The (De-)Evolution of Democracy?
If recent events are anything to go by, the
United States' electoral system is turning more and more toward resembling that
of the UK. That is not necessarily a good thing.
As I watched the 2002 mid-term elections
something got me more upset--and confused--than the usual backstabbing and
Political (upper-case "P") game of elections usually managed to do. Incumbent
Senator Robert Toricelli of New Jersey had won the Democratic primary in his
state early in the year, but since then, allegations of campaign finance fraud
and corruption had gained the public's attention and had damaged his reelection
bid to the point that it could not be repaired. So, what did the New Jersey
Democrats do? They switched out Toricelli for former NJ Senator Frank
Lautenberg, less than 60 days prior to the election, completely circumventing
the primary process and the pubic's--or, at least, the Garden State's Democratic
voters'--whim.
Lautenberg won the election and is now a sitting Senator in the US Senate--again. The fact that the seat stayed Democratic didn't bother me at all; it was the fundamental means by which he stood for election that was most troublesome. Other than a couple of murmurs from the likes of Neal Boortz, I had not heard any outrage whatsoever about the Democrats' slick maneuver. This was a case of a political party placing a candidate, a member of that party, on the ballot for election when the public had no say as to whether or not they wanted this person to be their representative in DC.
Before I get to the significance of this strategy I am going to give a couple of more examples of comparable occurrences.
In 2000 Hillary Clinton was called, by a certain conservative radio personality, a "carpet-bagger" for choosing the state of New York, a state in which she had never lived, as the launching pad for her political career. She chose that state because her husband's presidency had been extraordinarily popular there and, it goes without too much saying, that means that she was, too. This was a case of a candidate, most likely in conjunction and coordination with her political party, who chose a constituency that would elect her to office rather than the people who have known the candidate the longest choosing her. If the latter had been the case, then the now-Senator Clinton would have run for office in Arkansas. But, it was not to be; they knew her too well in that state.
To be sure, there was nothing illegal about Clinton's run in New York, or , for that matter, Lautenberg's in New Jersey. She fulfilled the requirements to run for office in the state by purchasing a house there and by wearing a NY Yankees baseball cap. (That was only an informal requirement that lost her the votes of a few disgruntled Democratic Mets fans who really didn't care for her that much anyway and so it didn't really matter.)
The Democratic Party knew that Hillary Clinton was popular and that she would win in virtually any race into which she would throw her hat, but she still had to be in the right place, the just-right place: NY. Again, this is a case of a political party dropping a candidate into a so-called "safe seat" race.
I don't believe that this is a method of representation that most fits with our democratic republican form of government.
As a final example, I bring Alan Keyes to the fore. Do you remember that conservative radio personality that I had mentioned before? The one that decried Clinton's move to run in NY as "carpet-bagging?" Well, if you have been paying attention to this year's elections at all--those not having so much to do with "Vietnam" or the Texas National Guard--you may have heard about Barrack Obama, a "rising star" in the Democratic Party and the Junior Senator-apparent of the state of Illinois.
Obama is a smart guy and he is actually from Illinois. I don't agree with his politics at all, but he is, at least in my mind, running in his state legitimately with a legitimate electorate. His first GOP opponent was forced out of the race because of a sex scandal. Fine. Then, the IL GOP held several emergency meetings in order to appoint a replacement for Jack Ryan. Not fine. First off, I would have been happy to see that a special primary had been called in IL for a new Republican candidate, but the Party disagreed. (I don't have enough clout up there, apparently.)
To complete this grand misstep, the party decided that it needed to fight "black with black," a silly concept, and they decided, furthermore, to chose a person of sub-Saharan/Nubian ("African-American") decent from out-of-state. He was from Maryland. Thus, Alan Keyes was chosen and "carpet-bagged" himself over to the midwestern state.
Certainly, this is hypocrisy in the highest. Keyes had tried to defend it, but I don't buy it, and neither do the people of Illinois. His politics aren't working wonders over there, either, and Obama is still sure to win in November. Gross hypocrisy aside, this is yet one more example of a party, not the people, selecting a candidate to run in an election. This ain't a "safe seat," though, for the GOP, as they're going to lose, and lose badly.
Which brings me to the thesis of this rant: The United States appears to be moving toward a system commonly seen in parliamentary democracies. To illustrate the similarities I will use the example of the United Kingdom and how they run their central government democracy.
But first, a little background: The UK has a Parliament that is divided into two houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Discussion of the House of Lords is not particularly germane to this discussion so we'll leave it on the table. The House of Commons, however, is the body from which the head of government of the country, the Prime Minister, is selected. The method of selecting both the US's and the UK's President and PM, respectfully, is somewhat similar as the Electoral College is indeed a body of a few hundred people who cast the true votes for the chief executive; the Members of Parliament, the MPs, select the Prime Minister in a similar fashion. In neither case is the top dog voted into office directly by the electorate, the people. This has always been this way, however, and is not relevant to what I am talking about today. Besides, there are reasons for the Electoral College in America that supersede my argument now.
