Larry Lessig is running a campaign for an office he pledges to hold for as short a time as conceivable.

"My vice president, I want to be president as soon as possible," he told U.S. News during a wide-ranging interview Friday.



The 54-year-old bespectacled constitutional law professor's 2016 Democratic presidential campaign is a novel stretch of the imagination. He's crafted his candidacy around a single purpose -- election reform -- and is proposing to complete it swiftly, maybe even within a year. Once he's met that goal, he'd resign and turn the world's most important job over to his running mate.

It's not clear what's more far-fetched: Lessig actually being elected or accomplishing what he's setting out to do.

But he says until the the central issue of political corruption is dealt with head-on, no other issue is solvable.

"The fundamental weakness in our democracy is Congress," he says.

There are three pillars of his electoral reform:

Make voting registration automatic, get rid of photo I.D. requirements and change Election Day to a weekend to allow more people to participate.

Restructure congressional elections by creating “multi-member” districts.

Hand voters vouchers to publicly fund congressional and presidential campaigns. Candidates could earn matching funds from small donations. Government officials’ ability to become lobbyists would be limited.

"I'm not in this as a protest candidate, or merely to raise the significance or salience of this issue," Lessig says. "Obviously from this perspective, from this point, it's hard to imagine how I am the nominee and then the president. But there are a lot of steps from here and that point. If the issue can be framed in a way that's convincing and complete I think it definitely has an opportunity to change the dynamics of this political race."

Attracting attention to his cause may be his most attainable goal. Right now, polling firms aren't even including his name in horserace surveys.

Below is an edited transcript of Lessig's interview with U.S. News:

Multi-member congressional districts: "The fact that we have 90 competitive seats in the U.S. Congress, which means we have 345 seats that are not competitive, which means the citizens in the minority in those 345 seats have a representative who has no reason to care about them. We did the numbers. That's 89 million Americans who have a representative who has no reason to worry about them, because the only thing that representative needs to worry about is what his or her party cares about. That, too, is a manifestation of inequality. The framers used to have multi-member districts to avoid precisely this inequality. Fairvote has put forward . . . a system to make it possible for Congress to be representative through a combination of multi-member districts and rank choice voting that would literally in a single statute change the way Congress was selected. (Fairvote is a group that has endorsed a "ranked choice voting plan, outlined here.) When you voted, you would rank your choices. It automatically calculates who gets enough of the highest rankings to be representative in that district. It would produce a world where, if your views are represented by 20 percent of the district, you have a shot at a representative. Because 1 out of 5 is a good shot. It gives everybody in that district a reason to be engaged in the political process."



The future of super PACs: "Right now there are a series of legal actions being developed and deployed . . . in order to tee up the question of whether Citizens United really means super PACs have to survive. My own view is that the Supreme Court is going to reverse that decision. There is no reason they have to affirm that decision that creates the super PAC and I'm sure ... the court is not happy with the monster they've created here. It's perfectly possible for them to say Citizens United is right, super PACs though are not constitutionally mandated. It's not something that's going to happen next year. I think there's a way in which we get to resolving the super PAC problem without getting to a constitutional convention or without getting an amendment."

Hillary Clinton's weaknesses: "If I'm on the stage saying, 'We have a problem with the corrupting influence of money inside of Washington,' it's hard for someone to look at Hillary and say, 'She's the solution to that problem.' She has incredible strengths. But I think if this is the issue, she doesn't have strength against that issue. On the day that I announced my campaign, she came out with her policies that included small-dollar public funding. Those are great policies. This is just a wish list. She isn't explaining to the voters at all why that part is important. She's not helping the American people to understand why this has got to be a Day One issue. She's not setting up making this the priority which happens on Day One. And I think the only credible way to make this possible is to run a campaign that says, 'This is what we've got to do on Day One.'"

Resigning the office: "I'd give my left arm to be president for four years or eight years. This is not about motivation. It's almost like a Frodo story. You've got to limit your claim to power to have the kind of mandate necessary to bring about this change. If I came in and said, 'I want to be president to change this but I also have these views about Internet policy . . . I have these views about health care, I have these views about climate change' . . . I would be no different than any of those other people. So the resignation isn't something I want, like I want to go on vacation. The resignation is something I think is necessary to have the clarity of the referendum that would be necessary to have a shot at doing what otherwise seems to be impossible."