Its not Lessig's proposals that make him ridiculous - its his perfect lack of any plausible strategy to enact them should he be elected.

Lessig is More!

In all seriousness, you'd think that SNL could have had Lessig on their faux Democratic Debate to make the point about exclusion, and give him some serious exposure. Opportunity missed.

@1 FTW. Lessig's campaign is a publicity stunt that is taking itself far to seriously.

These plans sure do sound like they'd get real far in Congress!

A Democrat doesn't run to represent the American people.

A Democrat is appointed to power within The Party.

The election is just a formality to convince everyone it's on the level.

Once selected by The Party the election is used only as a way that Party Leaders can control whether the power broker keeps his office or is thrown own.

I wouldn't mind Lessig in the debates now that he has dropped his "I'll get this passed then I'll quit" mantra. I would like to hear his proposals. The problem is that he can't be elected president wave a magic wand and get his agenda passed. Unfortunately he has shown no interest in the rest of the job.

This is a parody of an overly earnest daily Kos diary, right? Because the alternative is too sad to contemplate.

The entire premise of this article is idiotic. You can't fix politics.

I saw him on Bill Maher. He came off as a peevish, one-note WASP.

Without a prayer of making his one issue happen - the GOP will control Congress for another decade thanks to the very problem he's identified. And Gerrymandering. Why would they change now?

@9 Exactly. Show me someone who can "fix" politics, and I'll show you a Dictator for Life.

@6 Party loyalty above policy is a value of the Republican party. No other party in modern history has shut down the government over not getting its own way; or directing the DOJ to prosecute the opposition party on the flimsiest of grounds and to deliberately ignore their own party; or removing life-long loyal servants of foreign policy over ideology and replacing them with green, ignorant, straight-out-of-Liberty-University idiots. They all have taken place over the past 15 years, and those are all facts, not some random accusations with nothing to back it up.

This article is bullshit. The reason why he was not allowed into the debates is because, not only has he no chance at winning, he also has never been elected to any public office. At least Chaffee, Webb, Pataki, and Kasich have all been elected to major public offices.

There is no reason to include him in the debates.

Very good comments, especially #12. Why do folks assume that just because they are smart, they are qualified to be President of the United States? Maybe you should hold some sort of office first. Hillary Clinton was literally married to the President and very much involved in his presidency (meaning she was probably qualified then) but she didn't just run after that. She become a Senator first. If Lessig is serious about being President, he should consider the same path.

I'll admit I'm a little surprised at the reception Lessig is getting here. He is perhaps the only candidate who sees this enormous problem plaguing every aspect of our political system, and simply wants the opportunity to speak about it on a national stage (and deserves to, having raised more money and polled higher than a handful of other Democratic and Republican candidates). The power of the people has been systematically weakened by politicians and moneyed interests to the point where the people's interests are no longer represented - to the degree that the majority of votes will hardly matter in national or even some state elections.

Our right to be represented by our government is perhaps the most fundamental right we have as American citizens, and we can't even take a moment to consider the platform of the only candidate who wants to speak on this issue? Whether or not you personally think that he has a chance at getting elected or would vote for him, isn't this a fundamentally important issue to Americans across the spectrum? How do we actually expect to get the reforms we want when Congress no longer works for us?

From the source you misquoted: "One Vermonter’s vote, according to the Electoral College is worth three Texans’ votes."

When did Slog hire sgt. doom to post?

@16: Careful, them's fightin' words.

Why do folks assume that just because they are smart, they are qualified to be President of the United States?

It's worse than that, though. His own stupid plan was to pass his signature bill, then immediately resign. (He's changed his tune now, but he ran on that insane idea for months.)

To explain how stupid his plan is is to insult the intelligence of the commenters here, but he really did somehow seem to claim his election would force the Republicans in Congress to pass a bill they obviously oppose. Also, does Baume actually not understand that the electoral college overrepresents small states like Vermont, not large ones like Texas? Is he aware that's a constitutional provision a hypothetical president Lessig would be powerless to change?

Lessig's signature bill is a fine idea, although not particularly radical within the Democratic party such that "they're suppressing this brave truth-teller" makes any goddamn sense. (After all, HRC, Sanders, and Obama all support the main ideas in it.) The Democrats are trying to nominate a presidential candidate, a job Lessig makes no pretenses to even want, let alone be qualified for.

Lessig is the Ben Carson of the left. Frankly I'm surprised they haven't let him run, to pull away support from Sanders who in fact would have a much better chance of fixing the very issues Lessig is running on. Sanders also supports election reform.

Not really. Sanders represents a position on the political spectrum, supporting a collection of policy positions that can more or less describe a coherent whole. So, in his own way, does Carson. Their monstrous policy positions aside, the Republicans don't have a vanity/joke candidate like Lessig. As badly as the Republican candidates insult the intelligence of their supporters, one way in which they don't insult them is by pretending it's just fine for a Presidential candidate to take a position in only one policy area. (And no, Lessig wouldn't pull support away from Sanders, or Clinton either--why would he? He's a one issue candidate, it's not an issue most voters care that much about, and Sanders and Clinton agree with him anyway.)

"the vote for president — arguably one of the most important elections we face — is rigged with an insane Electoral College system that disproportionately prioritizes certain voters above others."

During the course of campaigns, candidates are educated and campaign about the local, regional, and state issues most important to the handful of battleground states they need to win. They take this knowledge and prioritization with them once they are elected. Candidates need to be educated and care about all of our states.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, in 2012 did not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. 10 of the original 13 states are ignored now. 80% of states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns. Candidates had no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they were safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

In 2012, more than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested on voters in just the only ten competitive states. There are only expected to be 7 remaining swing states in 2016.

Issues of importance to non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them.

Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.

Since World War II, a shift of a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections

Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

“Battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

Vermont, among 4 small jurisdictions, 3 medium-size states, and 4 big states, with a total of 165 electoral votes, has enacted the National Popular Vote bill.

The bill would take effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority, and the presidency.

The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter equally in every presidential election.

The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states states with 250 electoral votes.

NationalPopularVote.com

"The One Guy?" Is his plan somehow dependent upon him personally? On him being president?

There's no question that these are serious issues, but there's little indication that Lessig is actually treating them more seriously than having a link on a website with the word 'plan' in the title. A good first step would be to at least acknowledge the complications of convincing congress and the myriad state-level organizations that actually control things like congressional districts and voting rules to capitulate to a new, ill-defined, crowdsourced system of legislation that is very unlikely to be in the self-interests of anyone in currently in power.

Goodspaceguy makes more sense than this clown.

Comment #24 Asks: "The One Guy?" Is his plan somehow dependent upon him personally? On him being president?

Actually, Lessig says he tried to find a Democrat and also a Republican to run on his "Fix Democracy First" platform, but could find no one. He therefore took upon himself the job of running as a Democrat. I think his recognition of his own lack of political and executive experience led him to promise to resign after signing his proposed Citizen Equality Act, which currently is being crowd-sourced at http://citizenequality.us