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by Doug Berger
Another election season is upon us and for many people, they don't care. Why is there such a negative image about politics in the world's largest democracy? The short answer is simply politics, as we know it today, sucks. Here some reasons why politics sucks:
The nature of our "winner takes all" elections. All that is required to win an elective office is a simple majority of those voting. This leads one to think their votes doesn't count. This belief leads to the results they feared because they don't vote. Since they didn't vote their vote didn't count.
The two party machine. This machine led by the two major parties, the Democrats and the GOP, make it near impossible for alternative candidates and parties to get on a ballot. The two main parties have worked together to enact ballot access and election laws that put alternatives at undemocratic disadvantage. One way they do this is by basing the number of signatures required to get on the ballot on the percentage of those who voted for that candidate or party in the last election. Alternatives are in a Catch-22. The major parties seem to go through the formality of submitting petitions for a spot on the ballot since they need so few.
The "Lessor of two evils". It is similar to #1 above but applies to those who do vote. They don't like any of the candidates so they choose the one they dislike the least. That seems fair, no??
So, it seems that politics does suck. That doesn't mean we have to leave it like that.
The first thing to do is rid the books of all the election laws that give an unfair advantage to the two major parties. Another solution is conduct elections with multiple candidates and preference voting. People would choose candidates in the order of their preference. The candidate with the lowest number of votes would be dropped and their votes would be applied in the number of the preference. This system would continue until you were left with one candidate getting a majority of the votes.
Preference voting would mean that every vote would count since even if your vote didn't get your candidate elected, that vote would be given to the next candidate you preferred. Preference voting would also allow alternative candidates getting access to the ballot. This would break the stranglehold of the Dem/GOP machines.
Yes, politics, today, does suck, but we don't have to let be that way forever.
