The Free Ride is Over
November 8th, 2010
I’ve always been of the opinion that while supporting your favorite candidate is important, when election day nears, the final push and vote should be for someone with a chance of winning. Any significant split vote can easily lead to placing the worst possible candidate into office.
Lucky for Democrats and Republicans, vote splitting is usually not a problem. Party line is the status quo; people either acknowledge the split vote problem and take the trade-off, or are too lazy to do the research in the first place.
The major parties have been riding this train for years. We vote for a favored party year in and year out because the single other choice is horrifying. A quick poll on twitter corroborates my theory. Only one person responded that they were unwavering with their choices.
To vote party line is an understandable and not-unreasonable position to take. I think we can all see the logic in wanting to vote for someone with a chance. It seems moot to vote for someone you know has no chance before the polls even open. That mindset doesn’t take the full climate of politics into mind, though.
That’s why I’m announcing a personal policy shift. From here on out, I will vote for the best candidate, not the lesser of two evils.
Politicians running for either of the two big parties are comfortable. They see a single opponent. They know that their only impedance to winning is one other person. As voters, we’ve removed accountability from the system.
With that in mind, politicians have little motivation to do anything but vote with their party. We continually elect the same people, those without the electorate in mind. They are driven by the desire to maintain their career with only the unchecked American media (whose biggest interest is sensationalism in order to make money) and unlimited corporate contributions to influence them. Voters have become mere minions in a popularity contest between two lost giants.
The binary system is not working.
We’re (nearly) all to blame. We haven’t been educating ourselves and we haven’t been voting with a brain. Electing the ideal candidate is difficult; it requires time and effort to match values with names. Americans are lazy and unbiased data is difficult to find.
My proposition: for all future elections, vote for the best candidate. My offer: to build a trustworthy source of information before the next election. We have an obligation not just to vote, but to vote for people who will steer America in the right direction, and few who hold office today are there.
I’m ripping the pegs off my bike; the free ride is over.
If you are interested in joining a project to make information on politicians easier to access, more trustworthy, and more personal; and you have a strong knowledge of politics, technology, or design, please contact me at jbouvier@thatdorkjordan.com for more information.
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- Thain
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