We Need a New Election Process !! Now !

HOW MANY OF YOU ARE TIRED OF VOTING FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?
think about this for a minute... how did we get to the choices we have now? WE DIDN'T....the choices we now have were the choices chosen for us by the many methods of manipulation. (media, political contacts, strings pulled, etc)... which always turns out to be the most popular candidates from each party that is electable (without to much scandal). We always seem to find ourselves railroaded into 2 choices that we don't like either of...
what if the election system was a "best 2 out of three" type of arraingement... where we had a pre election to find out who everyone would REALLY want to have a choice between (this is just one suggestion, feel free to suggest other ways to expand our choices).
If we would have had a best 2 out of three type of election in 2000, then i hesitate to say, we would have seen Ralph Nader get close to being the "other" choice besides Bush. then it might have been a runoff between bush and Nader... as it was, most everyone who would have liked to vote for Nader, was so afraid it would make Bush President , that they voted for Gore... and lost. if the remaining Naderites had voted for Gore the DEMS would have won.... by a slim margin...

I think America needs new blood in government... it is too much a good ol boys club... SSDD (same sh#T different delegate). The only way to change it is to enable people to vote their heart first and THEN vote the choices available...
I have voted 3 times and NEVER got to vote for a candidate i wanted... it was always to keep the guy i didn't want from getting it.
As to this election, i couldn't pick one, over the other... i can vote for an ex pot smokin hippie turned yuppie or an elitist ex coke fiend turned clueless.. at least the pot smokin hippie wont go pick fights. once again... i feel like i would love to vote for Nader, but then that vote that might have kept Bush out of office, was wasted... lets come up with some hypothetical improvements to the election process. Direct representation, more equal funding for candidates... SOMETHING that will break the cycle of SSDD. anyone ever notice that we keep electing lawyers, not businessmen... maybe we start there...... lawyers should be ineligible for office.

[edit on 20-8-2004 by John bull 1]

Dude we have per elections of sort. They are primaries. WE elect the canidates we want. Yes teh media has alot to do with it but thats the way the world is. It still possible for anyone to run for the president and postentially be President. The key is money tho to campaign.

You might say look at nader he is a third party canidate. But his views are pretty of from the norm of the people.

NOt tryint o be hostile tho if your not happy with the canidates then do something about it. GO write senators you would like to run or heck get into politics yourself

my point is that the two party system panders only , never truly serving the public. they both serve their own interests (of holding the power and being able to sell influence)...
we need an election system that enables a possible third party candidate to actually be one of the two final election choices... do people not understand that there is a whole slew of third parties that could do a lot more for america, than the dems or the reps, but third parties are never going to get elected because of the "racket" that we call a fair election process ... Ross Perot could never be elected, but he would have made a good president... Ralph Nader would have made a good president because of his unusual take on things... remember the president only has so much power (unless he uses the war powers act). so he is going to be moderated by congress and senate. The end effect is the president becomes a figure head for the country... right now we have a cowboy, soon to have a rich boy, why don't we ever have a good boy (or girl) for president? someone who is outside the "good ol boy" system of government. Someone who could set right much of the wrongs done in america today... because we are sheep corralled into the election booths.... this year we have only choices of skull and bones... they don't care who wins,...
either way they have locked the election... skull and bones wins again....

You must be forgetting Mr Perot had a pretty real shot. Before he went basically nuts, he had a pretty decent chance at the Oval Office and even got a good share of the vote after the craziness. It CAN still happen.

What really needs to go is the outdated Electoral Vote system....

Likewise, there need to be other parties recognized and more represented. Instituting a primary before the primaries (to pick the candidates running in the primaries) would be a good idea as well.

Oh, and I doubt rich boy will make it. As much as I want to see Dubya go, I just don't see it happening...

What really needs to go is the outdated Electoral Vote system...

what would replace it?

we really dont want a straight "mob rules" type of system do we?

what would replace it?

We have a popular vote. Is it better to have a president in office that the majority of Americans didn't choose? (such as our current president)

We were founded on mob rule, hehe....

Yes, I'm fully aware of how it works, more populous states and all of that, however I'm also aware of other ways this basic idea is manipulated, such as drawing out voter districts to exclude/include minorities, certain financial status areas, etc., and personally my view is to hell with all of it.

I agree the electoral vote must go, I find this unfair that the destiny of this country highest seat in goverment end at the hands of just a few.

So it does not matter how the rest of the population votes.

mob rules would go no where....
i like the primary before the primary thing... if everyone could at least vote for the party they really wanted first, ie... in a "pre-primary" without sacrificing a vote later on in the selection process then i think that people would at least know that the two best candidates were the choices... instead... everyone is so scared of one candidate or the other, that they vote out of fear for the second strongest perceived party. Instead of voting their heart. they are voting from fear...of the "other guy winning"...
this process prevents any of the "anyone can get elected" promise of America. I also think it is time to get rid of the districts... popular vote should be the rule... not "the best average among the popular districts". In college, i took a great class that illustrated a number of surprising election facts. It pointed out that there are vast places in america that have no vote... that people votes don't really count. that delegates for electoral college don't even have to vote the way the district wants them to. It also pointed out that the 2 party system in America is a lock in unless a new election process is used.

