JAGWAK

All kinds of personal stuff -- sickness, work issues, etc. -- intervened. So, over a month with no posts. Bad, bad, bad. "Just Another Guy With A Keyboard...who doesn't use it for anything"!

Seriously, though, I'm going to try one more time to get this going. This time, there's a theme: Policy Ideas. We're going to start for now (today? this week? who knows?) with the specific area of "Elections, Voting and Representation". The idea is going to be to throw out for comment a series of ideas for reforms that I think are interesting ideas. I'm not planning on using this to repeat ideas tossed out on the campaign trail -- by either party -- although I may toss out my own alternatives. There are enough blogs out there that follow political news and will cover the "story of the day" -- or launch their own campaign to make some "underreported" story the new story of the day. They fill an important role, and I may occasionally join in with that. But the focus here is going to be the "Policy Jam" to toss new ideas into the mix.

If you've got your own alternatives to the policies outlined in my posts, I encourage you to post links in the comments, or short descriptions (but beware the Haloscan limit). I'll also try to have regular open threads -- use those to suggest areas to explore, or to post descriptions and links of interesting policy ideas you've come up with or found in areas that I haven't addressed that you think deserve more attention.

Feel free to use this as the first Policy Jam open thread.

Later today: the Policy Jam kicks off with the Equal Expanded Vote, a preference voting alternative to the Instant Runoff Vote (for single-winner elections) and Single transferable Vote (for multiple winner elections). Also coming soon: how to avoid gerrymandering headaches with legislative Freedistricting, followed by the magic of Virtual Bicameralism.