So, America’s political system, in my opinion, is broken. The
people don’t have enough power, power is increasingly in the hands of a
small oligarchic elite, and we really don’t have enough choices to make
our voting choices meaningful. A recent study
has concluded that the US is an oligarchy and is completely unreceptive
to the peoples’ wishes in terms of policy. Elites control policy, but
individuals have no effect. We have a congress with a 96% incumbency rate
despite having the popularity rating of cockroaches. We have a system
in which we vote for the lesser of two evils in presidential elections
due to a fear of the consequences, despite not really liking any
candidate. Honestly, we have a system in which the people are isolated
from the government and only given the most indirect influence on the
voting process. If we want the system that works for us, we need a more
direct influence in it. This involves fixing how elections work on many
different branches of government in many different ways. For reference,
I’m only looking at the federal government in this article, but I will
cover much of how we can better change our system.
House of Representatives: Gerrymandering
Want to know a huge reason congress has that 96% incumbency rate discussed above? A big reason is known as gerrymandering. Every 10 years, when the census is done, congressional districts are redrawn to better fit the updated demographics. We have a system locked in at 435 representatives, and these are divided among the country, mostly by population. During redistricting, some states gain districts and as such representatives, while others lose them, depending on how populations shift.
However, we need to keep in mind who does the redistricting. As it turns out, the party in charge in the individual states often redraw the districts. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it happens enough for the problem to be rampant. It also turns out that these guys might have vested interests how districts are drawn, because those who draw them often do so in a biased way. Say you have a state that has 40% republicans and 60% democrats. It is possible for the republicans to win in a state in 2010, and then redraw the districts that give the republicans an unfair advantage like so. By redrawing the districts in ways that may skew voting in favor of the party doing the drawing, we have a system in which the politicians are choosing their voters before their voters choose the politicians. Essentially, the game is rigged.
Pennsylvania, where I live, has a lot of these really messed up districts. Take a look at this map. While we are ultimately a purple state, we generally likely have a slight left wing bias overall. In presidential elections, we have voted consistently for democrats since at least the 1990s with Bill Clinton. But because the republicans won big in 2010, they redrew the map to benefit them. As such, there are a lot of irregular districts that happen to vote red, because they tend to be drawn in ways to favor the republican voters and suppress democratic voters. I live in such a district. I live in a heavily democratic city, but it’s put in a red district. Furthermore, by city is connected to my district by a thin piece of land; the bulk of it is in the next county, which is much more rural and conservative leaning. I won’t tell you what district but looking at the map maybe you can figure it out. Another district is said to look like an ink blot test of Goofy kicking Donald Duck. If you can actually make weird complex shapes out of your district, we may have a problem. Speaking of which, that’s kind of how the term “gerrymandering” got its name. Apparently it was popularized after a governor named Gerry made a district that looked like a salamander. By the way, this new drawing of it isn’t necessarily worse than the previous drawing. When I entered my political science 101 class in college back in 2006, I had to do a paper on my congressional district. I had a hard time figuring out what district I was in because there were like 2-4 around my city and the boundaries of them were not clear. Long story short, I got an A on the paper, but went to the polls that November only to find out I wrote on the wrong district. Yeah, it’s a mess.
Solutions to Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering has many possible solutions. So far we tried to make laws saying districts have to be compact and stuff, but those don’t seem to have done much good.
We could do, as other nations do, put the power to draw districts in the hand of a nonpartisan commission that makes decisions based on what represents the people, not party politics.
Another, more controversial approach would be to implement some computerized method such as shortest split line or another similar method. However, it should be noted that this method may have some drawbacks, as it splits up communities that really should be represented together. Some people think humans should make these decisions because they have intelligence; computer programs don’t and depending on how a program is expected to divide districts, it could give certain parties inherent advantages.
Another solution that won’t have a direct impact on gerrymandering itself would be to up the number of representatives that exist from 435 to, say, 1000. Some would argue that when districts represent so many people, that people are bound to not be represented properly. Having more districts might make it harder to just lump a ton of people into a single district when they shouldn’t be.
