Just Say No - A Solution to the Party Candidate Selection Problem
The Electoral College is not the problem. Democracy and Populism are not the problem. In the United States, the problem is We The People don't have a meaningful say in the candidates that are put on the ballot. We don't have an election problem - we have a candidate selection problem.
In the United States privately funded corporations called political parties have the sole and exclusive power to select candidates that appear on our ballots. While we have so-called primary elections for President, we have repeatedly witnessed the flaws in this process. These are not public elections: they are voting by private club members. In the primaries, only the most motivated voters - who tend to be on the extremes - participate, as we saw in the Republican primaries... resulting in Trump. Or, as we saw in the Democratic primaries, the Party itself can simply disregard an outcome they don't like through their own rules... resulting in Clinton. The point is, on all but the most local level, the two major political parties have an effective monopoly on who we actually get to vote for - candidates that are not representative of the electorate, or who are representative of only a small minority of party members.
At the general election, a majority of voters in 2016 were left with a no-win situation. Trump won not because a majority of voters thought he would make an ideal President (though a small number did)... he was the protest vote - a protest against the political parties, a protest against Clinton, and a protest against the political process. Nonetheless, he became the most powerful human being on the planet despite the fact that he was essentially the "None of the Above" candidate. Why? Because disaffected and dissatisfied voters had no other choice when standing in the privacy of the voting booth.
This is something our Constitutional framers did not allow for - you may be surprised to learn that organized national political parties (whether 2 or 3 or 10) and primary elections are not enshrined in the Constitution in any way. I've read every word of the Constitution hundreds of times. Check for yourself. You'll see nothing supporting or promoting this idea. Indeed, forward thinkers such as John Adams anticipated the development of parties under our Constitution, and warned that it would lead to no damn good. The framers would be embarrassed and appalled by how our process has devolved from 18th century republican humanism towards 15th century republican oligarchy - rule of a politically enfranchised elite. Replace Democrat with Medici and Republican with Borgia, and you have an accurate description of the effective state of our democracy.
The two monopoly parties are controlled and beholden to major campaign contributors, such as organized labor, wealthy individuals, the much hated "special interests" and major corporations. The job of political parties is to serve the interests of their campaign contributors. What they have to sell is voters - you and me. What they offer is control over legislation and public office to the highest bidder. This has always been a chronic disease in the democratic process, but has become acute and fatal since the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States that opened the door to unlimited campaign financing by non-individual entities. We are by no means unique in this regard - the problem of special interests and money controlling political power is endemic to popular politics. As has been shown, no amount of legislation or public outrage will mitigate this condition so long as political parties continue to control who appears on our ballots. We will have no choices other than those given us by our political masters.
Until and unless we can break the two-party monopoly on the American elective process, there is little We The People can do to improve the outcomes of general elections. Because of the mechanics of our general election process, candidates can be elected to office with no voter majority. All that is needed is to get 1 more vote than the opposing candidate(s). All they need is a plurality, not a majority. This is why third party candidates are typically doomed from the outset, even if they miraculously find their way on to the ballot. All third party candidates do is dilute the winning margin - they seldom influence the ultimate result, and even more seldom do they actually get elected.This is why organized third (or fourth or fifth) parties are not the answer to the current deficiencies in the elective system. We will continue to be stuck with unsatisfactory candidates that are not representative of the general electorate... and one of them will always win, regardless of voter indifference and regardless of public anger over the process.
However, there is one relatively simple thing we could do that would correct this problem - which requires no changes to the primary process; no third party candidates; no changes to how campaigns are financed. The reality is, none of these things could happen without the support of the entrenched political parties who - obviously - have no real interest in fixing the problem. Because it is not a problem for the parties - it is only a problem for We The People. The further reality is, as long as this remains true, the parties are not beholden to voters, because the candidates are essentially interchangeable parts in the political machine. This last point is why term limits are a meaningless non-solution; term limits simply replace one party mercenary with another - next man up, same system, same rules, same loyalties and same priorities. Term limits were proposed at a time when the actual elected politicians controlled the parties. This is no longer the case. The financial backers control the parties.
I propose the following two changes to our election process. These changes can be enacted on a local/state level, through popular referendum, without the support of the political parties. These changes would break the monopoly of the political parties, and force changes in the way candidates are selected by those parties. Effectively this would force the political parties to run representative candidates, and to assume representative positions in order to gain and maintain power.
Automatically appearing on every general election ballot for every local, state and national office will be an additional choice - "None of the Above". This would allow general election voters to reject the candidates selected by the monopoly parties.
Election rules are changed to require a majority - more than 50% - in order to win the election, rather than a plurality (simply the most votes). The likelihood of a marginal candidate achieving an actual majority when running against "None of the Above" is very low.
If you are interested in this idea, and would be willing to support it, please drop me a note on Facebook, or via email to:
richardstinchfield98@hotmail.com
If I hear enough support for this concept, I will take it to the next step, which is to work towards getting this referendum onto state ballots.
Thanks! Looking forward to your feedback.
