Election Thoughts
November 3rd, 2004Now that it appears to be over and Bush has won I must say I didn’t expect the decision so fast. I guess I was expecting a knock-down, drag-out fight like we had in 2000. In fact I fully expected the votes in Ohio to be challenged for at least a week or so. I’m glad it didn’t happen that way again, though. Regardless of who you wanted to win or who you voted for (not always the same candidate, mind you) I hope you agree that a fight like we had in 2000 does nobody any good. After a fight like that the candidate who does eventually win has half the country (or more) against him, and even more bitterly than they were before. So, I’m glad we didn’t have another 2000. That said, I do think our current electoral college system leaves a bit to be desired.
According to this CNN article, this is the first presidential election since 1988 in which the winner of the electoral college vote has actually won the popular vote. This just doesn’t seem right. Now, I know that stat would be much more impressive if it went back farther, but what it does mean is that for all of the presidential elections I can actually remember, except for this one, the people’s voice was not heard. That’s what elections are supposed to be about - letting the people choose. However, this seems to be one of the accepted dangers of the electoral college - the possibilty of electing a president in the popular minority.
The electoral college system also seems to be heavily biased towards the two party system (in fact, its design to maintain “political stability” seems to mean the fewer dissenting parties, the better). It is a major barrier keeping the smaller third parties like the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and even independents like Ralph Nader from being taken seriously. This is not a true open discourse, all candidates should be on equal footing.
The electoral college system was setup for different times than now. It was designed to require the president elect to have popular support from all over the nation. This was a concern because word just couldn’t be distributed very quickly about the candidates and their platforms, so voters would simply vote for their state’s “good old boys” because they were not familiar with the other candidates, and would therefore be making uneducated choices. Now, distributed popular support for the president elect is definately a good thing, but word can be distributed well enough now that the people can make an educated choice. We have well developed networks for distributing news and opinions all over the nation and all over the world. TV, radio, newspaper, and the internet all are great communication channels that allow the candidates to extend their reach and get their message out to the whole nation, and some of the mediums even allow small budget candidates to spread their message too (ex. the internet campaigns of 2004).
I don’t pretend to have the solution to the electoral college problem, though the popular vote seems like the obvious choice to me right now. I just think it is time to find a system that fit our times better, and represents the will of the people better. The problem is that the two dominant parties will resist change to the electoral college because it would weaken their strangleholds on the Whitehouse. And we, the people, will continue to lose our rights to legislation like the ambiguous and easy to abuse PATRIOT Act in the name of national security, otherwise known as the public good, otherwise known as a socialist state (at least it seems to me that’s where we’re headed).