A non-voter and proud of it, or, Why are people mean to me?

[Socratoad]

Originally Posted by Scotty

Interesting.

So, the partys are corrupt. One more corrupt than the other (the greater and lesser evil as it were). Why is that the case?

If you replace the party at an election but it is still corrupt, doesn't that mean you haven't put in place a new party? Doesn't that mean that the people who are truly in power are still in power?

With the electoral college, you vote into office representatives that then pick the candidate from a list given to them. When do we pick who we get to vote for? You would think that we would have a direct line to who gets put on the ballot, not what somebody else thinks even though we put them in office. How do we really know what they are going to do?

Plus, how do we vote the entire system/partys away? I'm for that but haven't seen that on the ballot ("To remove your government, please check here with a #2 pencil"). I want to fire the entire government and do an audit from an outside firm so we have a little accountability.

-Scott

[Petra]

Scotty, that would be great if you could do that. The sheer size of the US would make a change to your electoral system difficult; but worth it the end, I think.

One of the lucky things about being in a small country is that we were able to change our system from first past the post to proportional representation fairly painlessly. About 3 elections ago we had a few public debates followed by a national referendum, and had to vote for one or the other system. Proportional representation won, and we restructured everything accordingly. It was a good move.

Perhaps it won't be too many years before a significant public majority effects any reforms needed in the US to make for a fairer and more transparent system.