How can we stop politicians lying to get into power?

[antiestablishmentarian]

This and previous governments have used spin, propoganda, lies and fearmongering to manipulate the electorate and get themselves voted into power. Anyone with a brain will remember Leo Varadkar's 'not another red cent to failed banks' spiel and Gilmore's 'Labour's way or Frankfurt's way' speeches. Of course Fianna Fáil lied too numerous times and got elected for it, so the question remains, how can politicians and their lackeys be prevented from using dishonest methods to get into power?

There is one method that could be used to keep them on the straight and narrow: fear. A bill which introduced the concept of lying to be elected to political office as electoral fraud, be it to a county council or the Oireachtas, could do the trick. Those who are elected to public office and,like the current and previous government, implement policies the opposite of those they were elected to carry out, should face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years, with no parole eligibilty for 12 years and their civil rights, citizenship and passport stripped from them upon release.

[Newsy]

There is one method that could be used to keep them on the straight and narrow: fear. A bill which introduced the concept of lying to be elected to political office as electoral fraud, be it to a county council or the Oireachtas, could do the trick. Those who are elected to public office and,like the current and previous government, implement policies the opposite of those they were elected to carry out, should face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years, with no parole eligibilty for 12 years and their civil rights, citizenship and passport stripped from them upon release.

Great in theory, but who is going to introduce such a Bill, nevermind vote FOR it.

[Griska]

The right to recall elected representatives would be a help.

[Newsy]

During a general election, ask the candidates to sign a contract that if elected they will do EXACTLY what they say they will......otherwise no joy.

If, on being elected they do otherwise, they can be caught for breach of contract.

[C. Flower]

During a general election, ask the candidates to sign a contract that if elected they will do EXACTLY what they say they will......otherwise no joy.

If, on being elected they do otherwise, they can be caught for breach of contract.

I'm liking it. They could be asked to sign a contract, based on their manifesto.

[C. Flower]

Came across a very different system, in history, recently.

Politicians were only allowed to stay in the post for two months, and were locked up, on the job, for that time.

Random selection of leaders, with temporary imprisonment of those selected, while they do the job, seems to me to be the way to go.

[Hapax]

I'm liking it. They could be asked to sign a contract, based on their manifesto.

Wasn't it something binding of that sort that the Troika set about imposing on Greece's political leaders, as a condition for the recent bailout. I thought at the time it was an idea worth pinching.

[Count Bobulescu]

Careful what you wish for. Recall is best. Contract has pitfalls. There’s an outfit in the US called Americans for Tax Reform that’s a one guy operation Grover Norquist who’s been around for twenty years. He has gotten almost every Republican to sign a pledge never to raise taxes. The result is Congressional gridlock. Budgets can only be met by cutting expenditures/services

[Ephilant]

We tried the set up the contract bit here for the coming elections. One of the legal minds involved with us pointed out that this would constitute a contract between an individual and a politician, and as the ballot is secret the individual cannot prove he/she actually voted for this politician, making the "contract" just another bit of useless paper. Asking the politician to sign a contract presented to him by you on behalf of the people will also not work, unless you have a clear mandate from the people to do so, which means and election in which you can lie....
The best way to tackle the problem of lying politicians, other than death penalty when caught, is a system of direct democracy. Not all that difficult to implement, but extremely effective in keeping those guys on the right side of honesty.

[Count Bobulescu]

I wouldn’t presume to lecture the Greeks on Direct Democracy, but again careful what you wish for. For an example of Direct Democracy gone crazy see California. It is likely to be the first US state to declare bankruptcy. Voters repeatedly vote to mandate that the Government provide X or Y service and then repeatedly fail to pass the tax increases necessary to fund the service. I fear that the mindset of modern Greece is closer to that of California than ancient Athens.

Direct democracy was very much opposed by the framers of the United States Constitution and some signatories of the Declaration of Independence. They saw a danger in majorities forcing their will on minorities. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy[citation needed] in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10 advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority.

He says, "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

[Count Bobulescu]

Here’s the current example of the DD mess in Ca.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/cjc0405bb.html

From health care to state and local public-employee retirement benefits,

Californians face as much as $500 billion in unfunded liabilities for pensions alone

. The state’s unfunded health-care liabilities top $62 billion. Brown’s new budget actually proposes a 7 percent increase in spending, though it offers to cut some services
.
What the governor and his allies want more than anything is for voters to approve a constitutional amendment in November that would raise sales taxes by one quarter of a penny and hike income-tax rates on “millionaire” Californians—those earning more than $250,000 a year—by up to three percentage points, taking the top marginal rate from 10.3 percent to 13.3 percent. The increases would be “temporary”—the sales-tax increase would expire after five years, and the income-tax rate increase would sunset after seven. “There’s a lot of money sloshing around California, and there are a lot of people who are getting a share of it,” Brown said at a Wall Street Journal business forum last month. “I want to make sure all the different conditions work well, to the extent I can.”

Standing in strong opposition to the governor and his public-employee union allies are not Republicans—though they certainly dislike Brown’s tax-and-spend scheme—but rather a surprising coterie of liberal Democratic interests led by Molly Munger, a prominent Los Angeles activist and civil rights attorney. Munger, daughter of Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charles Munger, has put $3.4 million of her own money into qualifying a competing ballot measure that would raise the income tax across the board by one percentage point. New revenues would be earmarked almost exclusively for education under Munger’s plan. She estimates her initiative would bring in $10 billion.

Neither measure has qualified yet for the November ballot. Both campaigns need to turn in their signatures by April 20 to give counties time to verify the petitions by a June 28 deadline. Brown’s constitutional amendment needs 807,615 valid voter signatures. Munger’s initiative statute needs 504,760 signatures—and her campaign is offering new cars to its top signature gatherers to get the job done. Brown would prefer that Munger step aside to give voters one clear choice, just as the California Federation of Teachers last month agreed to forge a compromise with the governor that resulted in the tax plan he’s currently promoting. But Munger refuses to back down. “You sort of hope that the Democrats are the party that stand up for investment in children and in education,” she told the Associated Press. “Those are two bedrock principles of the Democratic Party.”

The disagreement between the two camps boils down to whether the competing proposals to raise taxes in this heavily taxed state are “progressive” enough. Sales taxes like Brown’s are often considered regressive because they tend to affect lower-income people more than the rich. Soaking the rich, on the other hand, is arguably a third bedrock principle of the Democratic Party.