Sunday November 07, 2004
My first thought was, as one British newspaper put it, how could 59,459,765 people be so stupid? The next four years do not look good for the average American, nor do they look good for the average world citizen for that matter. Here are my thoughts on the election itself:
Winston Churchill once said that to find the biggest argument against democracy, all you have to do is talk to average person for about 5 minutes. The American election results demonstrate this – how could so many people vote for such corporate corruption? How could they vote for a illegitimate and illegal invasion of Iraq that was based entirely on false grounds? How could they vote for the continuation of this invasion, and possibly even the expansion of the United State military regime? How could they vote for a president who on one hand is pro-life when it comes to abortion, but pro-death when it comes to foreign affairs? How could they vote for a president who in the last year alone spent $500 billion US more than revenues provided? How could they vote for a president who argues that only those who can afford it deserve health care? How could they vote for a candidate that is too short sighted to care about the environment? How could they vote for an ape that has cut funding to education by $26 billion US and wants to privatize schools and make education more primitive than day-time TV? How could they support a president who sees jobs as an export? How could they support a president that drives inflation up, decreases the value of their own dollar, lowers salaries, and makes imports even more expensive?
While final numbers are not yet out, it appears that the youth vote largely failed to materialize. While raw numbers of youth voters were up because the total number of voters was up, the percentage of the youth voters remained unchanged from the past election. This is greatly disturbing since youth, aged 18 to 34, represent around 1/8 of the population – easily a voting block large enough to sway policy IF IT ACTUALLY VOTED.
So why did youth not vote? I believe it happened for many reasons including:
- it is more difficult for them to find the time to vote and transportation to get to the polling booth.
- a feeling that their vote does not matter.
- a feeling that their issues were ignored by all parties and candidates.
- the belief that they do not know enough about the issues and candidates to cast a vote correctly.
- cynical thoughts towards candidates and parties.
- a feeling that there are no or only negligible differences between the two candidates.
So what can be done around voting to encourage more young people to vote? Firstly, education is key. Youth must learn that their vote matters and that voting can have huge impacts on how their government acts. Secondly, the parties must use new tactics and specialized materials that inform youth about them. Thirdly, steps should be taken to reduce the cynicism around politicians. Good politicians should be rewarded and awarded!
On election night, media ran stories on how great American democracy is. I disagree strongly. I disagree so strongly that I would question whether the United States is even a democracy. The United States is probably one of the last countries that should be trying to export its democratic model – and it certainly should not be trying to force its so called version of democracy down the throats of Afghanis and Iraqis, nor the citizens any other country.
My first peeve on election night was the fact that line-ups for voting averaged around one and a half hours. In the worst cases, some voters waited up to six hours in order to vote. This is a MAJOR problem. Although rules vary from state to state, employers are often required to give employees time off to go vote, but usually this time is limited to ONE HOUR, which is supposed to allow adequate time for voting as well as travel to and from the polling station. The long waiting times unfairly discriminated against working people and people with certain health conditions, since these were the people who could not afford the time required to wait in line-ups to vote. By coincidence, these are the same people who would be MUCH MUCH MORE likely to vote for Kerry as president. In a real democracy, as equal an access as possible is ensured for all citizens to the polling station. American democracy failed because there were not enough staff at polling stations and there were not enough polling stations for voters to ensure that everyone had equal access to polling stations. At some polling stations, they were even concerned about running out of ballots.
The second scary thing about the American election and American democracy was the voter turnout. With 117.9 million eligible voters voting, voter turnout, at 58.95%, was the highest since 1968. It is unbelievable that a country that loves democracy as much as the United States, that less than 60% voter turnout is considered to be high. The fact that people have to take extra steps to register, and in some cases even register with a political affiliation, means that voter registration in itself can be a hassle discouraging voters. Why did 82 million eligible voters not vote?
