A Congressional Reset

This is a proposal about elections, so let me be plain about something. Seven Years of Change does not replace voting and never will. I served, and members of my family serve now, specifically to protect that vote. Everything on this site is built alongside the ballot, not instead of it. Go vote. Then build.

I do not offer this proposal lightly. I recognize and honor the work of many serious public servants, including elected officials who have spent their careers trying to improve this country.

I also believe that the United States needs more than two viable political parties. Our two-party system has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to represent the full range of American experiences, needs, and ideas.

For that reason, I propose a temporary Congressional reset, one that would require sacrifice from all politicians, including those we personally support.

Following a one-year national planning period, every seat in the House of Representatives should be opened to a new generation of candidates for three consecutive two-year sessions: a six-year period equal to one full Senate term.

During this reset, current members of the House should voluntarily step aside, including our personal favorites. That is part of the point. We cannot demand renewal only from representatives we dislike while treating those we support as permanently indispensable.

Perhaps your favorite representative is doing the job well. That should be the expectation, not the justification for political permanence.

As part of this reset, I propose amending the Constitution, temporarily or permanently, if the nation ultimately agrees, to allow any otherwise eligible citizen who is at least eighteen years old to run for the House of Representatives.

We have long acknowledged the contradiction. At eighteen, a person may enlist, serve the country, accept military orders, and die in its defense, yet the nation still treats that person as insufficiently mature for numerous rights and responsibilities.

It is even more difficult to justify telling such a person that they must wait seven additional years before seeking a seat in the House of Representatives.

The minimum age for the Senate should remain thirty. The Senate’s longer terms and national responsibilities call for greater life experience and accumulated judgment.

During the six-year reset, I would strongly encourage women to seek most of the available Senate seats: women with children and women without children; women from every region, income level, profession, race, culture, and lived experience.

This country needs women’s wisdom, independence, practical knowledge, and leadership in abundance.

The campaign period for every congressional race should be limited to three months. Every qualified candidate should receive the same amount of publicly provided campaign funding and equal access to essential public forums. Personal wealth, corporate influence, and access to wealthy donors should not determine whose ideas the public is permitted to hear.

The Court has held that limits on political spending raise First Amendment questions. That is a serious constitutional argument and it deserves a serious answer, not a workaround. Mine is that a three-month campaign with equal public funding for every qualified candidate does not silence anyone. It equalizes access to the public's attention, which is a public resource, and the public is entitled to decide how it is allocated.

This platform and earlier versions of its ideas have been presented to many institutions over the years. Too often, institutions behave as though they already possess every meaningful answer and as though the “little people” cannot possibly offer ideas worthy of serious consideration.

That attitude is part of the problem a reset should confront.

This proposal would not solve every national problem. No electoral structure could. But it would interrupt political permanence, allow new generations to enter public service, reduce the power of money, and require the country to reconsider whom representative government is supposed to represent.

I know this proposal will sound unrealistic to many people. Perhaps it is. But our present system is producing outcomes that millions of Americans already find intolerable. At some point, defending what is familiar becomes more unreasonable than proposing something new.

So here it is. Take it apart.

This proposal is not part of the Seven Years of Change framework. It is one citizen's argument, published under his own name. The platform does not depend on it and does not endorse it.