If you've been following along here - and there are not many of you - you would know that I despair of the US election system ever working properly. When the yard signs go up, I absolutely despair. If you think I am going to vote for someone because you put a piece of cardboard in your yard - you are seriously deranged. And if you think negative attack ads work on me, think again. It's way to easy to say negative things - give me some idea what you stand for.
The evidence is that most elections are decided by the LOOK of the candidate. A square jaw and confident smile can win the day most of the time. I wrote a bit more about that in this blog entry:
http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-hate-elections.html
And, even longer ago, in 1996 I made a good case for indirect elections. If we are so driven by our emotions and gut instincts, then we need to buffer our citizenry with a layer of truly representative officials. At the very least, I thought this might get rid of political parties.
https://sites.google.com/site/carlscheider/carl-s-papers/face-to-face-democracy
It is highly unlikely that any nation will ever adopt that approach. It smacks a bit too much of the "soviet" system! Than just today I stumbled on a wonderful article that gave me at least a glimmer of hope.
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed
It's a little long, but it's a very nice piece contrasting the US form of democracy with that adopted by most other democracies - the parliamentary form. It had not occurred to me that the other approach might actually work better, given the culture propensities of our nation. The author has a good grasp of history, and he at least holds the hope that we might be able to transition to another form. It's well researched, and it makes some sense to me.
After Citizens United, and all of the money thrown down the drain by our 1% to persuade our irrational voters, I may just be grasping at straws here. See what you think. and let me know.
