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The Role of Elected Officials
This is something that's been bugging me for quite some time now, particularly with the current situation involving the Bush administration.
America, and pretty much every other democratic country, is actually better described as a "democratic republic." A "republic" refers to a system in which official representatives of groups of people act in place of the people, so "democratic republic" describes a system in which people elect representatives, who then make decisions for the people who elected them. However, this brings up a question of responsibility between the people and the official. Is it the people's job to elect a representative whose views they find acceptable, or is it the representative's job to find out what the people want, and support that regardless of his own personal views? I personally believe the latter. Whatever candidate is elected to any office should be largely irrelevant; the representative is supposed to "represent" the people who elected him, therefore he is supposed to advocate what the people want. If a representative is pro-life but was elected for other reasons in a majority pro-choice area, that representative is supposed to advocate for a woman's right to choose. The whole reason we research candidates is to find the one who is most "in tune" with us, the one that will have the easiest time of advocating for what we want. However, we should never have to worry that a candidate's view on a single issue will result in a lack of accurate representation on that issue. It is the people who make the decisions; it's the job of the representative to support those decisions in the government. To use a current example, take the war in Iraq. A poll by the World Public Opinion group shows that a majority of Americans want a pullout of troops within two years (Article here). Thus, President Bush needs to respect this and create a timetable for pullout. It doesn't matter what he wants; he was elected to represent the American people in the international community, and advocation of continued presence is not what the American people want. This is particularly relevant this year, with the coming election. If I were running as a candidate, here's what I would say. "I may be an independent, but a representative is supposed to support the people. If the people want something that I'm against, then I'm going to support what the people want. This is a country by the people, for the people, not for some elected official to run as he sees fit." As an aside, I also firmly believe that periodic nationwide polls should be conducted by the national government to determine the country's stance on the biggest issues facing it. For instance, the poll could include a question about when we should leave Iraq: 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, open-ended. This would likely help to remedy the current feeling among many Americans that their voices don't matter, and would give a clearer indication of where America stands. Now, the trouble with this occurs when problems arise that are beyond the average American. For instance, the current economic crisis and threat of recession (which is inevitable anyway; the whole thing is cyclical). Most people just don't know what to do. It is in this situation that the candidate chosen actually matters, as you want to elect someone that you believe has the ability to make correct decisions that the average American cannot. You want the president to be able to pull the country out of crisis when the people cannot come to a majority agreement on what to do. For this reason, the ideal candidate for anyone is the strongest candidate that most closely shares his or her views. The one that can lead, and can make decisions in line with what the person believes. However, there are people who argue that it is the people's job to elect the person that they believe has the ability to run the country best, and live with that choice. The candidate elected is the candidate whose views America has chosen to agree with. I do not agree with this, and I find it hard to come up with supporting reasoning for the position. Perhaps I'm being influenced by Thoreau's belief that "the government is the mode by which the people have elected to execute their will," and is supposed to be a direct extension of the will of the people. Anyway, I'd like especially to see the supporting reasoning for the "America chooses to side with the candidate; it isn't the candidate's job to switch views every time America does" stance. |
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Doing what the majority of people want isnt always easy. What if the majority of americans wanted to kill every child born in the year 2008, its been known to happen in history as a religious uprising of sorts. I know theres almost no chance of it ever happening, but if it did, would you justify the killing of millions of innocent children? Hopefully not. A good president must be able to make sound decisions not always for making people happy, but for the good of the nation. |
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The reason that elected officials shouldn't necessarily be 100% required to respect fully and only the wishes of their constituents is easy enough to describe:
