Good morning, readers! As I am charging up for the day on my mandatory dosage of Fox News, I noticed myself wondering off the prescribed train of thought given by the morning anchors.
The headlines were not capturing my attention, rather the situations, actors, and leaders that took action to contribute to the event which warranted national audience(according to Fox producers). Specifically, how ignorant people must be to bring certain individuals to power within government (whose names I will not divulge at the risk of losing whatever sort of objectivity I had going into this post) and how we DEFINITELY need to institute a basic knowledge test to individuals attempting to register to vote.
But that's beside the point I hope to portray....
Is the system installed in the modern day United States truly the best form of democracy? Is the government an excellent representation of the people with both vertical and horizontal accountability, a strong sense of party identification?
The simple answer is no.
We have a Single Member District, First Past the Post (FPTP) system were a voter casts 1 vote to a candidate of their choosing who represents a party and runs on a platform projecting that parties' core values. Among other follies, this system offers an inherent sentiment of 'wasted votes'and little party identification resulting in lower voter turnout and uneducated voters.
To combat current electoral problems, I propose a consideration of the mixed proportional electoral system where voters casts 2 ballots;1 for a candidate and 1 for the party. Such a method eliminates the 2 party system, accurately represents it's constituents, increases party identification, every vote counts, and it maintains the same levels of vertical accountability (between the voter and the representative) as our FPTP system. Would congress be productive with the incredible diversity offered by mixed proportional?...possibly a topic for a different time.
Food for thought...
-Stephen
No comments:
Post a Comment