Back in 2000 our country had a huge debacle over "popular vote" vs. electoral votes and for months we couldn't even decide who our president was. Why weren't things updated or "fixed" back then? Instead, we let the government elect the government, or was it the media?
either way, once it was swept under the rug we just continued on and never fixed a thing.
Well, I can't say that changes weren't made. Some were, some districts switched back to paper ballots, some went to computers, some purchased new touch screens. etc, etc.
No one bothered to look at how broken our system really is.
Now, here we go again.
And of course, being a Floridian, we are right in the middle of it AGAIN.
This system angers me completely.
I think I will be sick to my stomach if it happens again. If the democratic party elects someone that the people did not vote for. I voted for McCain and plan to in the general election too, so it isn't that I'm an Obama supporter, I'm just angry that Clinton could get a free ride because she has more friends in politics.
I was incensed when I heard that Florida's democratic delegates were not going to count and surprised that more people didn't complain about it in the first place. We were damned from the start. How do you tell an entire state that they have no voice in choosing a candidate and get away with it? Have we really come that far away from our core values of a government elected by the people?
Then, there is this issue of "super delegates" that just makes me fuming mad. The electorate system was started back in the days where votes literally had to be counted by humans so it made sense that local officials would poll their area then report to the state then the states would report to the national parties. Now, in our modern world, that system is stupid and antiquated. It made sense to do things that way back then, now, there is no excuse why we couldn't have a straight popular vote. Even in the primaries.
Plus, the super delegates don't even have to vote for the candidate that their constituents want! The entire reason for creating a "super delegate" was to prevent an "un-electable" candidate from winning the democratic nomination. What? How democratic is that?
The people cast their votes to elect candidate A and then the super delegate says "no, I don't think candidate A will be able to beat the Republican candidate, we are going to vote for candidate B instead"
Where is the voice of the people?
Regardless of the way this all boils down in the end, we've screwed it up. Me, for example. I'm an independent. But in order to be able to vote in Florida, I had to pick a side. I am passionate about certain things that are Democratic views, and also passionate about things that are Republican views so picking a side was difficult. So, when I found out that Florida had been stripped of their democratic delegates, the DNC had made my decision for me. So, I switched my registration to Republican. Had the DNC not done that (or Florida not moved their primary... whichever you want to blame) I may have decided to vote Democratic. Who knows.
And then there are those who usually vote Democrat and didn't foresee this debacle and just didn't bother to go to the polls because they knew their vote wouldn't count.
There is no way to say how Florida's vote would have turned out if we weren't' stripped of our delegates in the first place.
Would it be the same? Would it have worked out better for McCain? Worse? Would Clinton have still won? Who knows... there are just too many factors to count.
And a do-over! That wouldn't be fair either. What if people like me decided that we wanted to vote Democrat instead? Would I be allowed to vote on the Democratic re-do?
And where would the money come from? Take it away from the schools? the firefighters? the police?
I'd only recently started following politics and I'm beginning to think I was better off back when I stuck my head in the sand. Certainly would have been better for my health.
