We all know that the recent presidential election was rather surprising. Many of us watched in fascination until almost 3 AM while the best computers and supposedly best minds to do a job failed miserably. You all watched as the number of votes came to within the NOISE LIMIT for the sampling mechanism. (Let's think, at least 20,000 votes in error * 50 = 100,000 votes. Let's face it, Florida is Probebly typical in noise. I'd call this within the noise limit. I define noise as any votes that could not be counted or were almost certainly in error). You watched as the man not the winner of the popular vote was about to take office.

But what does it all mean? Many people want to protest the fact that the winner of the popular vote was not the man who took office. I'm one of them, but it's not what I'd see as the key issue here.

The key issue is this: The American public DID NOT decide. It was a tie.

The problem we have is that the American government source code (or instructions that tell the 'machine' that is the beaurocracy of government what to do) has a problem, what we in the computer world would call a bug.

A significant thing about this election is that 11% more of one gender voted for gore, while 11% of the other voted for bush. This could mean one of many things.

But what it probably means is that it's time we enforced affirmative action on the oval office.

I am suggesting that the US be ruled by not one, but two presidents. It may be that the time has come to accept that men and women do have somewhat different viewpoints, and enforce both these viewpoints.

I am suggesting that we hold another election - for the Presidents (male and female) of the human race. I am suggesting that we have a pair. (I will present a suggestion for how to control their joint power later). And for the new senators of the united states (male and female). I am suggesting that we change the two senators from each state to be two senators from each state, one male and one female.

But this wouldn't help much unless we made one other rule.

It is time to demand honesty from the people in office. From recent campaigns, this includes their entire arrest record, financial status, financial history, and anything else that happened to them. WHAT?

Hello, let's wake up and smell the coffee here. There's two sides to this coin. On one side, yah, it'd be nice to know someone was into drunk driving and cocaine. It might even be nice to know if he wasn't honest with his spouse.. i.e. if he cheated on her. But there's another side to that coin. We all want to have our own private lives and live our own private lives. We're asking a awful lot from our representatives when we ask them to do that. A rebuttal is that these people are paid a _lot_ of money. And their ability to mess up our lives is _absolute_. So don't we want to insist on the best people our world can produce? (This does NOT, however, mean the people with the most money. Mother Teresa was broke her whole life. Harry Chapin was never really rich. But you know 'Cat's in the cradle'. Oh, yes you do. Don't even try to claim you don't. Now go back and listen to the words.)

I don't know what the right answer is here, either, but I propose we vote on the subject, separately. And demand laws that enforce our vote, and revote from time to time in case we've changed our minds. Using a reliable, secure voting system.

I really think we need some way to stop our candidates from lying to us. I think they should be allowed to tell us 'No, because we can't afford to', but lying to us should be frowned upon most seriously. And I think we need a way to vote people out of office when they do. Not lying about who they are having sex with, but lying about what they are doing with our money and what rules and restrictions they are making on our behavior. WE are the people, we are governed 'WITH OUR CONSENT'! That's what it says. So that means if we don't agree, we can NOT consent. We can collectively call our government and say 'Build us a better one'.

I propose we vote from time to time on less serious issues, too.. like how we feel on education or nuclear weapons.. just to make sure that every person in the government knows how we, the people, feel.

I mean, that's the key, isn't it? We the people? Isn't this supposed to be our government? Wasn't that the whole point of voting? Well, then, let's vote on the issues, not just on the people. Not forcing the government to do anything, but just sharing our view, ya know? I mean systamized voting, with enough of the country answering that we had some idea where the government should be going?

You, the reader, you have opinions, right? There are some things you would, or wouldn't, like to see? Like going into space? Or better privacy? Or the right to pray in schools? Or the right not to? Or campaign finance reform? or something?

We demand the right to have honest answers from our representatives, and we demand to have very, very easy access to a voting system that lets us do it. (Suggested technology: Web browsers and library terminals. The rule here would be 'vote early, vote often'.. in other words, feel free to vote on any subject you'd care to. To vote, scroll to the bottom and click vote. (Optional: read the entire web page, which tells you what the arguments for and against are) You wanna vote ten times? Sure. Only rule is that you must vote through human muscle effort. And each time you must type in your completely double blind anonymous username. These usernames will be issued to everyone, and then a SYSTEMATIC purging of them that will leave the government unaware of who they were issued to. We're talking a system designed so it CAN'T be broken here, with our best minds working on it for a few months.)

Those same usernames could be used, if the system were made sufficiently secure, for voting at home.

Some system would have to be invented to issue those at birth. People would be eligible to vote on non-binding issues (The polls, and I propose having one a week, with some of them recurring every (#) iterations.) and every politician would be required to read, and prove that he read, have memorized, know, grok every one of those results for the past ten years before he would be eligible for public office.

It's important to note that if America were to do anything requiring power to keep government in operation, there would have to be some fundamental changes in where we get power from.. i.e. to solar as a full scale, 'do it now' government project like the Apollo program was. I will present a argument for this later. There are more than environmental issues at stake. And might I add that you people are SHEEP! and so am I, so far, although I'm not going to be by 2002, I've decided.

And we really need women as well as men in the government. We need 50 50. And we, as HUMANS, need to transcend our petty race (male/female) differences and all accept that this is a fundamental truth. Not all men created equal, but all people be created equal, and let those words be struck from the source code. I'm not kidding.

Suggestion: that the following things require consensus of both the woman and the man presidents to be done: Going to war. (War being any attack on another country that costs more than $10 million, either in damage to them or in cost to us or both combined) Vetoing a bill that 3/4ths of the senators had signed. (Either one of them can veto a bill that 1/2 of the senators had signed, which performs a check on any stupid male/female things that go through. They'll be deadlocked occasionally, but hopefully common sense will sometimes prevail)

I ask that people think about this, before their 'keep it the same way' nerves kick in and they suggest otherwise: If you are a woman, what makes less sense to you than some of the actions of a man? If you are a man, what is more infuriatingly impossible to understand than a woman. Think about that. Then admit both views need to be represented in a country that is 50% of each gender.

Oh, and it's time for a reality check here. We do not have unlimited resources. The people can wish for bread and circuses all they like, but the answer from the electors is still to be 'No!'. Meaning, the people can never spend more money than they make. Ever. You want more services? Pay in more income tax.

Let me add that this is also what the stock market is obviously for. You want more space? Go dump some money in a good space start-up.

P.s. and by the way: You idiots, you need to not fuel so much competition so fast. You're all gonna lose your chips from spreading them too thin. Put more into each company, and buy less companies, for crissake. A 'HOT' IPO is only hot if they have a really good and really useful product for which there's only one competitor. There are NOT an unlimited number of us geeks to build these things, and you can burn through a lot of money and get nowhere if you don't have talented people behind the computers. Nothing works out of the box. Don't ever believe that.

Oh, and on the electoral college: Crazy as it sounds, I say keep it ONLY IF YOU DO THESE THINGS. But I'm not going to explain why. (and let's not forget, now there will be two electoral collages)

I'm sure these won't be very popular, but I just wanted to place out on the net for everyone to see my views on the subject.