So I was having trouble deciding what to write about for this first post, until my sister told me that Clinton won in Kentucky ("trounced" Obama, according to the Post), and Obama is fewer than 100 delegates away from winning the nomination. So I've decided I'm going to focus on this, as well as the Electoral College in general. Sorry if it becomes too much of a rant.
Here's what I think. The entire nation should vote on the same day. Novel idea, no? It makes no sense to me that some people should vote in January, and then people are still voting now, and the rest of the voting doesn't happen until June 3rd. The people at the end have no say in who their choices are because the multitude of candidates that were available to the early voters has slimmed down to two due to financial difficulties, lack of media attention, etc. I think Europe has a better idea. If I'm correct, the most of the European countries that have a system similar to ours do their elections in a much shorter time span. Less time spent campaigning means less money wasted and more time that politicians can spend doing their jobs. I remember reading an article a while ago about how Europeans think it's totally random that we spend so much time and money on campaigning and the election process. (By the way, "random" is just a word that I overuse, and use in contexts that don't necessarily fit the conventional definition. Don't be confused by it - I don't mean "by chance", just like..."stupid".) It's true that our country is very large and has a lot of people, but I think we can handle shortening our election process. It doesn't need to be oversized like 2/3 of our adults, or our waste production, or our relative percentage of resource consumption.
Also, I know it's all been said before, but the whole Electoral College is sooo out of date and not correct for our situation. I understand the reasons why the Founding Fathers established the setup (stupid Americans didn't really know what was going on and couldn't be trusted to elect a good president), and why the system has remained (it takes an amendment - no easy task, plus politicians don't like to change much and possibly it helps them as is? I'm forgetting...), but I still think something needs to be done about it. The American people as a whole are so much less ignorant than they were at the time of the creation of the Electoral College (you can say what you want, but people can't help but be better informed with all the technology and forms of communication available to them). People are getting much better educations now, and just generally should be trusted to elect a president.
8 comments:
I agree that we do waste to much time and money on campaigning. I also sort of agree on the electoral college issue, but what keeps me from completely agreeing is that in case of a tie it does make it easier to determine the winner.
I totally agree with you that we waste time and money campaigning and I just want to know who our nominee is going to be already! I am sick of waiting and hearing about all the drama between candidates. And I think that the electoral college kind of out of date but I don't think it's going to cast aside anytime soon.
I agree with what you have to say. Its about time that some changes are made to our election process, it was made hundreds of years ago! i think one main reason that it has continued to persist is because tradition. It makes me think of a book we read in English, The Lottery, where a town of people drew names of citiczens in a lottery deciding who would be the "lucky" one to be stoned. Their practice was completley out of date and alittle rediculous but simply because it had been going on for many years the tradition continued. While people in the electoral college arn't being stoned to death, the practice is completley out of date and, as you mentioned, painfully and unnecessarily slow.
I agree with you. The whole election process is being dragged for sooo long. And yes, voting on the same day is much more sensible idea because a lot of the candidates has to drop out with time due to financial crisis and lack of vote from the states that went first. I have never been a big fan of the Electoral College either but I think why it's still around is because nobody really came up with a good alternative. Besides, the whole amendment process is another issue. Even though their are obstacles, I think something should be done about this matter because it's the 21st century for god's sake!
I agree what's the incentive to vote if you're one of the last states and your first choice candidate has already been knocked out of the race? I mean yeah you'd vote for the other same-party candidate but some people don't like Clinton so much they'd vote for McCain if Obama was out of the race and that just creates weak party loyalty. We have a screwy system whereby the latter states only vote because its tradition, they really don't have much say.
Well, the amount of time spent and alloted for campaigning is necessary. It gives the candidates to travel to every state and present their views so that they can gain a voter base and perhaps win some primaries. If it weren't for these primary campaigns, our politics would be even less engaging.
And I'd say that the reason the Europeans don't have to spend so much time campaigning is that they don't have as many people to contact; the countries are much smaller.
As for the Electoral College, I love it. For Republicans it is phenomenal. If you look at the Congressional Map with a red-blue key according to party, you could easily say that America is red. Republican win all of the Midwest and South because of it. Even look at California, it's pretty red. Wonderful.
I've never actually pondered the idea of having everyone vote on the same day. Its actually not a bad idea. The states that vote at the beginnng have rushed on their opinions of the candidates so they know little to none of what thel the candidates are all about. You're right about the ones at the end. They don't have much say since the majority has already had their say. Now as far as actual voting, maybe it could be done over the period of a working week where 10 states each vote Monday-Friday and America knows who her president is at the end. That way, people don't have to deav on on day: drop everything and vote. Maybe we can even vote like we do on American Idol.
Ben, you would love anything that helps Republicans! I, for one, agree with Emily... I think that it would be alot easier for us all to vote for our candidate on the same day, and wouldnt that be easier for the candidates anyways because then they could focus on running for the presidency, not just the nomination...?
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