All in all, these solutions are something that needs to be looked into. Gerrymandering is a horrible problem that robs people of their agency and leaves us with a broken congress, that has no worries about getting reelected, no matter how badly they perform. It also gives various groups undue advantages they don’t rightfully deserve, and go against the will of the people.
Debate: Do we need the Senate?
The senate was formed back when we made this country as a compromise between people who wanted states to make the decisions while others wanted people to make decisions. Some smaller states feared they would have no representation if we decided things on popularity, but others wanted government to represent the people. Obviously, I’m more for the people and less for “states’ rights.” Not to mention I think in the 21st century we tend to see ourselves as Americans, not as Pennsylvanians, or New Jerseyans or whatever. The only state that really has a huge thing for its own state identity seems to be Texas. As such, it may be attractive to get rid of the state, which is clearly undemocratic in some ways. I mean, Wyoming gets as much say as California? Really? That isn’t fair.
On the flip side, it might be better just to keep a bicameral legislature for the sake of checks and balances, separation of powers. A single legislative branch with all the power might make it too effective, and we might want more checks in place. The senate provides those checks. As such, maybe we should keep it. Either way, it’s worth thinking about and debating.
Executive Branch: Electoral College needs to go
Honestly, we need to get rid of this undemocratic travesty of the electoral college. The electoral college is a system in which we vote for president. Essentially, delegates vote for the president, not the people. They are not bound to vote any certain way, but generally abide by the will of the people. Still, delegates vote on behalf of their state. So what happens? Well, say Pennsylvania votes 51% for Hillary Clinton and the other 49% go for Trump. Hillary gets ALL the electoral votes of this state. The system is winner take all. This can lead to fairly unrepresentative outcomes. The 2000 election is a good example. The popular vote wanted Gore, but Bush won because of a narrow victory in Florida. Should 500 votes decide an election if the candidates are more than 500 votes apart? Probably not. But we get that in our system. Due to how unrepresentative this system is, and, by the way, how not all votes even count equally, you get a system where you can theoretically win with only 22% of the vote. I’m not kidding. This needs to be replaced with popular vote yesterday. There is no reason, in the 21st century, to have a system like this. It may have made sense in the 1800s when you had actual delegates to go an actual convention, but in today’s day and age of instant communication, it seems horribly dated.
Popular vote isn’t enough; we need preferential voting
Now, we move into the other problems with our system. This particular one applies both to congressional and presidential elections. Essentially, a straight popular vote, also known as first past the post, isn’t a good system. It tends to encourage a lot of the mediocre options, for the sole reason that the one who gets the most votes wins. Say you have two parties, with 50% voting for each side roughly, maybe some slight variation between elections. In such a system, you can expect the side with the most support to win. Say you add a third party. Say we add Gary Johnson to the right wing side. So say 45% votes for Hillary, Trump gets 35%, and Johnson gets 20%. With two parties should have resulted in a rough tie, but Johnson split the republican vote where Hillary won handily. That is what happens in a first past the post system. People are encouraged to rally behind the candidate they’re closer to, even if that candidate is a poor match to them, because if they don’t, they get the worse alternative. Third or fourth options are discouraged, and considered to be “spoilers” that could cause that entire side of the spectrum to lose, even if they would otherwise have the numbers to win. This is why the democrats don’t want people to support Stein or Johnson, they fear people unhappy with the democratic party will vote third party, and this will cause them to lose. So they scare people about how bad Trump will be, even though Hillary is no prize herself. This happens in this system.
So, solutions. We need some form of preferential voting. Preferential voting can be implemented in many ways, and it essentially gives people more choice with who to vote for. Imagine a runoff system in which people vote their conscience and the least popular candidates get eliminated until the most popular one remains. Imagine a system in which people can rank their candidates in the order in which they want them, and if their favored candidate isn’t chosen, their vote ultimately goes to their second choice, etc.If we had this kind of system, I could support Stein without fear of getting Trump because I didn’t vote Hillary. I could make Hillary my second or even third choice if I desired, and as such, my vote will count toward her before it aids Trump in any way. This kind of system would also allow conservatives to support Johnson before Trump and Trump before Hillary, so it works both ways. This means that we will have multiple parties vying for votes and people would support who they want rather than voting based on fear and who is the lesser of two evils.
