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May 17: The Crazy US Presidential Election Process: Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

Who in their right mind would ever want to be president of the United States! To become POTUS, you have to be a millionaire or have several friends who are. You must subject yourself and your family to every possible humiliation. You must appease the radicals in your increasingly idealogical party, while also appealing to the huge swath of America that lies in the middle. You must sleep in hotel beds night after night as you kiss babies across the country for months or even years. You must watch your every word and deed in a world of instantaneous sharing on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. You must build a killer campaign organization nationwide. You must be a world-class debater in an age where video and television decide elections. And finally, in addition to all this, you must run the gauntlet of one of the most maddeningly complex election processes in all the world, a process where, even in the 21st century, we have yet to come up with a method to count votes accurately!

This is crazy stuff indeed, and this Thursday night we will try to bring a little sanity and clear-headed reasoning to the process. Here are the questions we will bat around (links to the readings are after the questions):
  • THE OVERRIDING QUESTION: Much blood has been spilled for the privilege to vote. As Americans, we proudly point to our democracy as a model for all the world. But in our presidential elections, depending on where we live, we might be among the millions of people who the election system disenfranchises, making our votes nothing but a hollow echo nobody hears. As citizens, should we demand to be heard? Can a government that doesn't count the votes of millions of its citizens really claim to be a government for the people?
  • The primary elections
    • Why should Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina get all the love? If we are going to have early voting states, what about rotating the states so that the whole country has a chance to participate in the process? Fact: If you're a Republican who lives in Utah, and you want to vote in the GOP primary in 2012, you vote dead last...and by then nobody gives a hoot what you think!
    • Or what if we scrap early voting states entirely and instead have the whole country vote on the same day? Would that scenario be feasible for the candidates? 
    • What in the Sam Snookie is a caucus, and how is it different from a primary? 
    • Does it make sense to have both caucuses and primaries, each of which forces the candidates to jump through entirely different types of hoops?
    • Should delegates be awarded proportionally, at least in the early states? The current system says yes, but it resulted in a Republican primary this year that just about burnt people out on following the election.
  • The general election
    • Red states, blue states, purple states, green mates! What's up with this color-coding of states? Even Dr. Seuss would be outraged!
    • The delegate system has led us to red states vs. blue states, which means that if you happen to be in one of the states that's not considered a swing state/purple state your vote doesn't count. Say what? 
    • What about the popular vote? Why shouldn't the winner of the popular vote become president rather than the one with the most electors? Isn't this supposed to be a government where your voice is heard, representative republic rhetoric be damned? 
  •  The electoral college
    • Is it time to do away with this archaic system of indirect election? Or is it is a necessary safeguard to protect the voice of the small states?
  • Partisanship 
    • Is the overwhelmingly bipartisan system we have ruining our presidential elections? Heck, even Ron Paul had to run as a Republican! Could the election process benefit from additional parties, or at least a strong third party? 
  • The role of the states
    • Since this is an election for a federal office (not a state office), should the federal government have a stronger hand in regulating the process than the states and the parties do? In other words, could we benefit from a standardized process instead of this hodge podge state-controlled process we have now? 
  • Counting votes
    • Holy taco batman, in this age of technology, shouldn't we have vote counting down to a science? Well yes, we should, but don't tell that to Iowa...or Nevada...or Florida, or wherever else they use PAPER ballots or have utterly incompetent voting systems where the margin for error is huge!
  • Campaign finance reform
    • Oh where oh where did we go wrong with this? Looks like we are back at square one now, where pretty much any millionaire can write unlimited checks to any candidate. So much for a level playing field.
    • Super PACS or Ms. Pac Man? How these new political entities are gobbling up taxpayers like power pellets, and how can we stop them before they eat us?!
  • Media bias in political news reporting
    • Gimme a break, could the bias in our supposedly objective political news sources get any worse? When you have to choose between Fox and CNN, the answer is no! 
    • Are there are news sources out there where one might have even a shred of hope that the news he or she gets is not tainted? (paging Jim Lehrer!!!)
  • Other whimsy
    • Were Newt Gingrich or others like him in it to win it? Or were they just trying to get publicity so they could increase their book sales, boost their speaking fees, get re-elected, or spread their pet philosophies? Are we okay with people "using" the presidential election as a platform for their personal aggrandizement and millionaire ambitions, or is this something we should curb somehow? 
    • What's up with taxpayers spending money on the Secret Service to protect candidates like Newt Gingrich? It costs taxpayers around 40K per day to protect a candidate. Is this really something we ought to foot the bill for? Or should candidates use a portion of their multi-million dollar war chests to hire their own private protection? 
    • Why do presidential campaigns seem to drag on for eons? Is there a way to make them short and sweet, or at least fresh enough so that on election day we don't go to the ballot box sick to death of the candidates?


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