If we had an entrance exam for each of the candidates (you know, on basic skills like english, math, science, problem solving skills, and reading comprehension) we may not be in the trouble we are in. Think about it. Why can't we test our candidates to make sure they are of the highest intellect? Why do we have to settle with the person who has the slickest accent, or the nicest haircut, or the best looking running mate. Lets pre screen them based on thier intellegence. If you fail there, you can't even become a party candidate.

[edit on 20-8-2004 by mpeake]

GREAT INPUT... KEEP THE IDEAS COMING...
seriously, i am trying to get a "thing" going... if we have some agreed upon improvements, then maybe we can get populare media to promote some of them as future revisions fo the election process. I know that most of America is not satisifed with the process we have...

if America used the popular vote...

Abe Lincoln would have never been elected...

John Kennedy would have never been elected...

Bill Clinton Would have never been elected...

George W. Bush Would have never been elected....

im pretty sure that America would be a very different place today...

well creepy, that is a good point...
but you have to take the good with the bad also...
you forgot to mention all the presidents we would have had if we had the popular vote...
Dubya would have Probably lost to Gore... maybe that would have changed america as a whole... maybe Truman wouldn't have made it in either, or many of the scandalous presidents of the past. At least with popular vote, you get what you ask for, not what they give you... but that is slightly off topic... the main thing is
How do we get a viable third or fourth party, that doesn't destroy the essence of popular vote...

here are only a few reasons to keep some sort of an electoral vote....

The Electoral College protects minority interests from a tyrannical majority. For example in a direct election, since African-Americans account for about 13% of the population, they could only account for 13% of the vote. In the Electoral College, African-Americans account for 25% of Alabama's 9 votes, 27% of Georgia's 13 votes, 31% of Louisiana's 9 votes, etc. Farmers, once a very influential constituency, now make up less than 4% of the population. Why would a candidate worry about this small group in a direct election? In the Electoral College system, farmers do make up sizable parts of several states, and thus their combined strength in a smaller pool of voters gives them more power. Because minority groups (be they African-Americans in the south, farmers in the midwest, etc) are usually concentrated in some states and not spread evenly throughout the country, their influence is greater.

The Electoral College prevents candidates from ignoring smaller states in favor of big metropolitan areas. In a direct election, New York City would have about twice the electoral clout of the states of Alaska, Deleware, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined! Why even campaign in those six states when you can double your impact by spending more time and less money in one city. The needs and issues of small rural communities would be outweighed in the candidates' mind by those of large urban areas.

The Electoral College helps prevent a candidate from pandering to one region, or running up their votes in certain states. Sports fans understand this aspect very easily. In a baseball season you don't play 100 odd games, add up your total runs from all those games, and the teams with the most play in the World Series. Teams would just run up the score on weaker teams to balance the closer games against tougher opponents. In a direct election, Democrats would run up the vote totals in safe states like Massachusetts and Republicans would run up their votes in states like Nebraska. The Electoral College forces candidates to concede states their opponents are winning handily and contest the tight races.

www.presidentelect.org...

It comes up every four years, that refrain of "The system sucks, we need to change it." It then disappears after the first Tuesday in November.

If you want to change the system, if you want to see other parties than Republicans and Democrats in federal office, you need to work at it more than just during the presidential election.

As it currently stands, you will not get a third party president. This is because the two major parties control far too much political power: from local sherrifs to the president of the US. At the national level, one vote does not have the ability to change this balance of power[1].

To make an effecitve change, to really make a difference, you'll have to start smaller than that. Watch your local elections and participate in them. Contact your local Green/Libertarian/Natural Rights/Very Silly party and ask what you can do to help them. Elect representatives to city council, school board, and sherrifs offices. Work to get a better representation for third party candidates in your state gubernatorial, senate and house seats.

It'll take a while, and it's not as immediately glorious as showing up on Good Morning America to talk about how unfair the system is. The difference is, though, that it has a chance of working.

The electoral college has got to go. A country based on democracy can not have it's leader chosen by the minority of the population. Ther are two ideas that I think could work:

1. A pre-election to determine the top 2 candidates that would be followed by the Nov. election. Both would by based on direct popular vote.

2. Allow every citizen up to two votes, while only giving 1 vote per candidate. This would allow a person to vote for their top two choices, meaning they could vote for the candidate of their choice and to try and keep their least favorite candidate out of office.

I favor this more because it can better guage who the people want in office.

The other thing I think should be considered is going back to the original way the Constitution called for presidential elections where whoever came in second in the election became the Vice President. This would allow more room for third parties because people could vote for them knowing that even if they didn't win they would still have some pull if they took 2nd place.

in a direct popular vote system...

any type of minority would eventually have no recourse at all...