True voting reform

This year's voting is serioulsy irking me. It's probably the same ever year, but for whatever reason, this year it just seems like more misinformation is being spread than ever before. It's gotten to the point where I'm not reading or watching anything about the vote until a few days before, so that my mind isn't tainted by incorrect information.

I haven't studied the propositions yet, which sort of helps me stay immune to the television ads about them. The television ads I've seen give no indication as to what the propositions stand for, they just explain how a yes vote or no vote would cause the world to fall apart. I know that the california police say one of the propositions would cause our state to crumble into a Gotham-City-like crime state, but I have no idea why, and I don't even remember what proposition would do this. When I finally do read the ballot I'm hoping that I'll be able to approach it from a fresh perspective, since really none of the advertising is all that meaningful to me right now, because it has no context.

On the other hand, I feel my approach is not pushing forward what I believe is right. If I was a concerned citizen, I would have studied the issues months ago, and been writing, calling, protesting, flyering, etc., about the issues and spreading the facts. I feel torn between the fact that I loathe the marketing that goes into the campaign and proposition process, and the reality that this process actually does affect the outcome of the vote.

I personally think that the only way to reform this process is to get rid of privately funded media advertisements altogether. Instead, take those millions of dollars spent on campaigning, and cut it back to just a few ads that air the weeks before the election, and the ads would mirror what happens in the official ballot guide: the first 20 seconds of the ad would be the information about what the issue was about, the second 20 seconds would be the argument from one side, the last 20 seconds would be the argument from the otherside (and the ads would randomly alternate which side went first and second). That way, as long as you are seeing the whole ad, you are receiving the facts and both interpretations of the facts all at once. I feel like this would be the most effective and fair way to get information out to the voters, and would also save the voters money in the long run because these hundred-million dollar mudslinging campaigns would be reduced to a few million dollars of fair media coverage.

There's also something inherently flawed with the fact that as a San Francisco resident, I should be so concerned with a senate election happening in some small town in the midwest. Theoretically senators are elected to represent their local district. The fact that there are huge campaign events where people from Oregon get together to call voters in North Dakota just seems wrong. Again, this is where the ideal world falls apart and reality steps in - of course local elections matter on a national level because they determine who controls the senate, the house, and therefore the nation. But the system was not intended to be that way, it's a side-effect of having a two party system. However, this system is so ingrained into our government that I'm not even sure at this point that there's an alternative. It would probably be more worthwhile for me to start taking interest in elections in Ohio than trying to support a system where local elections only have local effects...