Candidate Questionnaire - Attorney General -David Van Os
State Candidate Questionnaire - Attorney General -David Van Os, Democrat
1. Would you support requiring all electronic voting machines to print on paper for each voter a complete summary of their voting choices, which will become, after their inspection, the authoritative record of their vote?
A: Electronic voting machines that do not provide a reliable means to enable the voter and the public to confirm that the vote is recorded by the machine as the voter intended it, are in my considered opinion unconstitutional under Article 6 of the Texas Constitution, and I will so rule as Attorney General. Your proposed solution sounds like it would cure the constitutional infirmity if such a bill were enacted. As Attorney General I will not need to wait for a bill to pass the legislature. This is a constitutional issue and I will have the authority to act and will do so. My position is spelled out in more detail at my website.
2. Would you support single payer universal health care?
A: Yes, absolutely.
3. In February 2003 Santa Fe, New Mexico enacted a minimum wage ordinance which raised the minimum wage to $8.50/hour for all business and non-profits with 25 or more employees. The wage will increase to $9.50/hour in 2006 and $10.50/hour in 2008. Would you support similar legislation and an escalator clause that would guarantee cost of living adjustments?
A: Yes indeed; Wonderful idea and long overdue.
4. Would you support enactment of legislation providing for public financing of general election campaigns for elective office at the local, state and federal levels?
A: Yes. The achievement of public financing would make a tremendous stride toward restoring democracy.
5. Would you consider implementing a state income tax to be used to fund health care and public education?
A: The Attorney General is not part of the legislative branch and does not implement changes in law. If I were in the legislative branch of government, I would make this a priority. I have seen Senator Shapleigh’s presentation three times. I think he is right.
6. Would you support a ban on the death penalty?
A: This is a very hard question because I have changed my mind about the death penalty several times during my life and I remain genuinely undecided about whether or not the death penalty can be an appropriate reaction by society in some circumstances. Twice I have gone through the experience of testifying in the punishment phase of a capital murder trial as a character witness called by a person who had killed another human being in a violent criminal act, and who used to be but was no longer a friend after the commission of such senseless brutality. On those occasions I did not have the luxury of abstraction, as I had to look in the eyes of the guilty person who was pleading for mercy and humanity and the victim’s family member who was seeking answers for a level of grief that other persons could not remotely understand. I am convinced that even if capital punishment is appropriate for some acts of senseless violence, in a rational system it would be imposed at a much less frequent rate than in present-day Texas, where capital punishment is a runaway train. With the recent revelation that an innocent person from San Antonio was executed for a murder he did not commit, the need for a moratorium has become even more pressing, so that we can step back as a society, study very carefully what we do and why, and work harder and smarter to make the imposition of the death penalty much more restrained and selective. I support a death penalty moratorium, but whether or not we as a society should extend such a moratorium into a total, complete, absolute, permanent abolition of the death penalty is something that I am genuinely having great difficulty making up my mind about. I welcome fresh input and ideas from my friends on this very difficult question.
7. Would you support increased funding for renewable energy and ending subsidies to the oil and gas industry?
A: Yes, of course. We need renewable energy, and the oil and gas industry will still be plenty profitable without subsidies.
8. Would you support programs to restore full funding for mental health/mental retardation adequate to provide food, shelter and medical/mental health treatment for the homeless?
A: Yes, of course.
9. Would you be in favor of changing the Texas method of selecting electors to the Electoral College from “winner take all” to proportional representation by popular vote?
A: Texas doesn’t have the ability to change the Constitution by itself. The Electoral College is in the Constitution. But the Constitution does allow each State to implement at least a somewhat more proportional system by basing the electoral vote allocations on the popular vote results by Congressional district. This could make a huge difference in the allocation of the Texas electoral votes, with our having 32 congressional districts. Definitely Texas at least needs to take the Constitutional framers up on this option.
If we take this question to the level of amending the Constitution, I would definitely favor changing to a mandatory proportional representation method of selecting every state’s electors.
But I would not be in favor of abolition of the Electoral College. There are good reasons for the concept, i.e., making sure that citizens in the small states and rural states don’t get overlooked by the candidates, which would likely happen with no Electoral College since the candidates would be greatly tempted to concentrate their campaigns on the massed populations of the big cities to win the popular vote. The present-day assumption that is sometimes made, that the Electoral College was designed to take the selection of the president away from the people, is historically inaccurate. Jefferson and his populist camp pushed for the Electoral College because they saw it as a way to make sure the backwoods settlers and farmers of the less populated southern and western states had as much say as the inhabitants of the northeastern cities. The more things change the more they remain the same. The Electoral College is working the way it was intended because it is indeed preserving a say for the smaller and more rural states. The key to its working in this manner is the allocation of 2 votes per state to the 2 Senators of each state, since the 2 Senators are not based on population. Thus a State that has only enough population for 1 Representative will still have 3 Electoral Votes because it has its 2 Senators regardless of population. Thus I contend that the Electoral College is indeed a populist concept when properly understood. While it helped elect George W. Bush, it also helped elect Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, let’s go win those southern and western states back.
But at the same time, let’s press hard for allocating the electoral votes in our state by congressional district rather than by unit rule in the whole state, as the Constitution allows right now.
10. Would you support Instant Runoff Voting?
A. Yes.
11. Would you support a substantial increase in teacher compensation? What other approaches would you take to improve the quality of public education in Texas?
A. Yes definitely. As the son of a junior-high schoolteacher, all my life I’ve heard about how the State of Texas disregards its teachers, and I well know how true that is. The other thing we have to do is make the State responsible for education funding rather than the individual school districts. Forty years ago the State accounted for over 60% of education funding and today it accounts for less than 40%. This is plumb crazy. I like the Shapleigh income-tax plan.
12. How would you improve the environment of Texas i.e. TCEQ accountability, grandfathering of refineries, power plants etc and clean air emissions standards?
A. As Texas Attorney General, I will aggressively go after industrial polluters pursuant to my Constitutional power to restrain corporations from violating environmental protection laws and regulations. I will pursue revocation of corporate charters if necessary to preserve clean air and water.
A13. re you dissatisfied with the way legislative districts are configured in Texas? If yes, what will you do about it?
A: Yes I am dissatisfied. The DeLay power grab was the ultimate monstrosity of partisan political line drawing, but the practice has been around for a long time and Democrats have been guilty of it too. Though it was never before been done as arrogantly and tyrannically as the DeLay scheme, Texas Democrats engaged in highly partisan redistricting after the 1990 census under the leadership of the cynical and self-serving Martin Frost. I believe redistricting should be performed by citizen commissions on which elected or appointed public officials are prohibited from serving, with suitable pay to enable the non-wealthy to serve, with the commissioners selected by the state chairs of political parties that had ballot status in the last general election, on a basis of proportionality to the last general election vote results. And with the commissions bound to apply objective criteria that de-emphasize – not necessarily eliminate – political considerations. This is only a general concept that would require a lot of work as to the details. The overall guiding principle has to be that in a Constitutional democracy the voters select the representatives, not the other way around.