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Warning: rant on politics
Nov. 6th, 2002 03:10 pmI've been seeing a lot of LiveJournal posts recently about elections in the United States, and there seem to be a few interesting things coming up time and again:
I think there's something wrong with the attitude that says you have to at least vote for the least evil of your many evils in order to have some right to complain about the evil. Especially in a society where freedom of speech is given such importance (at least on paper and in schools, if not in reality), people should be able to complain whenever, wherever. Certainly, someone who feels strongly about something but is too lazy to vote for their preferred candidate certainly won't have the moral high ground, but some people have reasons for not voting for any of the candidates they're presented with.
A lot of the complaints I've seen about the ballots being confusing come down to their being badly formatted. While saving paper is certainly an admirable goal, I think having a working ballot system is preferable. Yes, ballot system reform would be costly. So are a lot of other things. However, not investing in infrastructure just causes more costly problems further down the line; if you can streamline the process now, you'll be making savings for many years to come.
The American electoral system is so firmly entrenched in two-party politics that a viable third alternative isn't likely to be able to break in at all - both the other parties, with their similar politics, powerful lobby groups and financial backing, will likely actively resist any alternative that looks like it's making enough headway to be listened to by the populace. While the two parties don't always like each other, they're both similar enough in policy and background that they'd rather see their traditional rivals in power than some other group. The establishmen will close ranks against an outsider. There is no even footing, let alone a fair footing.
It would be interesting to see how the introduction of Single Transferrable Vote (STV) ballots could shape U.S. politics. STV would allow citizens to vote for an independent candidate and their primary preferred candidate without "throwing their vote away". If theirs is the least-favoured candidate, then their vote will be transferred to their second-choice candidate (if they chose to rank a second candidate). It allows a voter to say "I want candidate C to get in, but if C doesn't have enough support I would like to see A get in rather than B."
Certainly, that does make the voting ballot a little more complex, and counting the votes would take a little while longer (and have to be fed through a computer to do the STV ranking algorithm, which would be rather onerous to do by hand), but if even half the amount of money that went into exhorting people to vote the right way actually went into education on how to vote at all, then I don't think people would have trouble with it. Ireland, Malta and Australia can do it; why can't the U.S.?
I suspect that it's because it's not in the best interests of the two major parties for people to know more about how their democracy works - and that worries me.
Anyway, for those American readers out there, I hope that your voting sews fruit that you will enjoy reaping. Good luck.
- "Not voting means you have no right to complain about the government later"
- The voting ballots are complex and confusing
- Voting for third-party candidates, and whether it's a wasted vote or not
I think there's something wrong with the attitude that says you have to at least vote for the least evil of your many evils in order to have some right to complain about the evil. Especially in a society where freedom of speech is given such importance (at least on paper and in schools, if not in reality), people should be able to complain whenever, wherever. Certainly, someone who feels strongly about something but is too lazy to vote for their preferred candidate certainly won't have the moral high ground, but some people have reasons for not voting for any of the candidates they're presented with.
A lot of the complaints I've seen about the ballots being confusing come down to their being badly formatted. While saving paper is certainly an admirable goal, I think having a working ballot system is preferable. Yes, ballot system reform would be costly. So are a lot of other things. However, not investing in infrastructure just causes more costly problems further down the line; if you can streamline the process now, you'll be making savings for many years to come.
The American electoral system is so firmly entrenched in two-party politics that a viable third alternative isn't likely to be able to break in at all - both the other parties, with their similar politics, powerful lobby groups and financial backing, will likely actively resist any alternative that looks like it's making enough headway to be listened to by the populace. While the two parties don't always like each other, they're both similar enough in policy and background that they'd rather see their traditional rivals in power than some other group. The establishmen will close ranks against an outsider. There is no even footing, let alone a fair footing.
It would be interesting to see how the introduction of Single Transferrable Vote (STV) ballots could shape U.S. politics. STV would allow citizens to vote for an independent candidate and their primary preferred candidate without "throwing their vote away". If theirs is the least-favoured candidate, then their vote will be transferred to their second-choice candidate (if they chose to rank a second candidate). It allows a voter to say "I want candidate C to get in, but if C doesn't have enough support I would like to see A get in rather than B."
Certainly, that does make the voting ballot a little more complex, and counting the votes would take a little while longer (and have to be fed through a computer to do the STV ranking algorithm, which would be rather onerous to do by hand), but if even half the amount of money that went into exhorting people to vote the right way actually went into education on how to vote at all, then I don't think people would have trouble with it. Ireland, Malta and Australia can do it; why can't the U.S.?
I suspect that it's because it's not in the best interests of the two major parties for people to know more about how their democracy works - and that worries me.
Anyway, for those American readers out there, I hope that your voting sews fruit that you will enjoy reaping. Good luck.
