Bev Perdue, the governor of North Carolina, has an interesting suggestion:

North Carolina’s Democratic governor suggested this week that the U.S. suspend congressional elections for two years so the people’s representatives won’t have to focus on reelection while they work to solve the nation’s budget woes.

“You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things,” Gov. Bev Perdue (D) told the Cary Rotary Club in North Carolina yesterday. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover.

“I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It’s a little bit more contentious now but it’s not impossible to try to do what’s right in this state. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

We are 9 months into this session of Congress and already things are coming to a halt because of upcoming elections. Remember last month when John Boehner wouldn’t let President Obama address Congress about his jobs bill because there was one of a million Republican debates on that night? Things like that right there contribute heavily to a broken Congress.

It doesn’t stop there though. Between August 1 and November 30th of this year there are 87 work days, not counting holidays. Of those 87 days the House is scheduled off for 40. Why? Because they got to go out and raise money and get ready for an election that doesn’t even hit for over a year. In other words, our leaders can’t do their job because they are working to save their jobs. It’s the epitome of a broken political system if there ever was one.

The problem though is that suspending the elections won’t fix the underlying problem – a systematically broken electoral system. We now see House and Senate races that cost millions of dollars to run. Regular donors don’t bring in that money; the candidates rely upon the big money donors, which means they have to spend time sucking up, time that should be spent fixing our country. The only solution to this problem is to get money out of politics and the only way to do that is to institute a publically financed electoral system.  Sadly I don’t see that happening. Our politicians, from all sides of the political spectrum, are to reliant upon this money and this money will also prevent such a system.

So America, what we see now is what we are stuck with. The only hope to change our broken government is for the people to take action and help force the changes. Don’t support a politician purely based upon what party he/she belongs to. Hold them accountable and start pushing the issue of fixing our broken electorate system.