All right gang. Our credit has been downgraded and all the rancor in Washington has given me a tummy ache. It's getting hard to read the news now with all the posturing going on. Hit the jump for a little posturing of my own.
With folks already kicking into high gear for the 2012 election, I thought I'd address our voting system in the U.S. You may have guessed, but I'm a liberal at heart. After the election in 2000, I have to tell you... I'm disfranchised with our voting process. And it reminds me of the high stakes testing process in schools... which you know I'm not the highest fan of in its current state. Here's the breakdown of how I see it, in easy bullet points.
1) What's the point of voting for the POTUS in New York? Since it is such a heavily Democratic state, we know the electoral college votes will go to the Democrat runner. Given this, how does my vote count? It doesn't.
2) The system in place right now has created a series of "battle ground states" that dictate the entire election. States (and the voters in them) don't matter if it's understood to be either a red or blue state. States like New York, Alabama, Tennessee, California... they just don't matter like Florida, Ohio, etc.
3) Because of this, a large number of citizens' voices don't matter. It creates an uneven sense of power with politicians funneling resources into the swing/battle ground states.
4) This is not the America I believe in. Every citizen should be responsible to vote, and every vote should count. It is a beautiful privilege to vote, one fought for and paid for by the blood of patriots. And yet the electoral college wastes the voice of many of our citizens.
5) So I believe we need to eliminate the electoral college so the voices of every citizen are heard, while the polices and promises of our politicians are held to a standard not of states, but of the nation.
Any questions? Thoughts?
I agree with this unequivocally.
ReplyDeleteI will add that I think that we should expand the number of representatives in Congress, so that each one represents a smaller number of people. Additionally, I think that they should have length:width ratio maxima or such so that gerrymandering does not disenfranchise large numbers of people so easily.