This post is NOT about the Big Lie that Biden rigged the election. Now we have that out of the way.
This post is about how our election process works, or doesn't work, and what, if anything, we can and should do to fix it.
The Electoral College. I'll leave this one to the experts; however, there is one solution I've read about that could be a simple solution. A number of states have already signed on to a proposal under which all of the state electoral votes would be assigned to the winner of the popular vote. If this were to be the process in every state, it would basically bypass the role of the Electoral College, and the winner of the popular vote would be the winner of the election.
Money in Politics. Campaign spending on the 2020 election was about $14,000,000,000 (14 billion). For the presidential contest, Trump raised $785 million and Biden raised $1.06 billion, totaling $1.85 billion, between January 1, 2017 and November 23, 2020.(1) In my humble opinion, this is obscene and out of control. We need to limit the amount of money in electoral politics. Citizens United went the opposite way, so we need to overturn that through legislation, or a constitutional amendment. There should be strict limits on the amount of money spent, no dark money, complete transparency and more. It is a fact that electeds spend a huge amount of their time every year doing fund raising. And yes, big donations result in favors or special treatment.
Politics should be Local. Why do we allow people (or corporations and other entities) to get involved in elections for people who will not represent them? In other words, donations to and campaigning for political candidates should be limited to the people who will be represented by the elected person. In many elections at the local, regional, state and federal levels, outside money and campaigners can flood into the process and determine the outcome. In Oregon, for example, we have a ballot initiative process, and we often find that some person or organization from outside Oregon sponsors an initiative, puts big money into campaigning for it, and can win over Oregon voters for it. Why is this O.K?
The recent presidential and senate elections in the State of Georgia is another good example of outside influence. Many millions of dollars poured into the Georgia election from outside Georgia. Georgia voters were inundated by many thousands or millions of letters, postcards, telephone calls, text messages from people outside Georgia. Wouldn't it be a better process if the citizens of Georgia made their own decisions without all the outside money and labor trying to persuade them? (Yes, I know that if you are a Democrat, you don't like this idea; but it works both ways.)
This issue, of course, goes back to the issue of money in elections. Think about it, if every candidate was given the same amount of money by government to spend on campaigning, and was not allowed to use outside money, a lot of the problems would go away.
Voter Registration. Voting in America is not just a right, it is a responsibility. As such, it should be easy for citizens to become registered voters. In fact, there are some who think that every eligible person should automatically be registered by some process, and even make voting mandatory. The 2020 election had the largest voter turnout, by percentage, in more than a century, at 66.3%. In other words, one-third of American voters didn't vote. Certainly we can and should be better at this.
Voter Suppression. A shameful aspect of voting in America is the efforts by political bodies at every level to suppress the votes of specific groups, mostly people of color. The formation of the United States only allowed white men to vote, and this was not completely corrected until the twentieth century. Today there are efforts to redraw voting districts to favor a specific political party (usually Republicans), there are laws passed to make it more difficult for certain people to exercise their voting right, and the act of voting is often made more difficult for minority communities by limiting the number of voting locations and understaffing them. Many solutions abound, including a national vote-by-mail mandate. Credit is due to the dedicated people who worked hard to make the 2020 election one of the most secure in history, and in the midst of a pandemic.
Stop the Lies. Elections and campaigning should be based on fact and truth, not lies and deception. Candidates should be punished in some way for mounting advertisements or making speeches that convey false statements - lies. Broadcasters should be regulated, as they used to be, to only allow truthful statements and facts to be aired. Unfortunately, lies were the foundation of the Trump administration, and this will be difficult to unwind.
Back to the Basics. Unfortunately, American politics has become a partisan money game, instead of the ideal we strive for. According to the Constitution:
- The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.... [Article 1, Section 2]
- The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof....[Amendment XVII]
- The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States....[Article 1, Section 8]
(1) Source:https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_campaign_finance,_2020
(This post was modified several hours after the original posting.)
No comments:
Post a Comment