Our election system.
So remember how America's all about freedom and representation and equality?
well, that's apparently not when it comes to our election system.
See, America operates under Single Member Legislative District. This creates a "winner take all" scenario. It works like this:
Each state divides themselves into districts. Within each district, voters cast their ballots for the candidates of their choice. But here's where it gets sketchy: No matter the proportion of votes in each district, whoever maintains plurality wins the representation.
Imagine a situation in which there are four candidates representing four different political opinions in the district lettered A-D. The votes in one district are as follows:
Candidate/Opinion A: 30% of the popular vote
Candidate/Opinion B: 27% of the popular vote
Candidate/Opinion C: 25% of the popular vote
Candidate/Opinion D: 18% of the popular vote
However, Candidate/Opinion A wins the vote, and only that 30% of the population is accurately represented. There is a chance that this could be okay, though.
Unless--(yes there's a catch)
Unless this happens in every district, which it almost always does. Then the people of Opinions B, C, and D don't receive representation at all.
And here's a real life example!
In case the print is too small, these are the voting distributions from the McCain/Romney primary election from 2008. The purple-ish bar represents the way votes were allocated by district. The red bar shows the votes proportionally by a general vote. As you can see....Romney would've only been
7 votes behind McCain at that point!
Personally, I'm appalled by the fact that we're still using the "Single Member District/Winner Takes All" method of voting. There a few specific reasons why, and here they are:
- This method doesn't accurately represent the opinions of the people, which is what The Constitution set up the government to do. The Winner Takes All method practically voids my personal vote in an election! I want a voice! I would like to be able to speak my opinion and be heard!
- This method also favors and values some votes above others. Due to the population deficiency, the vote of a Wyoming resident is worth 4x as much as the vote of a California resident! I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the fact that someone in some other state has a vote that matters more than mine...after all, we're both citizens of the United States of America. Shouldn't that mean equality and sameness?
- Due to the nature of this method, candidates feel no need to campaign in "safe" areas. If they know that they have all votes or that the other candidate definitely has all the votes, that area automatically misses out on all the campaigning fun. This counts for states in the presidential elections as well. States like Idaho, where the vote is guaranteed very strongly, must specifically search out the campaigning material. We never get visited, either.
- This evens out radical opinions and forces candidates to neutralize their opinions as much as possible. Due to the fact that you MUST receive a plurality of votes no matter what to get representation, candidates cater to the broadest range of people possible. This means that, potentially, some opinions will go un-represented, no matter how hard their third-party candidates campaign and advertise.
I would think that, if Americans were smart, we'd move to a proportional method of representation, where each vote counts and every opinion is represented appropriately.
That is all for tonight.
Rachel.
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