Why Do We Allow Ourselves To Be Slaves To A Broken Electoral System?

Recent Presidential elections have illuminated the shortcomings of the elective process.  Our electorate has regularly been left with a choice of who they perceive to be the lesser evil, rather than who they feel is the best candidate.

This has never been more apparent than as reflected in recent polls.  A clear majority of over 60% of Americans don’t want either Trump or Biden to be the next President, but barring death, withdrawal, or prison one of them will almost certainly win, proving that we are all slaves to the system.

This starts with the primaries.  Voters are motivated to throw their support behind the candidate they feel has the best chance to beat the other guy instead of who presents the best policies.  Many fail to realize that once a selection is made, the support of the party machine will rally behind the winner regardless, enhancing what might have been seen as a lesser candidate for the general election.  

Alternatively, they’re choosing someone who will stick it to the competition, as we see right now with Republicans, who have Trump with a substantial lead.  Polls show, however, that if the general election was held today he’d be neck and neck with Biden, while others like Nikki Haley (who trails Trump by quite a bit amongst Republicans) lead Biden by around seven points amongst all voters.

Conversely, Biden campaigns not on his accomplishments (smart, because they’ve been mostly terrible) but as the only option who can beat Trump.  Effectively saying “I know I’ve been a dismal failure as President, but anything is better than that guy, right?”.  

Democrats must believe him because he too has substantial support despite most voters’ dissatisfaction with his age and failed policies.  It’s easy to say, “Can they really not find anyone better?”, but this is how the machines are designed.

As with most things, the party machines are more self-serving than altruistic.  They want to win at all costs, the country be damned.  This would likely change if we could find a way to legitimize a third party, which starts with platforms like this one.  The vast majority of voters are not extremists, but the extremes often dictate to the parties.  This leaves the middle no option but to reject the opposite extreme even if they don’t fully support their own choice either.

Vocal promotion of grassroots candidates who pledge election reform would be a start.  Regulating money would be another.  Our country regulates everything in the name of equality but allows political parties to engage in a race for the most cash.  

Mandating advertising equitability would remove the power from the controlling forces.  I'm not a big fan of regulations, but we already regulate almost everything.  Why can't we regulate this?  It only determines how the entire country runs and is perceived by the rest of the world. 

Personally, I’d like to see all political advertising banned, though I can’t see a path to that (please share if you can think of one).  Commercials waste millions of dollars, ensure that only the wealthy can influence elections, and work to twist and obfuscate the truth to paint a prettier picture of a candidate - not to mention how damned annoying they are.  Most Americans don’t have the time to research and fact-check every item raised, so they are forced to absorb what’s slathered onto them.  Generally, it’s all bullshit.

It would be so simple to cap campaign financing funds, ban political advertising, and legally limit campaigning to personal appearances, debates, and published policies (like websites).  The policy proposals would be released publicly by a certain date, and anyone polling above 1% thereafter would be eligible for the debates.  

All eligible candidates could then convene for more and longer debates, with a pre-vote to thin the herd down to the last four or five regardless of affiliation.  They’d all have their policy proposals clearly delineated on their websites for voters to view at their leisure for comparison, so they’d be accountable to their published statements to prevent flip-flopping toward the whims of evolving polls.

This would remove their need for glad-handing the powers-that-be for support since those individuals are not representative of the wants and needs of most of us.  It would also remove the incentive to vote for the lesser evil over the best option, as it would transfer the power from the party machines to the issues-based selections that matter to the populace.  

It would open opportunities for more centrist candidates, which would actually represent the views of the majority of Americans.  What a concept, letting the people decide.

Additionally, this would free candidates up from towing their respective party lines and permit them to present a truer version of themselves and their beliefs, since only their views would be the basis for the voters’ choices.  As it stands now, most are interchangeable, cookie-cutter representations of their party lines.  

A candidate who is both pro-life and in support of defunding the police, for example, is a candidate without a party and as such, without support regardless of whether the voters wanted them.  They, and the voters, would never get the chance today.

Something has needed to be done for a long time, but it’s getting more urgent with each passing year.  As parties lean further left or right, and candidates are required to lose their individuality to get in lockstep with the party consensus, we are left with nothing but trash versus garbage.  

Worse, we are forced as a country to waste untold millions which could actually help real people in order to promote our trash over the other side’s garbage.

Enough already.  

We need to demand a system that allows for better options to emerge, and better represents the needs of our diverse population.  There aren’t only two types of people; there shouldn’t be only two types of candidates.

Zephareth Ledbetter is the author of “A White Man’s Perspectives on Race and Racism”, available as an ebook at smashwords.com/books/view/1184004, and can be reached on Facebook and Twitter.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.