Signposts of Democracy: How Americans Get Taught About the Political System They Have
I’ve tried really hard to avoid this brouhaha over Conor Friedersdorf’s article on why he refuses to vote for Barack Obama. It’s probably generated far more discussion than it merited, since it amounted to an unsurprising statement of support for a libertarian candidate from a right-leaning civil libertarian. That liberals pounced on it as an example of Naderite perfidy, though the circumstances are quite different, is something that I found revealing of liberals, and this post can stand in for my thoughts there.But I did take to Twitter to make a tangential argument that I think is worth teasing out. I said that, if the Presidential election actually mattered in more than 9 states in America, I would be able to get more worked up in this passionate arguments about whether one should support the candidate that most closely mirrors their beliefs or the most viable one that does so. Conor Friedersdorf’s vote, by the design of the federal government’s electoral system, already doesn’t matter as far as the Presidential election goes. He lives in California. No matter who he votes for, we know who will win the election here. His vote has already been disenfranchised by the world’s worst electoral system. And that’s true of around 80% of the population. Why are we fighting about Presidential choices amidst this travesty of American democracy?
One response I got to this was incredibly revealing and I thought spot-on. “But if we got rid of the electoral college elections would be way less fun to model,” said Patrick Maloney. And that’s absolutely right. There is no conception of talking about a Presidential race without talking about swing states, and voters in some corner of Ohio, and how local issues take on outsized significance. That this disenfranchises 80% of America doesn’t come into play.
The fact that there’s an election in swing states that looks nothing like the rest of the country, which has led to different responses on the Presidential question, should be alarming rather than a quirky sidelight. But the media wouldn’t know intuitively how to cover an election based on the national popular vote. Therefore they resist it.