The methods by which the Parliament, the de facto legislature for our purposes, and the Congress are elected are vastly different...on paper. In the UK, the political parties create party lists to which names of loyal (and not-so-loyal) members are added in a particular order. For example, if the Prime Minister really likes MP 1 he can place him on the top of the list; if he really has been disappointed in MP 2, he can place him at the bottom of the list, a list sometimes having 30, 60 or 80 names on it.
But, wait! There's one more step to add even more intrigue to the entire scheme! The Party doesn't have to keep a specific candidate or list in one particular constituency. As a matter of fact, the Party can pull someone that it likes from London and have them run in a constituency in Norfolk, Cornwall or North Yorkshire, all regions that are far away from the chimes of Westminster.
To add even more complexity to the matter, there are such things are "safe seats" and "unsafe seats." More loyal members are added to the lists for the so-called "safe seats" (those being seats that will most likely belong to that party after the votes are cast) and less loyal ones will be on the lists for the so-called "unsafe seats," as, after the election, they should be looking for new work because their party doesn't like them very much anymore.
Briefly, the Proportional Representation aspect of this system comes into play in respect to these daunting "lists" that I keep talking about: Just like in the US's House of Representatives, each constituency is defined by its population, and the larger the region's population, the more representatives its people get to vote into office. Thus, on London's list, if the Labour Party gets the plurality (the greatest percentage, also sometimes referred to as "First Past The Post") of the votes cast and London deserves, let's say, 10 MPs, all 10 MPs will be from the Labour list and will be the first ten names on that list.
This seems an odd arrangement for government representation, but I have to keep in mind that I have lived under a different system in the US for my entire life. It obviously has worked for a while in Britain. That doesn't mean, however, that I can't quarrel with it for being a mildly undemocratic route to democracy and for being something that appears to be spreading in our system.
Now, with the example of British electoral practices, you can begin to see the similarities between what the political parties do there and what they have begun to do here. I can only recall events during my lifetime but I do know that these three events, on a Federal level, have been rare, and so I would have to strain to assume that they had taken place en masse before.
Having parties choose the candidate for an election is bad. It's bad for the candidate, should he get into office, and it's much worse for the voter, as his new representative knows nothing about his constituency's peoples' way of life, much less their needs or their wants. The representative has very little or no tie to the place of which he is standing and arguing in proxy. He has his party loyalty and self interests in the top of his mind.
This is not a good system of democratic government and I hate to see it spreading to this nation, the country that pioneered this form of government that has led us to become what we are today: the best country in the world.
Viva la resistance!
Lautenberg won the election and is now a sitting Senator in the US Senate--again. The fact that the seat stayed Democratic didn't bother me at all; it was the fundamental means by which he stood for election that was most troublesome. Other than a couple of murmurs from the likes of Neal Boortz, I had not heard any outrage whatsoever about the Democrats' slick maneuver. This was a case of a political party placing a candidate, a member of that party, on the ballot for election when the public had no say as to whether or not they wanted this person to be their representative in DC.
Before I get to the significance of this strategy I am going to give a couple of more examples of comparable occurrences.
In 2000 Hillary Clinton was called, by a certain conservative radio personality, a "carpet-bagger" for choosing the state of New York, a state in which she had never lived, as the launching pad for her political career. She chose that state because her husband's presidency had been extraordinarily popular there and, it goes without too much saying, that means that she was, too. This was a case of a candidate, most likely in conjunction and coordination with her political party, who chose a constituency that would elect her to office rather than the people who have known the candidate the longest choosing her. If the latter had been the case, then the now-Senator Clinton would have run for office in Arkansas. But, it was not to be; they knew her too well in that state.
To be sure, there was nothing illegal about Clinton's run in New York, or , for that matter, Lautenberg's in New Jersey. She fulfilled the requirements to run for office in the state by purchasing a house there and by wearing a NY Yankees baseball cap. (That was only an informal requirement that lost her the votes of a few disgruntled Democratic Mets fans who really didn't care for her that much anyway and so it didn't really matter.)
The Democratic Party knew that Hillary Clinton was popular and that she would win in virtually any race into which she would throw her hat, but she still had to be in the right place, the just-right place: NY. Again, this is a case of a political party dropping a candidate into a so-called "safe seat" race.
I don't believe that this is a method of representation that most fits with our democratic republican form of government.
As a final example, I bring Alan Keyes to the fore. Do you remember that conservative radio personality that I had mentioned before? The one that decried Clinton's move to run in NY as "carpet-bagging?" Well, if you have been paying attention to this year's elections at all--those not having so much to do with "Vietnam" or the Texas National Guard--you may have heard about Barrack Obama, a "rising star" in the Democratic Party and the Junior Senator-apparent of the state of Illinois.
