Volunteer/Community Service
Aside from my activities with the Libertarian Party of Ohio, I have been volunteering for Rank the Vote Ohio since 2023. Rank the Vote Ohio educates citizens about the benefits of replacing our current election process with ranked choice voting.
Gerrymandering has made Congress into a geometry game, not self-government; House delegations do not reflect voters' party preferences. This, and the spoiler effect enforcing a two-party system, have made incumbents, and thus government, powerful and unaccountable.
For U.S. House elections, I propose replacing single-seat plurality districts with proportional representation within each state (similar to Swiss federal elections). Voters would choose a party (or alliance), and seats would be allocated proportionally to vote share and filled from party lists (set by primaries or party officers). In this model, voters can express honest preferences precisely, and all votes matter.
Barring this, I would strongly support anti-gerrymandering laws and ranked choice voting for federal elections.
Recent decades' economic growth and innovations have not lowered the cost of living, with the gains lost to rising rent, home prices, and medical bills. Rent-income ratios top 30%; house price/median income has nearly doubled from 1980.
This stems almost entirely from laws banning high-density housing, and good use of existing homes, where demand exists. Single-family zoning, parking mandates, lot size minima, and similar block spare-room rentals, duplexes, apartment buildings, and efficient urban land use. Federal policies should incentivize repealing these anti-housing laws.
Privately funded health care (such as cosmetic procedures) has grown cheaper, yet government-subsidized care has become far more expensive. Market-based reforms can cut costs; FDA drug approval costs are an outrage.
Our current electoral system incentivizes pandering to local extremists rather than building consensus around real solutions.
By eliminating single-member districts, and thus making every voter in a Representative's state relevant to re-election, my proposed electoral reform would encourage parties to speak to every voter instead of relying on a tribalistic base. Proportional representation allows smaller parties to win representation (directly or through electoral alliances), which forces coalition-building. Parties characterized by bad behavior and abusive, hyperbolic rhetoric would alienate voters and potential partners and lose power.
Ranked choice voting for Senators would have similar benefits due to the need to appeal for lower-preference votes to assemble a majority.
Since 2001, American undeclared wars have killed millions, cost trillions, and achieved very little. This Iran conflict has no realistic path to victory, destabilizes the region, offers zero benefit to Americans, and risks escalation against nuclear-armed Russia. Israelis should fund Israeli wars.
Congress must reclaim its constitutional powers over foreign policy. Allowing Presidents to trigger armed conflicts unilaterally, including by using nuclear weapons against nuclear-armed countries, is extremely dangerous.
The USA should pursue free trade with all, unilaterally lowering tariffs and barriers, except to deter pollution. Alliances, if any, should be strictly defensive. Terrorism is a law-enforcement matter; military force against it is like using a sledgehammer as a flyswatter.
Most valid objections to immigration actually arise from problems it exacerbates from state interference with the free market. This allows private capture of the value of immigrant labor and shifts its costs to those workers and others. For example, because H1-B visas are for a specific job, they give employers coercive power absent from a free market, leading them to use H1-Bs rather than hire Americans.
All people willing & able to support themselves without government financial assistance should be welcomed. Monetary entry deposits, refundable on exit (funds which currently go to smugglers), would be a good market-based way to ensure that immigrants pay for any harm they cause. Government need not judge whether a given person is an asset to our society; the market can do it far better.
