A short little treatise on voting
A short little treatise on voting
There is no such thing as a true meritocracy, or anything that can be rendered in a conscionable comparison to it, anywhere in the world. Why? Why indeed:
Gerrymandering-
Most democratic countries break up voting for representatives into voting districts. This is so that people can have local representation. Pretty much all of the voters in any govt with some form of democratic representation prefer local representation. The problem? Gerrymandering is when districts are broken up strategically to the benefit of one or more groups.
So what you can have is a situation where if, for example, five districts weren't broken up into one district you could have it so that in the majority or even all of those districts just one party wins. Depending on the number of parties involved, and the type of voting system (virtually all of them are a "first past the post system", or "winner takes all"), the same party that wins every district can literally have won less than twenty percent of the votes in the five districts as a whole.
Obviously, for those more simple reasons and considering a lot of other complicated stuff involved in gerrymandering (lots of not so fun to think about laws, committee rules, and back door type stuff), what can very easily happen is a wildly unrepresentative govt with basically zero concern for accountability in order to receive votes. So meritocracy 0, craven manipulation 1.
Strategic voting-
Oh boy, oh boy kids, are we depressed about voting yet? Well the last one actually wasn't too bad. The next problem? Well, let's just start by saying that it's probably the primary reason two party systems reign, and third party candidates end up screwing elections.
Doubtless, you may have a good idea already of what I'm talking about. People, when voting, are subject to several kinds of insecurities and one of the main insecurities is that although they really would prefer a particular candidate... well, clearly that candidate isn't going to win so they end up voting for someone more likely win that is closer to their candidate. In fact, it's not at all unusual for people to vote for candidates that they dislike, even keenly, because they really don't want another candidate to win.
Run some pretty simple models accounting for this with typical percentages and anywhere between 3-6 candidates, and you'll invariably find a shift towards a rigid two party system. Most models end up with terrible looking figures when you look at the population as a whole, and then compare polling percentages before the delegates choose nominees (oh boy, delegates choosing nominees, the electoral college and similar institutions in other countries, you're up next you sick wastrel), you end up with legislative systems where there are as much as hundreds of representatives, but... you may get pretty angry when you see how appallingly unrepresentative these models look, considering what everyone's ideal vote would have been.
And then we move on from these models to even more appalling results that have occurred and are happening in the real world:
So... once we've discussed the electoral college and delegates, thinking about how much the USA voting system in particular can just plain suck, us USA voters can be consoled when we look at those poor folks in the UK that are dealing with the
most,
suck,
ever. *Kudos if you know what group was represented by purple in those charts, the tiny sliver of representation they got is a testament to the most rank examples of gerrymandering and strategic voting I have ever seen anywhere*
Meritocracy 0, craven manipulation 2.
You don't directly vote for nominees or candidates-
You've finally managed to get over all of this and decided that you still want to vote? Well welcome, my friend, welcome to the world of delegates.
There are a number of different kinds of delegates from country to country, hence the different names. However, in many respects what they do is fundamentally the same, ergo the problems are basically similar. In Nordic countries like Finland, or Deutschland (Germany for those of you who aren't frickin' in love with the language, philosophy, and culture), they have aldermen. Let's stick to the US though, because it's more familiar for the presumable majority here. Here in the US we have delegates, super delegates, and the electoral college (which happens to be Congress, by the way).
Ready to go to the polls and nominate someone? Well, chances are you live somewhere that you have to be a registered member of a party. Okay, now we're registered! Whether it be the presidential election, with primaries and caucuses (originally it was all done by caucus, in the 18th century, from the Continental Congress up to much later), or congressional and state elections there will be either primaries and caucuses, like mentioned, or something similar. Typically it is a primary or a process that looks like a clone of it, where you go to a private box and cast your vote. It's rare to be able to vote for a nominee in absentia, that is... unless you're a delegate.
Delegates are comprised of people running the parties and these people are the ones who
actually vote... but they're really voting for you. In the majority of states these delegates are legally required to choose the candidate with the most votes in the district they are representing (oh boy, districts, that means we can gerrymander the crap out of nominations too). However, not all of them are required to do that and those delegates can vote however they please. Not much of a big problem because there are only a few states with that kind of delegate defined in their state constitution, and in the overwhelming majority of historical examples these delegates vote with their district.
So what's the big deal? Well, my not already depressed enough friend, the delegates are split incredibly disproportionately from state to state. Not only do states with much more population not get proportionate representatives in the House, or even remotely in the Senate because everyone gets two, but in presidential elections the nominees only care about five states.
You see, not only does it matter who gets how many members of the electoral college proportionate to their population count, it matters in the primaries how many delegates they get for the nomination.
And, on both counts it really matters who gets to vote first. If you weren't aware of why you should despise Iowa and New Hampshire, welcome to the wonderful new world of despising them with a lovely, fetid smelling passion. They get to vote first on your nominees, and guess who is really important in the general election too? Yup, five different states are subject to practically all of the campaigning, because of 18th century political conditions.
As our Senate is comprised of two candidates from each state, the sentiment was that each state should have their pull in the electoral college roughly equalized so the House seats were divvied up accordingly. The problem with that, is that we aren't living in the 18th century and not only are there are a lot more states than when it was in the teens, but there are wild differences in population.
So, because every state automatically gets three members of the college and others are divvied up to the point that only two states only have three, those few states
that actually wrote it into their constitution that they get to be the first group of states voting (I mean, us other states can try but then their own constitutions legally require them to open the polls sooner, it is actually written so that it has to be a certain amount of time sooner than us) determine what strategic voting will look like and also receive way too much voting power in the first place considering their population.
If things were more proportional, the state of California where I live now would have literally twenty more delegates. Why do we need that many more delegates, you ask? Maybe because my vote is
mathematically worth only a fifth of a New Hampshire resident's vote.
The final tally: meritocracy 0, craven manipulation 3. Looks like it was a runaway game.
So, welcome to the best, worst form of government in the world. Pretty much all democratic republics have issues that at their essence look identical, resulting in representation not just disproportionate but actually heavily disproportionate to the actual population itself. Why is it still the best? Because believe it or not,
other forms of government are even less accountable.
