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Gotta say I 100% agree with this idea, wondering what everyone else thought. I also especially agree with the point that people who know nothing about the issues should not be encouraged to vote with campaigns like Vote or Die.

http://www.georgetownnews.com/articles/2008/01/11/opinion/opinion02.txt

Casting my vote for a new system

By DANIEL KELLEY
Georgetown News-Graphic
1/11/08

After long conversations and listening to various and sundry complaints about elections and election systems, past and present, I have come to a definite conclusion.

All our methods for picking a leader are screwed up.

Nothing works. We can appoint people, nominate people, allow genetics or fate to choose people, but, inevitably, each system has a fatal flaw that eventually causes it to break down.

In the case of the rule of primogeniture, where the first-born son took over after the father in charge of the monarchy died, ad infinitum, the system basically guaranteed that incompetent rules would come to power more often than not. A crapshoot, the system depends primarily on the luck that the son who inherits the role knows, wants and understands the power - a requirement that is far from a guarantee.

Many of our older systems had similar problems, where the person receiving/inheriting/being granted power got it without any merit whatsoever, leading to the downfall and/or destruction of far more than needed to be lost.




Still today, with the various democratic systems in place around the world, the system is screwed up. Ugly, poor, minority or female candidates have historically stood minimal chance of success in popular elections, and today they must have amazing other qualifications to "overcome" whatever they must.

Our problem now is that the people choose a face or a party, instead of actually choosing a candidate based on the issues. Values and opinions matter, to be sure, but Ralph Nader, just to toss a name out there, will never get elected, no matter how much the public might agree with him, simply because he is not a Democrat or a Republican, and he's not, shall we say, conventionally handsome.

When a pretty boy with a nice name like John Edwards starts out with a significant advantage over Dennis Kucinich even before the discussion of the issues begins, something is wrong. The fact is, as long as the people are electing a face, the elections aren't fair, or even remotely close.

Never fear, though, for I have the solution. I'm good like that.

There is a Web site called selectsmart.com - there's probably a bunch of them like that, really, but this is the only one I've used - that will ask you a series of questions regarding your opinion on the primary issues facing candidates - 30-some-odd questions, with two or three choices each and a sliding scale that allows you to rate exactly how much that issue matters to you. At the end, it plugs your answers in and returns a ranking of how the candidates match up to your wishes.

These things are just for idle diversion nowadays - it's fun to see who it says you would be happiest with, and all - but they do seem surprisingly not inaccurate (I won't say accurate, but it acquits itself well) and that is just for a free, banner-ad-supported Web site that also features a quiz called the Death Quiz - in other words, not exactly infallible. But this is how our systems should work. No voting for faces or parties, just plug in what issues matter to you and, bingo-bango, your candidate is chosen.

On Election Day, instead of a quick little flip of a switch or push of a button, you show up at your church or your kid's school and, essentially, take a survey. At the end, the Selectsmart - or whatever - system picks a candidate for each voter, and the most popular choice wins.

It might take a little longer, it's true, and it counterbalances all the catchphrases of "Vote or Die" and the like.

But you know what? I don't want the ignorant and uninformed of our society voting anyway. I just don't. Instead of saying "Vote or Die," Diddy's slogan should have been "Learn or Die." The people he's always tried to reach with his ads are the ones who, quite frankly, have no business at the polls. In short, there are two options for people of voting age who don't bother to learn what they are voting about. Either they vote, doing so ignorantly, or they abstain. Personally, I prefer that those who don't care enough to learn about the election not even bother. I don't want my leader to be chosen by people who care for a few minutes out of the year. I want everyone to vote, sure, but I want them to do so with the knowledge necessary. If making the voting process take a little longer weeds some out, then those aren't people I want voting in the first place.

So I am very much in favor of making the voting process take longer. It's more precise, and it weeds out the ones who really shouldn't be there anyway.

And there's another advantage still. Under my (totally awesome, if I do say so myself) system, all campaign ads would have to change. Gone would be the ads that would slander a political candidate or party. So what if you make John McCain look bad? People can not like him all they want, but it doesn't matter, because they aren't voting for a person - they're voting for the issues. Under my system, ads would have to be for one candidate, not against another.

Also gone would be the unending signs in yards proclaiming "Obama," "Clinton" and "Huckabee." Because candidates would have to stick to the issues, money and pre-existing power aside, anyone could become president. One of the Selectsmart categories is leadership and governmental experience, and enough people have strong enough feelings on that that we could weed out the inexperience among us that have just the right opinion but lack the experience necessary to apply their knowledge.

In the end, I'm sorry to say, but our election system is just messed up. The past couple weeks, we've proven that Iowa and New Hampshire have more of an impact on the presidential race than the majority of other states. In 2000, we learned that the popular candidate doesn't necessarily win (an amazing loophole in a completely outdated system, frankly).

Only inertia is keeping us in the system that we have.

Daniel Kelley is a News-Graphic copy editor. He can be reached at news@news-graphic.com.

i agree, sometimes i feel like it doesnt matter who i vote for in california its always going to be a democratic state so our electoral votes are guaranteed going to the darkside, err democratic side of thing.

Select Smart definitely isn't the way to do it because that thing made me most compatible with Barack Obama when I agree on essentially every issue with Mike Gravel. However, there has to be some system we could develop that's better than the current one. Maybe percent representation in the government so every vote actually matters.

it doesn't help that we've 'taught' everyone that their opinion matters. It's kind of like the same argument as telling every little kid they are special and can be anything they want when they grow up. Telling everyone they get to have their say in an election, well, some people SHOULDN'T and yeah, alot of people (myself included) do about 5 minutes of research and then vote.

I'd abstain, but then everyone guilts me so I just say heck with it, and vote for the party I know won't win anyways.

The system will never be 'fixed' without a complete overhaul. Alot of things in society are like this. It works for now, and to 'fix' it would take so much time, money and effort... we will never do it, unless the time comes where we honestly have no choice.

Rapture

it doesn't help that we've 'taught' everyone that their opinion matters. It's kind of like the same argument as telling every little kid they are special and can be anything they want when they grow up. Telling everyone they get to have their say in an election, well, some people SHOULDN'T and yeah, alot of people (myself included) do about 5 minutes of research and then vote.

I'd abstain, but then everyone guilts me so I just say heck with it, and vote for the party I know won't win anyways.

The system will never be 'fixed' without a complete overhaul. Alot of things in society are like this. It works for now, and to 'fix' it would take so much time, money and effort... we will never do it, unless the time comes where we honestly have no choice.

True, I just feel like it wouldn't be that big of deal to just have people click on the person they want to vote for in the booth, then have a screen come up with about 20 questions on where that candidate stands on certain issues and the voter has to get a certain percentage right for their vote to count. You should at the very least know very well the person you are voting for. It would deter a lot of one issue voters and idiots who don't know anything about politics.

I assume they would never do it because the percentage of voters would be so minimal, it would prove democracy to be a sham. It would prove that our country, for the most part, is so dumb and apathetic that it can't even do some simple research to vote not just for their representative government, but also vote knowledgeably to prove that a democratic system really works.

Oligarchy FTW.

it says i should vote for Ron Paul.

i agree with that too.