184. American Electoral Process

The American democratic election process is crazy and must be completely baffling to other democracies around the world. Right now, we have barely installed the 46^th president of the United States and already we are talking about the next presidential election in just four years. And, of course, there are the mid-term elections in just two short years and even less talked about are the yearly elections over things like school board members, city council members, and various taxing levies. The election cycle here is continuous and the politics can get as complicated, or more complicated, than a game of chess.

While I love the whole process and find myself getting sucked into it, I sometimes have to pull myself back so as not to let it get to me. We play with the vote a bit too much. We pass enfranchisement laws into the very fabric of our nation, the constitution, and then we look for ways to win the voters over to one side or the other. If that doesn’t work, we change the boundaries of voting districts to weaken voting blocks.

The election process in the United States is complicated mostly because of our size and because we have fifty separate states, territories, and the District of Columbia all with their own voting rules and regulations. This has also led to some congressmen questioning the legitimacy of certain states’ election processes, especially in hotly contested states that swing the entire presidential election. The electoral college was implemented to prevent populous states from overpowering the rural states, but now it sometimes gives an inordinate power to rural states that does sometimes bring our country into gridlock. While I don’t particularly care for those moments of grid lock, I am fascinated by the voting process. I am fascinated by the power plays that states make. I am fascinated by how the will of the people can be manipulated. The entire process is messy but interesting. I do not know how else such a diverse country could be closer to discerning the will of its people. So, I am grateful for the American electoral process.