Hi folks,
Back in October, I focused the last two weeks of the blog on the then-upcoming election. Despite what some read into it, the posts were not predictions about what I thought might happen. Rather, all I tried to look at was the reality of voting and how different people looked at the institution with different perspectives.
It was a big post, obviously, but I still kept a few things out. Here are those leftover thoughts, stated more directly than the manner I shared ideas during the debate series.
The next post will be on Monday. It's a quicker turnaround than usual but makes the most sense when looking at the rest of the January calendar.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Thought #1- what is the point of voting?
I think, at some point, everyone has thought through the mechanics of voting and concluded that, almost in every election, no one person's vote actually counts. It is a good point based on soundly exercised logic. Elections involving thousands or millions of votes mean the chance of a single vote making the difference in the end is unlikely to the point of being, realistically speaking, impossible.
I try to vote despite recognizing the validity of this argument. The 'public' reason is my commitment to worrying about process over results. If I do the hard work to cast the vote that best represents my thoughts, feelings, and conclusions about a given question, the consistency will carry over into other areas of life where perhaps the same rigor in thinking will bear more direct or immediate fruit.
Voting forces examination of topics that I otherwise do not think about. By preparing to vote, I start to clarify my own understanding of those topics. That's really all it does for me.
Without preparing to vote, might my thoughts on topics like 'the government' remain abstract? I suspect so. The process of voting forces me to consider what the government is capable of doing, where they are limited, and how I should allocate my energy to best serve my interest in making Massachusetts the best state in the country.
Thought #2- principled voting?
The concept of principles came up (ok, fine, I brought it up) in this series of posts. One thing I've thought a lot about since is the idea of principled voting from a national rather than strictly personal point of view.
To me, principled voting with the nation in mind requires asking how a given vote incorporates what I know about the country's principles. I'll take those of the Declaration of Independence- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness- and the freedoms guaranteed to us in the Constitution.
The same documents point out that governments exist to protect these rights. So, one way I thought about voting was to ask myself what kind of policy would best position government to do the best job it can to protect those rights.
My conclusion was to look at ways to lift people out of poverty. Any individual's conclusion to such a matter is debatable, of course. But that poverty restricts choice is not debatable. A person who 'chooses' buying a hot meal over paying the electric bill is not exercising freedom of choice in the way intended by our Founding Fathers.
So for me, one way to vote in a principled manner, nationally speaking, is to consider the extent to which my vote lifts or lowers those currently struggling to make ends meet.
Thought #3- taboo topics
Politics is considered a 'taboo' topic in some places, notably at work, for its tendency to encourage people to divide themselves over their positions despite the common interests that they may share. A workplace divided is less likely to be profitable, I suppose.
Hide things for too long, though, and soon we lose track of where we hid it. Topics such as politics carry the potential to divide the individual self in a way similar to how it divides groups. A person who might never harm a fly is able to compartmentalize parts of their personality to support politics that dispossess the poor or maim the innocent.
I think part of the post involved looking at how the different parts of our personality interact with political questions. I did it in the best way I could at the time. I suspect one consequence of bringing these scattered parts of our personalities together is the examination of the particular contradictions that stem from tiptoeing around taboo topics for too long. Perhaps that first step toward understanding how we truly feel involves acknowledging a willingness to live with our own contradictions. From there, the shaky first steps to reconciliation can be taken.
Tangent #3A- Why do people roll their eyes at puns in general yet find the cheapest sexual innuendos apparently funnier than anything they have ever heard?
Let's blame TV.
Thought #4- Remember when you were little and went out for breakfast? And you wanted to order ice cream for breakfast? And your brother wanted to order ice cream for breakfast? And your father wasn't really saying anything but you knew he liked ice cream and never really ate breakfast anyway? But your mother wanted you to order 'breakfast food'? And you ended up eating an English muffin? Remember?
In unrelated news, the electoral college is kind of like...
A good rule of thumb about systems is that if a feature of a system does not impact the system's ability to survive in the future, that feature is likely to survive into the next iteration of the system.
It is a bit of a mouthful so I'll simplify- what doesn't kill a system will probably stick around. This means that getting rid of these 'non-existential' threats requires targeted intervention.
The electoral college, at first glance, seems an unlikely requirement for the future of this country. Eliminating the system in favor of using solely the popular vote has surface merit, even if just in terms of simplicity. (We count before we add!) It will not go away on its own since the country will remain a democracy as long as people vote in some fashion.
The Constitution is hard to change but it has happened before. So, will it go anytime soon? My thought is that this is unlikely.
The number one reason I can think of is the two-party system. I see a symbiotic relationship of sorts between the required 270 electoral votes and the two-party system. To earn 270 electoral votes requires significant support nationwide, the kind a system with more parties would be unlikely to encourage. Any party that reached majority in this hypothetical environment would tempt their opponents to band together before the majority party could consolidate its power in a national election.
As long as the electoral college threshold is so high, smaller and less powerful emerging parties will always battle the incentive to band together or join larger parties to best leverage their resources toward a presidential victory. This means a challenger party rising up into the current setup is very unlikely as well.
With the two-party system entrenched, I think a change in the electoral college system is a non-starter. After all, who would spearhead such a change? Those in national government, almost all a member of one party or the other? Eliminating the electoral college would greatly destabilize a critical system that contributes to keeping the two-party system in place.
But for now, these two forces hold each other in check. The likelihood that the disruption required to spur change is low. Without one system, I think the other is at least free to go. But with one, the other is almost sure to stay.
Such realities do not guarantee the system will not eventually change, of course. A small but perhaps major step could involve eliminating the 270 requirement. The effects of such a move might take a generation to fully come through at the grassroots level. But it would at least make a third or fourth party emergence more feasible in the future.
