Maybe, Just Maybe - None of Your Votes Count

Published January 24th, 2008

Sounds impossible, right? What’s the point of spending millions on ads and primaries and caucuses if it all is meaningless? Well, there’s actually no guarantee that your vote will count - no matter what your state is. There’s no guarantee that the party will even choose a candidate on the ballot. This sort of thing has happened before - and it could happen in both parties this year. If you’ve been paying real close attention, you may have heard the term “brokered convention.” In fact, brokered conventions were how presidential candidates were chosen before the primary system was installed. Only rarely has it come to pass in the primary era (1976 Republican Convention). In a brokered convention, the delegates are free to choose whomever they wish - they are not bound by the votes of the states and the people. When does this happen? When no candidate gets 50%+1 of the vote. So if Edwards stays in it until the end, and the split is Clinton 45%, Obama 45%, Edwards 10% - welcome to a brokered convention. All bets are off, and whomever wishes can attempt to convince the delegates to vote for them. You could get someone out of nowhere - Al Gore for example - nominated. Whoever can work the most back-room deals to get delegates wins. For more detail on this, go to the excellent electoral-vote.com. In fact, keep going there through November if you want to learn a hell of a lot about our electoral process.

So once again, this is - though a longshot - institutional disenfranchisement of the voters. It’s also a situation that can be avoided by (surprise) having my wishes come to pass - intelligent voting system and elimination of parties. With Approval vote, it’s much more likely that someone will get 50%, even in a crowded field. And that person will truly be the most popular candidate. Without conventions and parties, this sort of thing will actually never occur. Even with a party system, this sort of thing would be less likely to occur if the GOP and Dems power structure was weakened - they wouldn’t dare think of taking the nomination process out of the hands of voters.

So lets run down what’s happened this year, and how broken the American political system has become:

• Intense and misleading media coverage of small-state primaries.
• Nearly complete lack of acknowledgment of Democrat super-delegate counts.
• Party leadership sanctioned and instituted penalties and disenfranchisement of voters in Michigan and Florida - because those states had the audacity to schedule their primaries whenever they wanted.
• Crowded fields often make it detrimental to vote for your favorite candidate.
• The possibility that if the race ends with no leader - indicating extreme splits in the electorate - the party will take matters into their own hands and strip all voters of their votes - and then choose whomever “The Party” feels is best.

To really understand just how absurd the brokered convention rules are, imagine if no candidate in the general election received the required 270 electoral votes to win. According to the US Constitution, the House of Representatives must immediately meet and choose a president from the top three vote-getters. All fine and dandy. But in the brokered convention, the delegates choose from any American on earth. Can you imagine the outcry if the House of Reps met and chose some random person instead of one of the actual candidates? But that’s exactly what might happen in a brokered convention.

Category: Personal, opinion, election 2008, politics | Tags: