads would be the candidates themselves and no one else. No kids saying that if they could vote they would vote for a particular candidate. No wives/mothers of candidates telling us how great and groovy their relative is. Radio and television stations who violate this policy would be fined $10,000 per violation, payable in cash dollars within 24 hours of the fine being levied. If no payment, the fine doubles every 24 hours.

Platform Availability
Each candidate for governor would be required to release his/her platform to the general public a minimum of 3 months prior to the election. The candidates for governor in the election that just ended released their platforms a little more than 72 hours prior to votes being cast, which gave no one any time to actually read the damn things. In this day and age where everyone has the Internet in their homes and even on their smart phones, this was beyond stupid. (Unless of course the respective candidates really didn’t know what the fuck they stood for until 72 hours before the election.)

Signage
One of the things that REALLY pissed me off about the election is the fact that every person running for office plastered their respective posters and billboards everywhere. Some of these posters were huge, and you could not escape them. I was at a point where I wanted to commit criminal mischief by defacing every sign I saw with a paintball gun. The sign wars that were going on in Yigo were as if the candidates were having a “my dick is bigger than your dick” contest. One camp had a ginormous sign by the side of the highway, with the other candidate having a sign TWICE AS BIG within 50 feet of the other candidates. This also happened in several other places as well, but the scene in Yigo in the parking lot at Mark’s Hardware was just ridiculously stupid. Good God, you could have landed a small plane on the Guiterrez/Aguon sign.

Signs under my rules would be limited to be no larger than 4 feet by 4 feet, and can ONLY be posted on public lands in designated areas, say, adjacent to the village mayor’s office. Any campaign posting signage anywhere else would be fined heavily. NOT every 10 feet on the side of every single road on the island, NOT adjacent to polling places, NOT next to schools or churches. Violate the rules and you are no longer allowed to put up any signs anywhere.

If a candidate is deemed to be Hideously Ugly, then no signs with head shots would be allowed at all.

The Door to Door Idiots
It was bad enough that you couldn’t escape the election when you turned on the TV or radio or newspaper, or, for that matter, simply driving to work every morning. The people knocking on my door wanting to come in and talk about their candidate was really too much. Some of these volunteers were worse than religious fanatics, stopping by every other weekend, a steely look of determination and civic pride in their eyes, wanting to come into the house and talk about "The Candidate". Under my new rules, a citizen would have the right to shoot mace, pepper spray, or other Chemical Deterrents at these peoples faces without fear of criminal prosecution. After a guy has had to eat a face full of pepper spray 3 or 4 times, I think that would discourage the door knocking. This should also be a legal policy when it comes to the religious fanatics as well, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Campaign Trucks
You might have heard them rolling through your neighborhood. The pickup trucks with the big-assed posters mounted in the back, playing music and campaign gibberish at audible levels well above the sonic pain threshold. These should be abolished, and citizens should have the right to open fire at these trucks if they come through their neighborhoods (small calibers only aiming at the signs only).

Not only would my changes help us to elect someone we could trust, they would also provide some quality entertainment for the citizens of Guam when the campaigns break the rules. If anything, it would at least make Election Season a bit more tolerable.