Every vote doesn’t count. This is the myth the media likes to push for months. Then on election night, they finally start to mention the electoral college which overrides the populate vote.
Most voters think because they are emotionally invested in the issues or the outcome they are participating in the democratic process. You can explain, it’s an indirect election, and they still go out to the voting booths, as if they are directly choosing who has power. Joke.
More should be done to highlight who these electoral voters are, how they are leaning, who influences them. From what I understand they are the type of people connected to a political party, already. Maybe they ran for an office of some kind, but lost, so now they play background. In this way, the election is decided long before election night.
Every time I hear a media pundit talk of winning over certain kinds of voters, I cringe to think of amount of people taken in by this. People holding signs, wasting time.
Most voters don’t understand that the debates only showcase the party members who were invited. A Rep or a Dem doesn’t have to invite an independent third voice. Most times a third voice can afford to solve an issue. But Reps and Dems don’t want to solve these main issues because those unresolved problems define them and the need for their representation.
As I get older, the more I realize there is an agenda for society that goes ahead no matter who is in office. The fact that promises can be made before the election, then broken without accountability is the standard course. A Republican will raise taxes just as much as a Democrat will go to war.
Have a direct election?
Require that third party canidates participate in the debates?
Spread the word to people who forgot what high school civics taught them for one hour, long ago?
Does the electoral college actually not vote the way the districts they represent vote? In other words, does the fact that insiders are the ones pulling the lever actually change anything, as compared to the vote for a district just automatically being tallied in favor of the winner in that district?
I ask because I wonder if the real problem is less that the electors are insiders, and more that we have a president who doesn’t really represent the people, but states and the electoral districts. How much of the problem you’re describing would e.g. redistricting reform solve?
I’m still hopeful that a third party will be included in the debates this year, the Libertarians have a relatively level-headed pair of candidates (certainly relative to the Republicans). They have a lawsuit in progress to force their way into the debates, and they may have enough support to get in by the book – as long a they’re included in the polling.
The electors in all 50 states are considered morally/politically obligated to vote according to the popular vote of their ‘districts’. Only about half the states actually have laws to punish electors that don’t, however.
Furthermore, it should be noted that ‘district’ means ‘state’ in all but two states- Maine and one other I forget. In 48 of the 50 states, the electors all vote for the full state’s popular vote, there is no splitting electors in a state between two candidates.