The average person is an idiot. By which I mean, the vast majority of the public lacks enough knowledge about the situations to know precisely what the consequences of their demands would be, they lack the training in implementing and arranging such things, and most importantly, they often, and oftentimes for no readily logical or apparant reason, change their mind. While most people are pretty stable in their opinions on say, the death penalty, or abortion, or other major conceptual ideas (Things that operate entirely on "For or against" [And even then, many people (like me) tend towards "Yes with an if" or "No with a but"]) as opposed to more practical decisions, their opinions on current issues are famously fickle and prone to changes as each individually persuasive speaker has a minute on a soapbox. So polls show the majority of Americans want out of Iraq...fair enough. How much of that do you think has to do with an informed knowledge of middle eastern political and social situations, an understanding of the logistics involved in pulling them out, and even a rough idea what the consequences of leaving would be? And how much of that do you think has to do with the fact that all kinds of other countries seem mad at them for it, and left-wing media is constantly bombarding them with statements about what a bad idea it is? (Please don't read that as a "The media is biased to the left" statement, I refer specifically to "the liberal elements of the media" there are just as many conservative elements) The whole point of representative democracy is an understanding that the average person has neither the skills nor the inclination for political maneuvering and planning. They make small-scale areas where each representative can explain their stance on person issues to the constituants, and they make a decision on which official of the possible ones "Will best reflect" their own desires to the larger governmental forms. I mean...So your state elects someone who "Is pro-life" and you said was elected for other reasons in a "pro choice area" that they ought to be required to advocate pro-choice legislation if/when it comes up...but what constitutes a "pro choice area"? Are 100% of the people there pro-choice? 51%? 50%+1? how many even have a concrete view on the subject if you asked them, versus how many have no opinion, or don't care? Democracy has always been the tyrrany of the majority, where 51% of people can run roughshod over the other 49%, but forcing a representative to be constantly polling the people on each and every issue to find out what the majority think "right now" (Bearing in mind that two months later, or even the next day, they could get an entirely seperate result) would basically make the government completely unable to act. Candidates for political office make public their stance on a variety of issues, and if confronted, especially publically, will provide their stance (or at least 'the party stance') on any issue you care to raise with them, and then you elect, as a whole package, the candidate you feel best represents your own interests. Relambrien suggested frequent nationwide polls to gauge the general opinion of the country, but worried about what would happen when "problems arise that are beyond the average American" But unfortunately for his idea, I think the list of things that fit that category are "Most of them" So you poll the American people, and they say "We want out of Iraq in 6 months" Let's say they vote that way overwhelmingly, say 90%. Simple fact is, that's impossible. I mean, it -might- be in the realm of possibility to actually physically remove the bodies and equipment in that amount of time, but that's not what withdrawing from an occupied area actually means. Withdrawing isn't the same thing as Evacuating for the specific reason that they aren't the same thing. So what happens then? 300 million people with little to no idea what is involved in a formal military withdrawl from an occupied area still under hostile enemy fire, and even less of an idea what the consequences would be for Iraq, the Middle East and the rest of the world demand that you undertake a horrendously ill-advised if not impossible course of action. What do you do? Accede to their wishes and consequences be damned? Try to find some way to actually explain to 300 million people why that's not something you can do? Ignore them completely? Which is worse? The average american thinking that their opinion isn't being listened to/respected? Or being told outright "I'm sorry sir or maam, but your opinion is ignorant, misinformed, and stupid" For the same reason that for matters of national security, the government can't/shouldn't necessarily tell all the people all of the information, it is simply not possible to explain the educated decisions made by panels of highly trained and experienced experts to what are essentially laymen. (yes yes, we can all riff on how the people in government aren't all necessarily experts, but theoretically at least) |
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I'll respond to Dark Ronin later; I have to do other things right now. |
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I am not going to type an essay like you guys but here are my 2 cents.
Devonin is right, people are idiots, we also live in a very large, populated country, meaning we have lots of idiots. That is why we in America elect an official who is supposed to do all the thinking for us, because Eddie Punchclock does not know what he wants. Forcing the elected official to find out what it is the people want is absurd, the people dont even know enough to know what they want, how can you expect the official to? And as devonin said, you would be defeating the purpose of representative democracy if the official always did just what the populous told him to do. They should run telling straight up what their views are on topics and what their policies are etc. and if the people should choose the one that they agree most with. This also opens the floor to discussion about limited democracy. In the begininng of our country when the founding fathers were deciding how things should be, Alexander Hamilton (look for him on the $10 bill) thought that only educated and learned people should have the right to vote. It's too late now to go to that, but i tend to agree with him. Why whould i have the same vote as some bum living off welfare who is too lazy to get a job? |
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I'll be nice and ignore the hasty generalisation, and the hidden premise, and just voice my agreement generally with the idea that the franchise being restricted isn't necessarily automatically a bad thing.
