Meet the Presidential Hopeful Who'd Quit After Signing a Single Law

from Rolling Stone:



Meet the Presidential Hopeful Who'd Quit After Signing a Single Law
Lawrence Lessig's plan for a 'referendum' presidency is so crazy it just might work

By Tim Dickinson August 19, 2015


Most people considering a presidential run dream of eight years in the White House. Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig proposes that his term should last a single day — just long enough to sign into law a transformational election rights bill, before resigning and passing responsibility for governing our reformed American democracy to his vice president.

Lessig calls his proposed legislation the Citizens Equality Act of 2017. It would end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, extend ironclad voting rights to U.S. citizens and make Election Day a national holiday. Most vital to Lessig, it would move toward public financing of elections — giving every voter something like a $50 voucher to back the candidate of her choice, blunting the influence of special interests.

A Democrat who once clerked for arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Lessig does not offer a plan to fix Citizens United or the unlimited donations to super PACs. But he insists his bill is the essential first step to making our representative democracy once again represent voters, rather than the nation's tiny donor class or well-heeled oil lobbyists.

Lessig's "referendum" candidacy is an intriguing longshot, with unexpected upsides: As the man who would handpick the vice president (soon-to-be president), Lessig suggests that his victory could be the key to installing a liberal heartthrob like Elizabeth Warren, or even a titan of Silicon Valley like Sheryl Sandberg, in the Oval Office. ...................(more)

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