Get money out of politics; publicly finance elections
In this day and age, to run in politics, this means you have to have money. Money requires going to people who have money and asking them for it, unless you happen to be as rich as Donald Trump. While it is possible to have Bernie and his $27 average contribution, he is somewhat of an anomaly here. Most politicians go to financial elites and other rich people who have their own agenda and ask them for money. Considering this, is it any surprise that the government caters to the interests of the rich while ignoring the poor? We need to break this cycle of dependence on the rich if we want politicians to support the people. We need to ban private contributions and replace them with publicly funded elections. I think any campaign that gets above a certain amount of signatures (number depending on office and number of constituents, but it should be high enough to stop crank candidates from getting in and low enough to make it open to more than just two alternatives) should be able to qualify for public financing. This way, everyone plays by the same rules and no side is advantaged or disadvantaged. If we had, say, 4-6 candidates all getting the same amount of money, that’s an even playing field. Our current system says money is speech, but because not everyone has the same amount of money, that means they don’t necessarily have the same amount of speech either. Again, my system would make things more equal.
Require parties to play by certain rules
This election has made me aware of how corrupt political parties can be. Superdelegates, insider favorites, etc. While parties are private organizations, they exist to elect candidates to public office. Since they essentially choose who we vote for in elections, the process by which they choose people should be open and transparent. Just like we got rid of the electoral college, we should replace complex systems of delegates and superdelegates with the popular vote for major elections. People should register as members of parties and then vote for them in primaries. The winner should then go on to be the nominee of said party. There should not be able elitist favoritism. There should not be convoluted delegate schemes, or caucuses, or anything like that. Just a straight vote by declared party members. Maybe even a preferential voting system.
Without this, we have elites who choose politicians we vote for, before we choose them ourselves. How can we have a system that represents the people if private interests basically give our choices to us and don’t let us choose for ourselves? Democracy, even in the form of a republic, requires the people to have input to work. If people cannot decide for themselves, then who does, and can they be trusted?
Conclusion
I could go on and on with this stuff, but this sums up many my grievances with the current electoral system and how to fix them. As it stands, people simply don’t have control over the politicians to an acceptable degree. In congress, the politicians choose the voters before the voter choose the politicians. In the executive branch, the highly undemocratic electoral college system is often divorced from what the people want. In both scenarios, peoples’ choices are limited, and they end up choosing mediocre candidates for fear of the other side winning than choosing who they actually want. In addition wealthy interests and party elites often have significant sway in who runs and what their policies are.
House of Representatives: Gerrymandering
Want to know a huge reason congress has that 96% incumbency rate discussed above? A big reason is known as gerrymandering. Every 10 years, when the census is done, congressional districts are redrawn to better fit the updated demographics. We have a system locked in at 435 representatives, and these are divided among the country, mostly by population. During redistricting, some states gain districts and as such representatives, while others lose them, depending on how populations shift.
However, we need to keep in mind who does the redistricting. As it turns out, the party in charge in the individual states often redraw the districts. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it happens enough for the problem to be rampant. It also turns out that these guys might have vested interests how districts are drawn, because those who draw them often do so in a biased way. Say you have a state that has 40% republicans and 60% democrats. It is possible for the republicans to win in a state in 2010, and then redraw the districts that give the republicans an unfair advantage like so. By redrawing the districts in ways that may skew voting in favor of the party doing the drawing, we have a system in which the politicians are choosing their voters before their voters choose the politicians. Essentially, the game is rigged.
