Rachel had a great post today and I decided to respond on my own blog because I want to be sure to get Darrell’s input on this (and everyone else’s of course, but I wasn’t sure if Darrell read’s Rachel’s blog or not).
I don't like the way we do primary elections. I think they should all be on the same day, like the general election. It seems odd to me that the early states end up having so much more importance than anything that happens later. By the time the states at the end get to vote, most of the candidates will have dropped out, and many people probably won't vote, or will base their vote on who is already winning. This means that their vote essentially does not count, and that does not seem very American! (But it does seem very 2000...) I realize I am not the first person to come up with this idea, but I thought I would share my agreement with it.
Team Obama!
My response:
I think we just need to get rid of the whole delegate/electoral college system anyway. I mean, that made sense when the population size was too large to effectively count individual votes but we are well within reach of electronic tallying for the entire nation and could make it happen if we actually put our minds to it. I just think we should go as close to the one person = one vote model as we can and we could be a lot closer now than we are.
The thing I hate about the primaries and trying to get the party nomination (which is yet another reason I think dumping the electoral college makes sense) is the way that the candidates really tear each other down in order to secure the nomination. I think it's divisive and it's not of any benefit to the parties overall.
Voting reform. We needz it.
Side note: Mad props on your new tagline, Rachel. JB rawks, and so do you!
I'll post this here and on Rachel's site.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot wrong (IMHO) with how we go about selecting a president. The biggest problem (again, IMHO) is the irresponsible way the press covers the electoral process. Journos know that short screaming headlines sell more papers/attract more viewers/increase hit counts better than nuanced exact reporting. So we get attrocities like "OBAMA WINS IOWA" instead of the more correct "Complex electoral system indicates a nearly even distribution of delegates among three candidates will occur when Iowa Democrats gather later this spring."
As for fixing the process, the best solutions I've seen is called the Single Transferrable Vote (STV). It's a system where voters rank the candidates on the ballot from most preferred to least preferred. The counters sort ballots according everyone's first preference. The candidate with the lowest total is eliminated, and those ballots are resorted according to the voters' second preferences. The process of eliminating bottom candidates and resorting ballots keeps occuring until someone has an absolute majority of the votes. The Irish use it to select their president with remarkable ease.
STV has a number of advantages:
1. It allows serious candidates on the fringes of the electoral spectrum to remain in the race until the end and keep their issues in the spotlight.
2. It forces all candidates to cooperate instead of denigrate in order to better build coalitions ahead of the election. (e.g. "I won't attack your positions on X and Y if you convince your supporters to list me as #2 on their ballots and vice versa.")
3. It requires a majority of voters support the winning candidate at some level.
4. It allows voters to select a compromise candidate that is acceptable to a broad spectrum of the voting public.
There are, however, some downsides.
1. The counting is complex and would require a massive coordinated effort at the national level.
2. The Consitution would require a serious overhaul. As it stands, there is no direct constitutional link between the people and the national government. The links are between the people and the states and then between the states and the national government (hence the Electoral College).
3. Sometimes the results can be a bit counterintuitive because people don't fully appreciate the nuances of the system.
4. Probably more, but I'm running out of steam and time.
Wikipedia has fairly decent and more thorough coverage of the system.