The electoral system plays into a party system and the entire party system seems designed to distill candidates down into two big droplets on the American attention span with one sticking briefly before they all fall back into a pool of "they're all the same"ness. That's my sticking point though, they, the political parties, are all the same. A Democracy is defined as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. A Republic is defined as a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. These are our two major parties; read as: the only ones with an actual shot at winning. Those of you saying "hey wait, it means something different in this context though..." yeah...no, sorry but fuck you, it really doesn't.
We identify the Republican party as the more conservative party just as we view the Democrats as the more liberal, but these are completely malleable alignments. If you go back as little as to the early 1960's, these ideologies were flipped. That's right, the Dems were the conservative ones while the Reps took up the liberal saber. This. Shit. Is. Completely. Arbitrary. How many people identify themselves as Democrat or Republican but end up disagreeing with more of their "party's" ideals than agree with them? Fuck if I know, but it's probably around the same number of party members that disagree with more ideals and stances of their party's chosen representative than agree with them. So why still march under those banners? Because you have to pick a side...?
In order to vote you must register, and when you register you do so as a Democrat, Republican or Independent. Yup. There's apparently Democrat, Republican and Everything Else. Think of the effect just knowing that has on the average vote; the "Independents" are so hopeless and insignificant that they all have to share an identity as a party. So because the voter knows this, he or she "knows" that the best case scenario when voting for an independent is that neither the Republican nor Democrat will get a vote. What we get is voters who may have voted for another candidate voting for one that's "close enough" because the perception is that only one of two parties can actually win. But then if you don't happen to live in a swing state, not voting at all is going to have just as much effect as anything else on which candidate your state actually "counts" toward. So even most people that "get out and vote" are aware, to some extent, that their vote is largely meaningless. Whether or not you can even register to vote is just as, if not more, arbitrary.
They say that with age comes wisdom, but I say that wisdom comes to some a little faster than to others. I've known plenty of sub-18 year-olds with a better handle on what each candidate actually has planned for their time in office than the people deemed mature enough to have a say in whose plan gets to be executed. If you're going to impose restrictions on such an important decision, can we at least have them achieve some modicum of reasoned thought? Instead of just "Yup, you're old enough, go ahead and pick the name from this list" how about "Write me an essay explaining why you agree with your chosen candidate and their plan for our country." That way if 14-year-old Billy wants to vote for Randy Republican because he agrees with that specific candidates plan for our military, economy, healthcare, foreign policy, and/or etc. his vote gets thrown on the pile. If 42-year-old Sally wants to vote for Leo Liberal because he believes in America and that Randy wants to destroy America however it's "I'm sorry ma'am, please try again." Because too many people vote for a candidate just because s/he's a Republican, or a woman, or white, or friendlier or more attractive. Take as much time and as many attempts as you need, but put forth the effort to educate yourself about the decision. This is a decision that, under absolutely optimal circumstances, affects the future of every man woman and child in the country, you'd better know exactly what it is you're actually deciding.
While we're at it, stop with the parties. It's a mental game that only clutters up what should be a smooth, straightforward process of choosing the individual person that is going to take office. You are not electing a whole party, as we already discussed, these fuckers can't even agree with themselves so stop lumping them all together and claiming it's for my benefit. If you create a system that not only gives prideworthy weight to each citizens vote, but also allows any citizen to honestly express their choice in leader you get voters that are educated about how the system works from the formerly ignorant, disinterested or just plain disgusted individuals muddying it up.
But we don't have that system, which is why I'll be the disgusted fleck of dirt clinging to the side until someone with the power says "Hey, maybe we should try and clean this shit up so it works better, huh?"