Pennsylvania, where I live, has a lot of these really messed up districts. Take a look at this map. While we are ultimately a purple state, we generally likely have a slight left wing bias overall. In presidential elections, we have voted consistently for democrats since at least the 1990s with Bill Clinton. But because the republicans won big in 2010, they redrew the map to benefit them. As such, there are a lot of irregular districts that happen to vote red, because they tend to be drawn in ways to favor the republican voters and suppress democratic voters. I live in such a district. I live in a heavily democratic city, but it’s put in a red district. Furthermore, by city is connected to my district by a thin piece of land; the bulk of it is in the next county, which is much more rural and conservative leaning. I won’t tell you what district but looking at the map maybe you can figure it out. Another district is said to look like an ink blot test of Goofy kicking Donald Duck. If you can actually make weird complex shapes out of your district, we may have a problem. Speaking of which, that’s kind of how the term “gerrymandering” got its name. Apparently it was popularized after a governor named Gerry made a district that looked like a salamander. By the way, this new drawing of it isn’t necessarily worse than the previous drawing. When I entered my political science 101 class in college back in 2006, I had to do a paper on my congressional district. I had a hard time figuring out what district I was in because there were like 2-4 around my city and the boundaries of them were not clear. Long story short, I got an A on the paper, but went to the polls that November only to find out I wrote on the wrong district. Yeah, it’s a mess.
Solutions to Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering has many possible solutions. So far we tried to make laws saying districts have to be compact and stuff, but those don’t seem to have done much good.
We could do, as other nations do, put the power to draw districts in the hand of a nonpartisan commission that makes decisions based on what represents the people, not party politics.
Another, more controversial approach would be to implement some computerized method such as shortest split line or another similar method. However, it should be noted that this method may have some drawbacks, as it splits up communities that really should be represented together. Some people think humans should make these decisions because they have intelligence; computer programs don’t and depending on how a program is expected to divide districts, it could give certain parties inherent advantages.
Another solution that won’t have a direct impact on gerrymandering itself would be to up the number of representatives that exist from 435 to, say, 1000. Some would argue that when districts represent so many people, that people are bound to not be represented properly. Having more districts might make it harder to just lump a ton of people into a single district when they shouldn’t be.
All in all, these solutions are something that needs to be looked into. Gerrymandering is a horrible problem that robs people of their agency and leaves us with a broken congress, that has no worries about getting reelected, no matter how badly they perform. It also gives various groups undue advantages they don’t rightfully deserve, and go against the will of the people.
Debate: Do we need the Senate?
The senate was formed back when we made this country as a compromise between people who wanted states to make the decisions while others wanted people to make decisions. Some smaller states feared they would have no representation if we decided things on popularity, but others wanted government to represent the people. Obviously, I’m more for the people and less for “states’ rights.” Not to mention I think in the 21st century we tend to see ourselves as Americans, not as Pennsylvanians, or New Jerseyans or whatever. The only state that really has a huge thing for its own state identity seems to be Texas. As such, it may be attractive to get rid of the state, which is clearly undemocratic in some ways. I mean, Wyoming gets as much say as California? Really? That isn’t fair.
On the flip side, it might be better just to keep a bicameral legislature for the sake of checks and balances, separation of powers. A single legislative branch with all the power might make it too effective, and we might want more checks in place. The senate provides those checks. As such, maybe we should keep it. Either way, it’s worth thinking about and debating.
Executive Branch: Electoral College needs to go
Honestly, we need to get rid of this undemocratic travesty of the electoral college. The electoral college is a system in which we vote for president. Essentially, delegates vote for the president, not the people. They are not bound to vote any certain way, but generally abide by the will of the people. Still, delegates vote on behalf of their state. So what happens? Well, say Pennsylvania votes 51% for Hillary Clinton and the other 49% go for Trump. Hillary gets ALL the electoral votes of this state. The system is winner take all. This can lead to fairly unrepresentative outcomes. The 2000 election is a good example. The popular vote wanted Gore, but Bush won because of a narrow victory in Florida. Should 500 votes decide an election if the candidates are more than 500 votes apart? Probably not. But we get that in our system. Due to how unrepresentative this system is, and, by the way, how not all votes even count equally, you get a system where you can theoretically win with only 22% of the vote. I’m not kidding. This needs to be replaced with popular vote yesterday. There is no reason, in the 21st century, to have a system like this. It may have made sense in the 1800s when you had actual delegates to go an actual convention, but in today’s day and age of instant communication, it seems horribly dated.
