US democracy doesn't make much sense

[asthfghl]

Is there a greater democratic show on Earth than the American presidential election? The sheer entertainment! The endless debates! All the polling! The pundits! The spin! Truly. There can't be a bigger circus than the famed, fabulous Road to the White House. Right?

Yet, there are things in the US election process that simply fail to make any sense to anyone outside the US itself (and arguably, to many within). Most of them are seemingly still being kept there out of sheer veneration for tradition, whatever that's supposed to mean. Here are some.

First off, why is Election Day on a Tuesday in early November? Sure, it seemed like a convenient time for farmers to vote in the early 19th century, but what about now? Tuesdays are typically in the middle of a workweek for most people. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the election on a Sunday? Conversely, if you so much insist on Tuesday, why not make it a national holiday so it doesn't mess up with work responsibilities?

What's the whole drama with early voting about? It has been tested and implemented elsewhere for years, and it hasn't yielded any major problems - on the contrary, it has opened up more chances for people to vote. Hell, other developed countries are already using online voting, that can't be so hard to do the right way, can it?

What's with the constant requirement for people to register to be able to vote? If you're already a citizen, you're registered to live somewhere, you work there and you pay your taxes there, why would you need to confirm that you, well, are going to vote there? Seems like too much hassle to me. Other countries just automatically register everyone as per their place of permanent residence. You just present your ID thus proving that you live where you've been registered, and then you vote. Simple. Seems to me someone's been trying to suppress a lot of vote here. And why all the arbitrary voter ID requirements? There are states where you need to provide a government-issued photo ID as proof to vote, but not a student ID or bank statement. Voter impersonation fraud, is that the concern? Really? Well, does it really happen?

Is it such a pain to make voting easier for people with disabilities? Too many polling places fail to provide such conditions. Now with mail-in voting, things could change. Hopefully.

And here we arrive at the dreaded Electoral College. Now, I understand it's all about states' rights, and those holy traditions. "The US is a Republic, not a democracy", I've heard this thousands of times. I get it, the institution has been there from day one, and this is America, folks! America is infallible! If the Founding Fathers said the Electoral College is the best system, then it is. Right?

Except, it doesn't make much sense in the 21st century. A presidential administration that's supposed to serve the people, does not get elected by the people. It gets elected by Electors. Well, technically it's still the people, since those Electors represent them - although it's not necessarily always the case (more about that a bit further down). The purpose of the Electoral College was obviously to curtail the passions of the masses who didn't know any better than follow the lowest common denominator. It was intended to prevent them from making stupid and rash decisions under the influence of emotion and cheap populist propaganda (how did that work out in 2016, heh?)

But did you also know that the second major purpose accomplished by the Electoral College was to protect the interests of slaveholders? While slaves couldn't vote back then, a slave still counted as 3/5 of a person (terrible, I know, but those were the days), which would give the South a disproportional weight in the Electoral College. And because Congress failed to fulfill its obligation to reduce the representation of states that disenfranchised voters, during the Jim Crow era it allowed the South to be fully represented in presidential elections while still denying the right to vote to a huge portion of its own population.

So turns out the Electoral College is twice anti-democratic. One, it filters people's decisions into a form that's acceptable to the elites; and two, it protects an institution that no longer exists (or doesn't it?) Hmmm? Even if the majority of PEOPLE decide it has to be Administration X to serve them, the Electoral College can decide otherwise, simply because some states are disproportionately represented.

And then, there's this thing called Faithless Electors. They could decide to defect away from their pledge, and vote for some other candidate even if they've been obligated by law to follow the popular vote. But then there are legal ways to correct that by either firing them and replacing them, or punishing them and still forcing them to comply with the choice of their constituents, thus making their autonomous decision null and void - which begs the question, why do you need all those Electors at all!?

There are other things of course. Like, why do you need a year and a half long election campaign, even with all those primaries and stuff. You're literally spending 1/3 of your time in election mode, and that affects politicians' approach to policy because they're more concerned with pandering to certain segments of the electorate rather than serving society long-term. If you're a society priding itself in being so pragmatic and frugal, and forward-thinking and modern and adaptable - then why would you insist on keeping a bunch of outdated stuff in your most important societal process just for the sake of it? Think of all the expense, all the time wasted (I agree, elections could be an industry, but then, there's the whole huge entertainment industry for that anyway). Why should super-PACs be allowed to run the show, drowning out people's voices? Why, why, why?

Americans do like to think of their political system as the gold standard of democracy, and yet the US has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the developed world. It's practically a two-party state, where variety of political opinion gets diluted and shoehorned into two possible options, falling under two generalized umbrellas with no alternatives getting any chance of being heard (the intention must have been to prevent the fringe from taking over, but again, how has that worked out for the last few years?) A horrendously complicated registration process, the failure to make Election Day more accessible to people, and a ton of complicated political measures aimed at suppressing turnout, not to mention all the arbitrary and outright ridiculous gerrymandering that goes on beneath the shiny surface at a more local level - all that somehow runs counter to the claim of the US being a paragon of democracy.

I'm almost tempted to start suspecting it's got nothing to do with tradition, but rather, some folks desperately wanting to keep their grip on the whole process. And who might that be? And what are you going to do about it?