The Premise
The founders of the United States of America believed that there is a necessary role for a strictly-limited governance. The purpose of such governance is to secure individual rights. While not anarchists, the Founders understood that governmental power tends to overstep its rightful limits, such that checks on power and balances across different power structures were built into the American system of government. These checks and balances included broad, Constitutionally-recognized individual rights, well-identified and specifically limited roles for government, with governmental power split into Executive, Legislative, and Judicial functions. Additionally, all state and Federal governance was intended to be led by publicly-elected legislators, following transparently-fair electoral processes, free of corruption and open to the highest levels of public scrutiny. Citizens serving in government must be held to the highest standards of personal and public integrity, fairness, transparency, and accountability. The process itself by which citizens are elected to office must also be held to the highest standards of integrity, fairness, transparency, and accountability.
Republican Government
The term “republican” today is commonly associated with one of the two major political parties. But the term more properly represents an ideal form of representative government that neither major political party today adequately represents or even strives to achieve. The fundamental goal of the “Who’s That Candidate?” project is to re-establish ideal republicanism within the Republican party, to “put the Republic back into the Republican Party.” The first step toward reestablishing the republican ideal is to promote the highest levels of integrity, both for our citizen legislature and for the process by which they are elected.
The American society, which has historically espoused individual freedom coupled with self-reliance, and which has been able to create the greatest good for the world, is failing. Part of that failure is due to a lack of individual integrity among various elected and unelected government officials. Too many see elected office as a means to create a fiefdom of corruption and personal profit, while abdicating responsibility for legislative governance. All too often, unelected insiders within the bureaucracy or other “hired out” vendors have assumed the role of governance that properly should be the responsibility only of elected officials.
Corruption also creeps into current governance via grandiose ambitions of wealthy individuals seeking to usurp democratic processes in order to stamp their own personal visions and schemes onto broader society. Instead of actually winning the hearts and minds of people with compelling arguments, they instead subvert and undermine real democracy wherever and however they find the back-channels to do so, whether through bribery, blackmail, censorship, election fraud, or propaganda disguised as “news.” Whether these corrupt individuals seek elected office themselves or simply manipulate other elected officials, the end result is a gross distortion of genuine public will, bent to a particularly biased reinventing of reality, contorted toward whatever pie-in-the-sky or megalomaniacal dreams the big spender wishes to implement.
Even worse today, we have turned over the entire process of “public” elections to unelected private companies managing a complex network of electronic devices without adequate transparency or accountability. The process of “winning an election” today is less about the people having their say, and increasingly about insider corruption, of who is best-positioned to game a complex system and get away with it. And even when and where a given election might be legitimate, the current systems provide no transparent process to quickly and easily confirm its legitimacy. In Kentucky, we can’t even get a list after an election of who actually voted, as such information is deemed “proprietary” by the unelected vendors managing the techno-babble that substitutes for an open, free, and fair process. And since there are more registered voters on Kentucky’s voter rolls than there are citizens residing within the state, ample means exist to exploit a system replete with gaping opportunities for corruption and fraud.
No process of election can ever be considered as transparently fair, just, and legitimate without meeting the highest standards of transparency and accountability, and current election processes in Kentucky utterly fail to meet such high standards.
An ideal Republic strives for an entirely open, transparent, and fair process for public elections. This in turn allows voters to focus on electing citizens of the highest moral stature, to represent them with honesty and integrity. The “Who’s That Candidate?” project supports a legislative agenda focused on securing liberty and individual rights. Elitist agenda, pork-barrel special projects, grandiose schemes of public works, corrupt fiefdoms, and social engineering have no rightful place in Republican governance.
Free, Fair, and Transparent Elections
As part of our Integrity Pillar, we support returning all public elections to an entirely paper-based, hand-counted process. There is simply no secure or transparent electronic or computer-based system of voting, counting votes, or managing of the electoral process. Any electronic system is simply too easily subject to fraud and “gaming of the system,” and thus ultimately fails to meet the highest standards of transparency and accountability. In contrast, voting with pen and paper, followed by an open, transparent process of human-counted votes (open to public observation and the potential for recounts) must be the required gold standard for an accountable election process. Lists or rolls of registered voters must be accurately maintained and made publicly available at all times before and after elections. A complete list of citizens voting in any election must be made publicly available in a reasonable time frame immediately following any election.
Transparency of Government Processes and Records
Secrecy within government is a toxic pool for growing a culture of corruption and fraud. Therefore, government integrity requires a completely open and public process for all government activities. There must be easy and open public access to all government records, contracts, minutes of meetings, and essentially any and all government documents. Government by its very nature cannot ever be a secretive or proprietary process. Transparency and openness encourage integrity and discourage corruption and malfeasance.
Integrity of Elected Officials as the Basis for a Renewed Republic
The “Who’s That Candidate?” project advocates a process for selecting responsible, just, and worthy Republican candidates for the Kentucky General Assembly. This process must originate in the local communities the candidate will serve, they must be identified and selected by their own community as appropriate individuals trusted and admired by their neighbors and peers within their local communities. We advocate choosing individuals who will adhere strictly to the “Who’s That Candidate?” Policy Pillars, and who will uphold the highest standards for personal integrity, honesty, and responsibility.