Just when I thought the Presidential election fiasco could get no worse, it hit a new low.
A friend of mine sent me a photo of his mail-in ballot, where he had written my name in for President. He wasn’t kidding.
So this very hard-working, intelligent citizen who has been a great community member, father, husband and friend, looked at the candidates offered on the ballot and decided he would rather write-in a completely unqualified, irreverent average Joe instead. The best that our current political parties were able to offer up came in second to his neighbor.
After a half second of feeling humbly honored, I then thought about the wasted vote. How many other votes will be similarly tossed off in despair to the Green Party or the Libertarian Party or to other neighbors? I’ll bet Bugs Bunny gets more votes than most of the write-ins. Actually, he’s not a bad choice, by comparison.
Those who opt for the choice of “none of the above”, which is essentially what a write-in constitutes, will be reducing the pool of voters who will affect the outcome of the election.
Here are some interesting statistics from the 2012 election:
Total number of eligible voters 218,959,000
Total number of registered voters 146,311,000 (67% of those eligible)
Total number of actual voters 126,144,000 (58% of those eligible)
So a bit over half of the people who have the right to vote actually did in the 2012 election. If this election has the same turnout, the percentage affecting the outcome will be even less because the toss-off votes will dilute the impact of the electorate further. Maybe down to half those eligible.
Now if the race is close between Trump and Clinton, let’s say 51% for the winner, that means that a tad over 25% of the eligible voters will be determining who our President and Commander-in-Chief will be.
Alexis de Tocqueville was a French economic sociologist, who wrote much about democracy from 1835 through 1856. He warned against a “tyranny of the majority” that he saw as a risk of broad equality of power. What he didn’t foresee was a tyranny of the active minority in an uninvolved electorate. He never went to a homeowners’ association meeting.
I found my experiences in two such associations, about ten years each, to be a great microcosmic laboratory of the larger American experiment in democracy. Few people voted for the board members. Those that ran for office aspired to the position for motives of control and autonomy, rather than true public service. Few people showed up to the meetings to oversee the board’s activities and decisions, preferring to attend only when they needed to complain bitterly of how their volunteer board members were screwing things up. The electorate was quite happy to let others do the work and make the decisions, until something negatively affected them personally. Few were willing to jump in and help in the volunteer efforts on behalf of all residents.
So a tiny fraction of the association members controlled a lot of the larger group’s future, of which they were blissfully ignorant.
When 25% of the U.S. electorate can determine the future of 100%, plus kids and national guests, then one would argue we no longer have a democracy, a government of and by the People.
Another political and social thinker, Joseph de Maistre, wrote in 1811 that “Every nation gets the government it deserves”. He was right. It appears we have abdicated our birthright of self-determination, purchased in blood for us many times since the Revolution. The only reversal is to be active in the democratic process.
It’s time, in my view, for the left hand of the right, and the right hand of the left, to form a new party that is based upon fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, that elevates the rights of the individual again, that ensures separation of religion and government, and that returns to the precepts of disconnecting government from business interests.
Hey. Maybe I’ll get elected after all.