Majorities determine how government should be run.
That’s how it’s supposed to go. A study just released, though, suggests that the United States of America has a “majority of a minority” rule when it comes to electing people to high office, at least during these mid-term election cycles.
Turnout for the 2014 mid-terms reached a near-historic low, according to political analyst Michael McDonald, a University of Florida expert on voter turnout.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/voter-turnout-drops-historic-low
The turnout was 36.4 percent of eligible voters.
What did most of the nation’s eligible voters miss? They missed the chance to determine who should represent them in Congress, in governor’s offices and in state legislatures. These folks determine a lot of serious public policy issues that affect us all.
Most of us sat this one out.
Too bad for those who didn’t take the time to vote.
According to MSNBC.com: “Most observers attribute the low turnout to frustration among voters at the gridlock that has enveloped Washington, after Republicans made stymieing President Obama their top priority. That has left many voters—especially Democrats—feeling skeptical about the system’s ability to deliver change. Eighteen percent of voters said they feel they can never trust the government in Washington to do the right thing, according to the NBC News national exit poll.”
That’s so very interesting and so self-defeating. If frustration in government has gotten voters down, then it becomes voters’ responsibility to step up to change whatever ails the system, which cannot change itself.
We hold the key. You and me. Citizens who have the right afforded to us by the very government we supposedly detest to actually change it.
There is a fundamental flaw in the notion that, if we the people do not like the way things are going, then we need to vote the bums out. As Hendrick Herzberg points out in his writings, each of us has exactly ONE bum we can genuinely have any hand in voting out, namely our House Representative. And if you live in a district where the majority are not your party, you have zero bums to vote out. Voter turnout is low because our method of electing representatives to congress does not match the reality of contemporary American demographics. The nature of our senatorial elections – where each state has two representatives in that house – misrepresents the political ideology of the majority, which is likely much more progressive than the new Senate. Maybe this is a good thing since it serves to put the breaks on majority rule and forces change to occur slowly, but with the current level of dysfunction and discord in congress, you’d be hard pressed to say it’s actually a good thing.