In the end, it is strange that a system that claims to be run by the people for the people empowered a president with the voter support of only 20.176111% of the American population (that is the number get when you take the 51% of support that Bush received and compare it to the actual American population). A system where only 40% of the actual population votes and where a president is chosen by only 20% of the population sounds undemocratic – as a matter of fact, this is not by the people and it doesn’t sound like it is for the people at all.
Thirdly, the biased role of media in American elections is disgusting. Media neutrality does not exist and this election showed that. Every tv-channel, newspaper, blog and radio station has its own bias, and this election showed it like never before. It is terrifying that our sources of information are now being clouded with spin to favour one organization’s or individual’s self-interest. It is increasingly more and more difficult to separate spin from fact – it is becoming more difficult to see critical views and contrasting opinions. People are no longer being presented with facts from which to derive a solution or conclusion, rather people are now being presented with spin from which they must attempt to draw the facts – and upon withdrawing those (selective) facts, they have already been presented with one possible conclusion – with which they are more likely to agree.
It has been said that media cannot control the way we think, only what we think about. I would like to take this further by saying that media cannot also suggest conclusions. When presented with spin and a premade conclusion, people are more likely to come to the same conclusion. It should also be strongly noted that the media can support a candidate simply by telling us what to think about as well. Surveys consistently showed that people believed Bush was much stronger than Kerry on the issue of terrorism – by having coverage on terrorism the media made individuals think more about terrorism and it became a more important issue for individuals following that media. This of course made those individuals more likely to vote for Bush. The large amount of coverage around terrorism and even the release of the Bin Laden tape strongly favoured Bush over Kerry.
The role of money in elections is sad. More often than not, the winning side in an election is also the side that spent the most money. With more money you can buy media time and hold more events to help set an electoral agenda that favours a certain candidate. The saddest thing though is that it helps the rich buy electoral results that favour them. Politics is not cheap – in the past US election the Kerry campaign spent $1.22 billion US and the Bush campaign spent $1.27 billion US, most of which was spent mainly in swing districts. The significance of money to the American election is also increasing. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected US president, the Democrats "only" spent 397.9 million US and the Republicans "only" spent $431.7 million. That’s an increase from $8.86 per winning vote in 1992 to $20.51 in 2004.
Finally, to be critical of the American democracy, one only has to look at how poorly it functions. This year there were over 1000 complaints that electronic voting machines did not properly perform the simple task of recording a vote. On top of that there are allegations that some machines were hacked. At other places, voters were supposedly turned away from polling stations because of skin colour, voting history or age. It is absolutely absurd that American elections are followed by lawsuits where voters go to court because they were denied their suffrage right.
During the election, several states also put questions on their ballots concerning various issues. Some of the more noteworthy include:
- Alaskan voters rejecting the legalization of marijuana by 57%
- Voters in Montana supporting the legalization of marijuana in limited qualities passed by 62% and it failed in Oregon with 58% voting against it.
- the banning of same-sex marriage in Arkansas by 75%, Georgia by 76%, Kentucky by 75%, Michigan by 59%, Mississippi by 86%, Montana by 67%, North Dakota by 73%, Ohio by 62%, Oklahoma by 76%, Oregon by 57% and Utah by 66%.
- $3 billion being given to stem-cell research by the state of California passing by 59%.
In my opinion it is scary that so many Americans reject the idea of same-sex marriages as seen above. There is absolutely no reason why homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. When people think of religious fanatics they often think of extreme Islamic fundamentalists – to me it seems that we have extreme Christian fundamentalists in the United States – the separation of church and state in the United States is becoming less and less present as voters now head to the polls for religious reasons. As a matter of fact, the same-sex marriage questions were put on the ballot on purpose by Republicans to encourage their religious right supporters to come out and vote.
Who knows? I see a world being pulled by a conservative super power that outspends its own resources, but touts military power as a tool of peace and foreign relations. I do not see the next four years as being good years for planet earth, especially since President Bush now has a majority in both houses.