Hello. If you don’t know me, I’m Indigo and I’m a fan of thought experiments and hypothetical situations. Take note of my interests because they’re the reasons behind this post.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about voting and how social perceptions skew the meaning of “freedom to vote” and make it go from 1. The right to participate or refuse to participate in the act of voting to 2. Having to vote but voting for the candidate you think is best, as long as it goes along with public opinion. Today I’m going to explore what would happen if society exercised the freedom to refuse to vote and provide just one of many interpretations of what this process means and does to the importance of the citizen’s vote.
To clarify before I officially begin, we don’t live in a democracy. (Sorry.) A true democracy is when the people are directly voting on what goes on in the sphere of government. It is when the people represent and vote as themselves, for themselves. The government system we do have is a constitutional republic. A constitutional republic is one that is controlled or ruled by the Law of the Constitution, since a republic by definition has to be ruled by law and has to recognize the independent sovereign person. The latter is what makes this form of government representative in its nature. We have a wide variety of representatives, such as local government officials, county executives, mayors, state legislators, state governors, U.S. representatives, U.S. senators, and presidents. Instead of voting on every particular bill or issue, we elect someone to vote on our behalf. This trend is observed at local, state, and federal levels.
What does this mean in terms of voting? Again, due to the upcoming Presidential Election, I will use this as an example and apply this concept to it. It keeps things interesting. The Presidential Election is one of the most important elections, and if every single citizen decided not to vote, we’d still have an elected President. It’s a pretty uneventful truth, but it’s puzzling. If the people’s votes are so important and candidates spend millions on ads and people all over the country volunteer and force the idea of voting down everyone’s throats, how could a President be elected without them?
The answer is simple: the electoral college would vote. As I explained in the post I referenced before, the electoral college is essentially the only public that matters when it comes to voting for a president. If nobody voted, the electors would vote without using their decisions as a reference or suggestion. In other words, the fact that only 538 people out of a total of approximately 315 million people actually vote for the President would be much more evident, especially since the electoral college has no Constitutional obligation to vote the way their respective states voted (if everyone voted).
With all that being said, what does this mean for us? What does this say about our voices? Do our votes really matter? When does representation cross the line and speak for us? My answers are the following. Our voices don’t really matter as much as we might think, and neither do our votes. If the opinions of 315 million people can be forgotten or overruled by the desires of 538 people, I think we have a huge problem. I’m not sure when representatives stop speaking on our behalves and start speaking from their status as the select few that are in the know, but I do know that there are some criticisms about the constitutional republic and comparisons between it and oligarchies, so I guess that’s a start. More importantly, what do you think about all of this? Will you still vote? Why? Does representation simply make government proceedings more efficient, or do they silence the true majority, which is all of us?
Great post, as usual. I think voters are under the impression that the electoral college decisions reflect the voter polls. Anyway, thanks for the insight.
I definitely think this idea has merit: why would we as a people stand for a system in which the voting power essentially lies in the hands of 538 people? Doesn’t this essentially create an oligarchy- choice of government by a few- and mask the voices of the hundreds of thousands general voters? I’ll certainly assent that the electoral college allows for this possibility, and in theory could eliminate the democratic principles which underlie our system of government. However, it is my belief that the electoral college is an institution whose actual effects are not restricting or repressive but instead contribute to upholding the continued liberty and freedom that we enjoy under our system of government.
One of the underlying messages in the post seems to be that the US’s constitutional republic system of government is, like the electoral college, a hindrance to the ability to people to influence how they are governed. I highly disagree with this sentiment. Direct democracies are indeed the most basic, purest forms of democracies, where all citizens gather to make decisions as one body. This is clearly infeasible for a country covering 3.8 million square miles and containing over 300 million people. Therefore, we use a representative democracy as our system of government, selecting people who we trust to represent our wants and needs in a more direct democracy-like setting. Although every person may not be involved in every decision made by the government, this does not make a representative democracy any less democratic, as the principles of equal representation, rule by the majority with minority concessions, and a voice of each person in every decision still hold. A nation can be both a constitutional republic and a representative democracy, and the existence of a set of underlying (but amendable) rules and structures by which the government bases its actions does not mean that the desires of each person cannot be addressed.
The possibility of the entire nation refusing to vote is certainly an interesting one, and would certainly send the message that no one wants a president. An issue with that situation is that our country needs a president- the system of government established in the Constitution has 3 branches that balance and counteract each other, preventing any one area of the government from becoming too powerful or dangerous. Removing one of those branches could upset the entire national government, as there are essential functions that the executive branch needs to complete for the government to work. (And we need the government to work- the justice system, foreign trade, maintenance of public goods and services, programs to support the poor and unemployed, though admittedly flawed in their own ways, cannot be fixed by immediate elimination but rather by gradual amendment.) In short, we need a president, and in the extraordinarily unlikely event that the public fails in its duty of electing one, a failsafe of respected individuals who can select an appropriate leader is certainly a reasonable solution. If the public has truly decided that the presidency is an unnecessary, excessively powerful institution, it should instead focus on electing Congressional representatives who will amend the Constitution to eliminate the position. If the entire country is absolutely unified in this sentiment, it should not take long to be enacted. On the other hand, if the nation just wants to keep the old president, it is vital that there be a body to bring in a successor. Peaceful, mandated transfer of power is one of the principles of free government, as it helps to block the possibility of regression into monarchy or dictatorship. And in general, the electoral college does not behave in a manner that would in any way threaten the choice of a president by the general public. 29 states actually have ordinances punishing any elector who votes against the will of the people, demonstrating the national intention that the people, not the electoral college, select a president. Furthermore, the electoral college holds other benefits, such as allowing the president to be selected by a majority of the country rather than small centers of population, making control of the country even more a reflection of the sentiments of the entire country rather than one concentrated group.
Even though I will not make the final choice of who if president, I will still vote. I believe that rather than being stacked in favor of one group of people, my vote will carry the same weight as every other citizen, whether it be my PSU peers or Barack Obama himself. I view the electoral college not as a threat to distorting my true wants but rather as a facilitator for selecting the president and a safety net if something should go horribly wrong in the election. If the will of the majority was in actuality silenced by the electoral college, the US government could hardly be considered a democracy. As it stands, though, the electoral college does not limit the fair selection of a president and is only a government formality that can step in in the event of no one voting or some other catastrophe.