Thursday, February 26, 2004
Where has the democracy gone?
The East Coast voters have determined the outcome of the Democratic primaries. Floridians and Jeb Bush determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. How is this representative of what the majority of voters across the country really want? Politicians with big bucks and big connections get advertising air time and media coverage. If voters don't know your name, they won't vote for you--how is a democracy a democracy when only the richest people in the country can have a shot at public office?
When I lived in DeKalb, the city sent every registered voter a small magazine-style pamphlet with objective profiles of all candidates running for offices that November, and their stances on big issues. Not ads, just facts for comparison.
Why can't the feds put a little money into publishing and mailing something like this? Millions of dollars are given (taxpayer dollars, mind you) to the two major parties for campaign funds, yet the feds can't find a way to inform the voters of the basics. Cut the campaign money and allocate it towards objective fact lists: how candidates voted on issues in the past, attendance records, et cetera. Just the simple stuff.
In the US, the two richest political parties dominate presidential elections. We can't even consider voting for third-party candidates without feeling guilty about wasting a vote. Gore could have won in 2000 if it weren't for Nader, likewise Bush could have won four more states had it not been for Buchanon. But many people fail to acknowledge that Nader could have acquired the 5% vote he needed to get federal campaign funds for the Green Party (for 2004) had it not been for the "fear of spoils" that led many of his supporters to vote for their 2nd choice, Gore.
In Australia voters don't have to create a strategy; they can just vote for the person they want as president. They vote for a first choice, second choice and third choice so that if there is a close race, second choice votes can be used to determine the outcome. Let’s say you like, um, Ross Perot, but don't want to vote for him because you don’t want Bush in office. Well, you vote for Perot as your first choice, Kerry as your second (even though you don't like him, either), and maybe write in Paul Tsongas (bless his soul) as your third choice. If Kerry and Bush are close, and Perot is only pulling 15% in the first choice votes, you look at the second choices on the Perot ballots. That's how you can call a close race, that's how you can prevent spoils.
But Congress would never approve such drastic change to the Constitution. They'll make efforts to change the Constitution to prevent same-sex couples from committing to monogamous relationships, but they won't change it to preserve representative democracy.
