From the recent US elections and KMT leadership election, electoral fraud, misinformation and foreign interference were rampant. Democracy is severely undermined when voters cannot receive accurate information.
Election laws need to be strengthened to remove rewards and to penalize the candidate who used the unethical/illegal tactics and to uphold the Law and Order. Candidates seeking public office need to be held at a much higher ethical standard. Therefore, I think candidate should not have any misdemeanor records in the past 10 years or any felony records ever.
Before entering into election race, all candidates are required to publish their up-to-date resume (e.g. George Santos), to authorize the release of their past (5-10 years?) personal tax return (e.g. Trump), and to self-disclose their domestic and foreign assets (valued >$10,000?). Those that are unable to fulfill these 3 criteria does not meet the threshold to enter into the election race.
Candidate found providing severely fraudulent resume or purposefully omitting significant assets will have their candidacy removed or removed from their office immediately. The office will be occupied by the candidate with the next highest votes.
At the very beginning of the election:
- All candidates need to swear under oath that s/he will behave in ethical and honest manner and abide by the law and regulation during election.
- All candidates need to swear under oath that: 1) his/her campaign will not intentionally commit electoral fraud, intentional spread false information to defraud voters, or hire professional internet army or trolls 2) Will not accept any political contribution or assistance from foreign government, entities, or organizations. Will not collude with foreign government (e.g. Trump). 3) Will not buy votes directly (e.g. cash incentives) or indirectly (e.g. Elon musk’s $1 million daily sweepstakes to registered voters in swing states who signed a pro-US Constitution petition in an effort to support Trump’s campaign)
If candidate was convicted of violating their sworn oath with any one of the above will have their candidacy removed immediately during the election or removed from the office if got elected (the office will be occupied by the candidate with the next highest votes), barred from running for any public office for the next (5-10 years?) and facing criminal penalty and perjury charges.
Laws need to be made to criminalize the professional internet army business (It is illegal to provide such services and no license shall be issued for such company. The company that provides such services will have their business license cancelled and responsible parties and personnel penalized).
Law should also ban ballot harvesting and professional lobbying.
In addition, polling results should be first published by the polling company (at the permission of the candidate if paid by the candidate), not by the candidate.
