The grim reaper’s voting booth jollies

The most impeccable logic may be non-transferable even when applied to similar contexts. Unlike rats, which can adapt to almost all environments, rationality may not endure the harshest climates. 

The reason is not meteorological, but political.

New York City mayors and City Council members are term-limited, as are the majority of the states' governors. Members of Congress have terms that are, in effect, perpetually renewable. 

Their public service becomes akin to prison sentences that are served consecutively, but it's the electorate that is behind bars. We made the system that incarcerates us.

When members of Congress are first elected, they are usually comfortably in the upper middle class financially. Within a term or two, every one of them, all 535, is in the top 1 percent. That must be proof that our representatives are chosen from "the best and the brightest.”

They get reelected well into their intellectual moribundity, when the sole cognitive function they retain is fluency in the charms of insider trading. The magic of exponential profits resulting from insider trading would land the rest of us in prison. Society has its standards.

Once elected, members of the House, especially,  have eternal tenure, despite the setup of periodic balloting. It's a daunting challenge to unseat them, even if they have done nothing positive for their districts and simply enriched themselves. 

Scandals are no flukes, and consultants, donors and political action committees know how to make them go away.

Term limits should be universal and mandated for all federal, state and city legislators as well as judgeships. Opponents argue that the electorate is mindful of its civic duty, is informed and responsible in its exercise, and can be trusted to ensure its judgments are in the public interest. 

If elected officials don't pass muster, they can be replaced.

That's what our cherished democracy is all about, they say. It's clear we no longer can trust our foundational beliefs. 

Overwhelming advantages for incumbents, even beyond funding regulations, are insidiously engineered into the electoral system. The claim of a level playing field for incumbents and their challengers is a myth and illusion. The soil for incumbents is meticulously tilled. Their challengers' turf is sinkholes and quicksand.

Aggravating the grim prospects for successful insurgency is the worsening widespread ignorance and apathy of an easily manipulated electorate. They are clueless about civics education and the eroded concept of the "greater good.”

They don't give much thought to the fact that they don't know what to think, and are demographically polarized along lines of groupthink.

It's a pity it's come down to this. Many voters have lost or forfeited their deliberative capacity and are ill-equipped to make sound and rational judgments.

The law should intervene to modify the voting franchise by imposing absolute and irrevocable term limits. Some good talent will be sacrificed, but much raw parasitism will be stopped. There is always collateral damage in the defense of integrity.

Term limits are even more needed in the judicial branch than in the legislative.

Even when judgeships are subject to renewable appointment based on performance reviews, their approval is rubber-stamped, as long as the "Your Honors" have paid their dues as "good soldiers" of their party. 

To the extent they are answerable at all, it is, using a blogger's coinage, "accountabaloney.” When judges get lifetime appointments, they often become laws unto themselves. They thrust to the winds those vestiges of legal scholarship that don't enrich them.

Federal district judges, of which there are many hundreds, insinuate themselves onto the national stage and presume to superintend presidential authority. Even when they may be right on the issues, they are wrong on the lawfulness of their assertion.

They should be benched from the Bench. Infinity does not befit black robes, whether dyed with Red or Blue sympathies.

Above all, for the sake of the nation, the justices of the Supreme Court must be stripped of their lifetime appointment. Their nomination is contingent upon ideological litmus tests and confirmed by senators on the same basis and bias. There are exceptions. Lately, in a 9-0 decision, the high court ruled that non-minority groups that allege discrimination need not meet additional criteria or a higher standard.

But let's face it. Regardless of how brilliant the lawyers presenting their cases to the Supreme Court, 95 percent of the time we know how Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson will vote. Much the same with the other members.

As noted by the nonprofit organization Fix the Court, "Today's Supreme Court is not only highly political, it's also polarized along partisan lines in a way that mirrors other broken political institutions. Our freedoms sit on a razor's edge…. Life tenure has turned nominations into a political circus.”

They submit a very sensible proposal:  "A single standard 18-year term at the high court would restore limits to the most powerful, least accountable branch of American government. Each new justice would be added every other year, and since 9 (justices) multiplied by 2 (years) equals 18, it'd take 18 years to reach the end of the cycle, hence 18-year terms.”

Despite its degeneracy and rule of quantity over quality, the elective process is the least undemocratic means of selection, so we must cling to it like Harold Lloyd to the clock in his silent-era film. 

But it is a travesty to have judgeships on the ballot, because we never know anything about them, and they are often endorsed by all political parties as a reward for loyal service. These patronage posts might as well be for sale, which they practically are anyway, like pillows.

New York City's rank-choice voting is calculated to obscure and sabotage democracy by feigning to fulfill its spirit. Trying to fathom it leaves me in a Thunbergian funk.

Psychologists should develop a state-of-the art cognitive function test that would be scored based on one's ability to explain it. A voter can indicate five choices and still add a writer-in candidate. Opposing candidates conspire against other opposing candidates to shut them out, in keeping with an enemy of my enemy is my friend until after the primaries and we are rivals again.

"Each voter ranks up to five choices. Then the votes are counted. If more than half of voters rank a candidate as their first choice, that person wins. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, ballots are tabulated round by round. In each round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, with those votes reallocated to whoever their voters listed as their next choice. That process continues until only two candidates are left. The candidate with the most votes wins," explains CNN.

Maybe we should just select leaders by roulette.