Obama is a smart guy and he is actually from Illinois. I don't agree with his politics at all, but he is, at least in my mind, running in his state legitimately with a legitimate electorate. His first GOP opponent was forced out of the race because of a sex scandal. Fine. Then, the IL GOP held several emergency meetings in order to appoint a replacement for Jack Ryan. Not fine. First off, I would have been happy to see that a special primary had been called in IL for a new Republican candidate, but the Party disagreed. (I don't have enough clout up there, apparently.)
To complete this grand misstep, the party decided that it needed to fight "black with black," a silly concept, and they decided, furthermore, to chose a person of sub-Saharan/Nubian ("African-American") decent from out-of-state. He was from Maryland. Thus, Alan Keyes was chosen and "carpet-bagged" himself over to the midwestern state.
Certainly, this is hypocrisy in the highest. Keyes had tried to defend it, but I don't buy it, and neither do the people of Illinois. His politics aren't working wonders over there, either, and Obama is still sure to win in November. Gross hypocrisy aside, this is yet one more example of a party, not the people, selecting a candidate to run in an election. This ain't a "safe seat," though, for the GOP, as they're going to lose, and lose badly.
Which brings me to the thesis of this rant: The United States appears to be moving toward a system commonly seen in parliamentary democracies. To illustrate the similarities I will use the example of the United Kingdom and how they run their central government democracy.
But first, a little background: The UK has a Parliament that is divided into two houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Discussion of the House of Lords is not particularly germane to this discussion so we'll leave it on the table. The House of Commons, however, is the body from which the head of government of the country, the Prime Minister, is selected. The method of selecting both the US's and the UK's President and PM, respectfully, is somewhat similar as the Electoral College is indeed a body of a few hundred people who cast the true votes for the chief executive; the Members of Parliament, the MPs, select the Prime Minister in a similar fashion. In neither case is the top dog voted into office directly by the electorate, the people. This has always been this way, however, and is not relevant to what I am talking about today. Besides, there are reasons for the Electoral College in America that supersede my argument now.
The methods by which the Parliament, the de facto legislature for our purposes, and the Congress are elected are vastly different...on paper. In the UK, the political parties create party lists to which names of loyal (and not-so-loyal) members are added in a particular order. For example, if the Prime Minister really likes MP 1 he can place him on the top of the list; if he really has been disappointed in MP 2, he can place him at the bottom of the list, a list sometimes having 30, 60 or 80 names on it.
But, wait! There's one more step to add even more intrigue to the entire scheme! The Party doesn't have to keep a specific candidate or list in one particular constituency. As a matter of fact, the Party can pull someone that it likes from London and have them run in a constituency in Norfolk, Cornwall or North Yorkshire, all regions that are far away from the chimes of Westminster.
To add even more complexity to the matter, there are such things are "safe seats" and "unsafe seats." More loyal members are added to the lists for the so-called "safe seats" (those being seats that will most likely belong to that party after the votes are cast) and less loyal ones will be on the lists for the so-called "unsafe seats," as, after the election, they should be looking for new work because their party doesn't like them very much anymore.
Briefly, the Proportional Representation aspect of this system comes into play in respect to these daunting "lists" that I keep talking about: Just like in the US's House of Representatives, each constituency is defined by its population, and the larger the region's population, the more representatives its people get to vote into office. Thus, on London's list, if the Labour Party gets the plurality (the greatest percentage, also sometimes referred to as "First Past The Post") of the votes cast and London deserves, let's say, 10 MPs, all 10 MPs will be from the Labour list and will be the first ten names on that list.
This seems an odd arrangement for government representation, but I have to keep in mind that I have lived under a different system in the US for my entire life. It obviously has worked for a while in Britain. That doesn't mean, however, that I can't quarrel with it for being a mildly undemocratic route to democracy and for being something that appears to be spreading in our system.
Now, with the example of British electoral practices, you can begin to see the similarities between what the political parties do there and what they have begun to do here. I can only recall events during my lifetime but I do know that these three events, on a Federal level, have been rare, and so I would have to strain to assume that they had taken place en masse before.
Having parties choose the candidate for an election is bad. It's bad for the candidate, should he get into office, and it's much worse for the voter, as his new representative knows nothing about his constituency's peoples' way of life, much less their needs or their wants. The representative has very little or no tie to the place of which he is standing and arguing in proxy. He has his party loyalty and self interests in the top of his mind.
This is not a good system of democratic government and I hate to see it spreading to this nation, the country that pioneered this form of government that has led us to become what we are today: the best country in the world.
Viva la resistance!
Posted: Wed - September 8, 2004 at 06:03 PM
Quick Links
Illegitimus Non Tatum Carborundum
Categories
XML/RSS Feed
Archives
FAVORITE LINKS
The Drudge Report
Neal Boortz
BBC News
MacNN
Andrew Sullivan
The Economist
Constitution Preservation.org
The Cato Institute
Air America Radio
Neal Boortz
BBC News
MacNN
Andrew Sullivan
The Economist
Constitution Preservation.org
The Cato Institute
Air America Radio
Emory Schedule
Notify List
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
iTunes Music Store
AMAZON LINKS
COUNTER
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 10, 2005 08:28 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 10, 2005 08:28 AM