In 12 days from now Americans will find out who our next President will be. According to recent polls from the USA Today, 25% of 18-25 year olds say that they regularly pay attention to politics and the same percent say that they trust no government officials on any level to make good decisions. This voting group is by far the most apathetic, but political apathy is still prevalent amongst all voters in America. Only 60% of eligible voters voted in 2008 when President Obama was elected and in the Congressional elections of 2010 barely 40% of eligible voters chose to use their Constitutionally protected right to vote for their elected officials. Malta leads world voter turnout with over 94%, but most democracies around the world have over 75% turnout, while America is woefully low on the list it would be all too easy to say that Americans are lazy and self centered, but I think that would be an incomplete analysis. Studies show that people will vote if they believe that their vote will make a difference, or if they have a strong sense of civic duty or strongly support a particular political party. Clearly American voters do not meet these voter turnout benchmarks. It seems clear that voter turnout is ultra low due to the antiquated Electoral College and two party system, the obscene amounts of money in elections and the nature of politics in 21st century America.
The Framers of the Constitution clearly did not trust the average voter. They established strict limits on who could vote and they did not allow direct elections for either the Senate or the President. The 17th Amendment changed that when it allowed the residents of a state to directly elect their Senators rather than the State Legislators. However, there has never been an amendment to eliminate the Electoral College (EC). There are two major problems with the EC. First, the citizens of the United States do not directly elect our President and second, people often do not feel that their vote is critical as most states are all but predetermined before election day. In the upcoming 2012 election everyone knows that President Obama will win Illinois and New York and Governor Romney will win Mississippi and the Dakotas to name a few. Essentially this leaves the outcome of the election in the hands of a few critical “swing states.” Voters in Ohio and Florida are most critical, but Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada will also be significant this year. Voter apathy in America is clearly impacted by an antiquated system of electing a President that most citizens do not even comprehend.
A recent poll of voters aged 18-35 found that 63% of this age groups policy positions actually would categorize them as Libertarians. In short they believe the government should be fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or put another way, the government should lower spending but allow homosexuals to marry. The catch here is that the Libertarian party has less than 285,000 Americans that are registered with them. Why is this? It is also mainly because of the winner take all EC that governs our Presidential elections, but also because of the entrenchment of the two political parties in America. The process of elections has almost gotten silly. Each political party is an entity that cares first and foremost about getting elected in our system. In Parliamentary systems parties are forced to compromise with each other in order to establish a government, in the American system no such structure exists to demand compromise, except that is for elections, but what does that matter when voter turnout is so low? Third parties in the United States have almost no chance of winning elections. Only one third party official is in the Senate and third party candidates such as Ross Perot or Ralph Nader are only blamed for stealing elections. It is time that a few third party candidates are allowed to participate in Congressional debates and especially the Presidential debates.
Over $1 billion is going to be spent on this election. An individual can run any ad they want supporting a party or candidate and spend unlimited funds to get them elected (indirectly). It is time to end this inequity in our system. Access to media should be publicly doled out and distributed to candidates in a way that allows people access to the candidates without hearing how every candidate for public office wants to kill grandma’s kitten. It is clear that this could be interpreted as a restriction of speech, but what our current system allows is that persons with huge amounts of wealth have more influence via media than those without wealth. A publicly financed campaign is the only solution albeit imperfect to the ridiculous ads that surround our campaigns today.
Finally, a non-systematic factor has taken the disrespect and dishonesty in politics to a new level. This factor is the 24/7 “cable news networks.” This started with CNN being launched in 1980, but did not begin to take off until the Persian Gulf War and CNN’s coverage of the invasion and takeover of Iraq. Shortly thereafter competitors arose such as Fox News and MSNBC. These news networks are owned by corporations whose monomaniacal goal is to make money. One can not be engaged in honest to goodness journalism if they have to appeal to a market. Therefore, our news networks continually have breaking news that is no big deal, coverage of the latest celebrity gossip and programs that are filled with incomplete and dishonest analysis masked as news and journalism. A democracy can not function without an alert, truly journalistic and independent media. The sad fact is that our corporate owned news networks are neither journalistic or independent and are rarely alert to the issues they should be. When Woodward and Bernstein revealed the corruption of the Nixon administration they were true journalists aiming to keep an eye on the government. But today with so many television stations and websites accessible to everyone in America it is getting difficult to discern legitimate journalism to a trained eye, and most Americans are not “trained eyes.”
Theoretically the true authority in and democracy lies within the hands of the people. As the United States is a Republic, we elect people to make decisions for us, but the problem is that we no longer have total control over our elections. Without direct elections for the President and legitimate challengers to the Republicans and the Democrats our future elections will become more corrupt and less democratic. Unless private money is taken out of elections and modern 24/7 media find their moral compass the future of America is murky. The United States is a great country, a unique place in the history of the world, but unless we are vigilant about our electoral system we as citizens may begin to lose the grip we ought to hold on our country.
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