Section 1 Elections shall be held for President and Vice President within forty-five days of their nomination by Congress. Elections shall be held for Senators and Representatives within thirty days of their nomination. The legislatures of the several states may increase the number of days to hold the election as they so desire up to 15 days before this date, but not after.
Section 2 Every person who is a citizen of the Confederation of Free States and shall have reached the age of 18 years will be afforded one vote by secret ballot in any election for which they will be represented. No citizen shall be denied the privilege of voting for any reason other than not having attained the age of 18 years. However, states shall establish procedures for elections and voter registration in order to prevent fraudulent elections.
It is important that legislatures are not afforded the power to determine who can or cannot vote. Huge sections of the population have been disenfranchised in the past because of different lifestyle choices. This has served to perpetuate the persecution of their choices by tyrannical governments.
Section 3 No office holder or candidate for office of any elected office of the Confederation of Free States, or of the executives and legislatures of the States, or employees thereof, shall receive any title, grant, gift, money, fund, or honoraria, either for personal use or as a campaign contribution, other than a salary as prescribed by law. Acceptance of such shall be treated as bribery and shall be treated as an impeachable offense and grounds for dismissal.
Free and fair elections are essential for self government. Ideally, every person desiring to offer themselves for public service should be fully heard by all the electorate, but this may be impractical. Still, the current system dominated by two major parties and wealthy power brokers is totally unfair, and combined with the advent of electronic mass media has made the idea of elections being decided on issues and political debate a sham. Elections should not be decided by who has the most money or name recognition.
Graft and bribery have been a constant companion to government throughout all of history. It is not enough to simply make graft illegal. All special interest influence must be removed in order to have a moral government. See Article II Section 12 for candidate funding.
The elimination of private campaign funding, which is often equivalent to bribery, is necessary in order to insure elections based on merit, not resources. Some may say that this puts a limit on free speech, but this is not so. The content of campaign information would in no way be impeded, and opponents could still put out as much information as desired related to issues. Moreover, since there is a finite amount of media time and space available, it could be argued that the purchase of massive amounts by one candidate could interfere with the free speech of other candidates, and in fact candidates in the past have been shut out because of lack of availability of air time towards the latter stages of elections.
In addition, there are some limits to free speech, such as libel, slander, or injurious falsehood. While everyone has a right to free speech, this right does not enable one to drown out the speech of fellow citizens, neither by volume nor by monopoly of media.
Section 4 No election shall contain ballots which contain any information other than the candidate’s name, and no party affiliation shall be identified on the ballot. There shall be no primary elections held specifically for a political party by any level of government, though political parties may be left to their own design in choosing nominees.
Individuals have the right to organize themselves into political parties in order to bring about the political change they desire, but government must have no role in showing preference to one party, or two parties, over any others.
An educated, enlightened, politically aware public should not need labels such as Democrat or Republican, to make a decision based on the issues of a campaign. Government should not contribute to strengthening a party, either by labeling names on ballots or by providing government funded primary elections. Parties can hold their own elections, conventions, caucuses, etc. if they desire to nominate a candidate to represent them, but this should have no effect on the election itself.
