One of the cornerstones of American democracy is that any American-born citizen over the age of thirty-five is allowed to run for president if they should so choose. While this is an important democratic idea, I am beginning to see this idea as more of a decoration rather than any idea of purpose. When you look at the numbers, not one state went to anyone other party besides the Republicans or Democrats, and to make it even worse, this comes as no surprise.
Ralph Nader, the frequent presidential hopeful who always falls dreadfully short of the votes he needs, has always been a critic of how our elections are set up in a two party system. He has even gone as far as to say "we've let our country be hijacked by political gangsters in Washington who've sold our government to fewer and fewer giant corporations (that) have no allegiance to this county" (Aronson, "Nader Rails Against Two-Party System at Ames Stop"). While I feel that Nader's comment is a quite extreme, I do agree with its underlying theme: in America, there are only two-parties that are really in control.
In my opinion our political system would be in far better shape if we were to switch from a two-party system, to a multi-party system, which would be harder than it sounds, but would be the best choice for democracy. This would be keeping with the idea that "anyone" can run for president, make it so the political power in our country is now dispersed more evenly to other parties aside from the democrats and republicans and it would provide american voters with more diverse options as to who they want to have represent them in Washington. It would also give a voice to the smaller and generally voiceless third parties.
As it stands now, third party candidates stand virtually no chance of winnning, which almost mocks their purpose in our democracy. Unfortunately the political efforts put forth by candidates like Bob Barr, Cynthia Mckinney and Ralph Nader go unoticed for the most part and are almost solely there to make us feel better and remind us, that yes, we are a democracy, even though it is partially just for show.
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I agree. Countries like Britain, which do have electoral systems in which the power is spread among the parties, sound like they truly have greater representation of the people. The parties in Britain have to work together and form coalitions around issues in order to work; here, the party just needs to win enough seats to be the majority. Democrats are ecstatic that they have won a majority in both houses of Congress, but I'm really not that comfortable with it. Sure, I'm a registered Democrat, and I believe they'll pass legislation that I agree with, but it's just not true representation of the people. It just rings false with me.
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