Would it be too much to ask that a general level civics test be required to be able to register to vote? Demonstrating your understanding of how the government functions, how the election operates, and just proving you bother to know the first thing about your civic duty as a citizen certainly doesn't sound like an inappropriate list of qualifications to vote. Test is free, anyone over 18 can take it, you aren't being discriminatory to any race, class, gender, creed whatever. You're just stopping the people who can't even be bothered to know what the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government do, and how the electoral college functions (in the US anyway, man that system is screwed up IMO) from contributing to electing people for no particularly good reason. |
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If it is such a huge event when a possible 25000 people are maybe not allowed to vote, the limiting of giant chunks of the population would certainly be shot down immediately. source |
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Also, i read somewhere that half of kids coming out of public schools in texas dont know who fought in the civil war. And they get the same vote as me? |
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"Civics" is a grade 10 class that is mandatory to take and pass in my highschool's school board in order to even graduate. I can't think of anything that would be on a civics test to be allowed to vote that woudln't be included in that course. And if you pass the course, one suspects you ought to be able to pass the test as well.
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Im in CT, and you must take a civic's course sometime in high school by state law. You would think what is taught in there would resonate with people, but lots of times it dosn't seem to.
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I don't intend to offend anyone, but the ideas presented in this thread are uncommon to most people but overdone to those familiar with the subject matter. They're definitely worth discussing, though.
For example, the idea of creating a test is not new. I'm sure you've heard of literacy tests of old; tests can and will be used to keep elected officials in power. I suppose if you had the test formed by an entity that could not be influenced by the United States, it could work, but I don't see that happening. What you're suggesting might be possible if we eventually develop the equivalent of an MRI for intelligence, however. The best way to get rid of the current, inefficient system would be to switch to proportional representation. However, there isn't a mainstream movement to stop it, and we currently have a public that can fall for rhetorical deception such as "Why are you focusing on election methods when we're at war?" so I don't see it happening. Unfortunately, I think only way our nation will face some sort of revolution like that is if a catastrophic event occurs that kills millions of Americans. |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the electoral college a form of proportional representation? At least insofar as selecting who the president is, the more populous states have a larger number of electoral college votes, and thus more influence into who becomes president.
In terms of the house and the senate, I'm not entirely convinced that a proportional system is in the best interests of the nation. It so happens that the states with hugely superior populations in terms of numbers::area are also primarily industrialized and home to a relatively small number of relatively huge cities, concentrating the votes into highly industrialised urban settings. And yet vast swaths of the country by area, where all the agriculture gets done and so forth, tend to be located in states with smaller populations, because so much of the land is given over to farms and rural life. That's a pretty solidly important portion ofthe country, and one that would suffer from a substantial lack of representation in a proportional setting. My home province of Ontario recently held a referendum on the subject of moving to a mixed proportional system. We'd still elect officials in our ridings in the usual manner, but we would also vote for a party on its own with no candidate attached. Each party would have already made a list of people that they wanted to win these additional seats, and based on the percentage of votes each party recieved (We have 3 major parties here, not 2) they would get a number of seats that way. The problem I've had with that (I voted against it) was that it is simply based on population, which in ontario, is -hugely- centered in Toronto. The city has fully 1/6th of the population of the -country- in it, to say nothing for the province, and compared to the size of the rest of the province, it would be giving too much sway in the system to one city centre. |
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That's pretty much how it works in America too. Notice that Congress is nearly always dominated by the Democrats, yet the presidency is dominated by the Republicans.
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Ah, we seem to be looking at where the proportion enters into it from opposite directions.
You're looking at the total vote tally after the election and who gets how many seats as a result of that, and I'm looking at how many votes each given region gets to cast. It doesn't help that I'm referring only to the electoral college, determining who fills the singular position of president, and specifically stated that I wasn't referring to the house or senate. The electoral college is proportional insofar as the more populous states generate more electoral college votes, and thus the larger the state, the greater the effect their state's voting has on which party's leader becomes president. |
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