Popular vote isn’t enough; we need preferential voting
Now, we move into the other problems with our system. This particular one applies both to congressional and presidential elections. Essentially, a straight popular vote, also known as first past the post, isn’t a good system. It tends to encourage a lot of the mediocre options, for the sole reason that the one who gets the most votes wins. Say you have two parties, with 50% voting for each side roughly, maybe some slight variation between elections. In such a system, you can expect the side with the most support to win. Say you add a third party. Say we add Gary Johnson to the right wing side. So say 45% votes for Hillary, Trump gets 35%, and Johnson gets 20%. With two parties should have resulted in a rough tie, but Johnson split the republican vote where Hillary won handily. That is what happens in a first past the post system. People are encouraged to rally behind the candidate they’re closer to, even if that candidate is a poor match to them, because if they don’t, they get the worse alternative. Third or fourth options are discouraged, and considered to be “spoilers” that could cause that entire side of the spectrum to lose, even if they would otherwise have the numbers to win. This is why the democrats don’t want people to support Stein or Johnson, they fear people unhappy with the democratic party will vote third party, and this will cause them to lose. So they scare people about how bad Trump will be, even though Hillary is no prize herself. This happens in this system.
So, solutions. We need some form of preferential voting. Preferential voting can be implemented in many ways, and it essentially gives people more choice with who to vote for. Imagine a runoff system in which people vote their conscience and the least popular candidates get eliminated until the most popular one remains. Imagine a system in which people can rank their candidates in the order in which they want them, and if their favored candidate isn’t chosen, their vote ultimately goes to their second choice, etc.If we had this kind of system, I could support Stein without fear of getting Trump because I didn’t vote Hillary. I could make Hillary my second or even third choice if I desired, and as such, my vote will count toward her before it aids Trump in any way. This kind of system would also allow conservatives to support Johnson before Trump and Trump before Hillary, so it works both ways. This means that we will have multiple parties vying for votes and people would support who they want rather than voting based on fear and who is the lesser of two evils.
Get money out of politics; publicly finance elections
In this day and age, to run in politics, this means you have to have money. Money requires going to people who have money and asking them for it, unless you happen to be as rich as Donald Trump. While it is possible to have Bernie and his $27 average contribution, he is somewhat of an anomaly here. Most politicians go to financial elites and other rich people who have their own agenda and ask them for money. Considering this, is it any surprise that the government caters to the interests of the rich while ignoring the poor? We need to break this cycle of dependence on the rich if we want politicians to support the people. We need to ban private contributions and replace them with publicly funded elections. I think any campaign that gets above a certain amount of signatures (number depending on office and number of constituents, but it should be high enough to stop crank candidates from getting in and low enough to make it open to more than just two alternatives) should be able to qualify for public financing. This way, everyone plays by the same rules and no side is advantaged or disadvantaged. If we had, say, 4-6 candidates all getting the same amount of money, that’s an even playing field. Our current system says money is speech, but because not everyone has the same amount of money, that means they don’t necessarily have the same amount of speech either. Again, my system would make things more equal.
Require parties to play by certain rules
This election has made me aware of how corrupt political parties can be. Superdelegates, insider favorites, etc. While parties are private organizations, they exist to elect candidates to public office. Since they essentially choose who we vote for in elections, the process by which they choose people should be open and transparent. Just like we got rid of the electoral college, we should replace complex systems of delegates and superdelegates with the popular vote for major elections. People should register as members of parties and then vote for them in primaries. The winner should then go on to be the nominee of said party. There should not be able elitist favoritism. There should not be convoluted delegate schemes, or caucuses, or anything like that. Just a straight vote by declared party members. Maybe even a preferential voting system.
Without this, we have elites who choose politicians we vote for, before we choose them ourselves. How can we have a system that represents the people if private interests basically give our choices to us and don’t let us choose for ourselves? Democracy, even in the form of a republic, requires the people to have input to work. If people cannot decide for themselves, then who does, and can they be trusted?
Conclusion
I could go on and on with this stuff, but this sums up many my grievances with the current electoral system and how to fix them. As it stands, people simply don’t have control over the politicians to an acceptable degree. In congress, the politicians choose the voters before the voter choose the politicians. In the executive branch, the highly undemocratic electoral college system is often divorced from what the people want. In both scenarios, peoples’ choices are limited, and they end up choosing mediocre candidates for fear of the other side winning than choosing who they actually want. In addition wealthy interests and party elites often have significant sway in who runs and what their policies are.
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