The Big Vote

December 12th, 2007

These political primaries , gobbling up time on the evening news, never used to be such big deals. In fact, people running for president would scoot around the entire country, talking to people and hoping that their words and appearance would influence delegates to their respective national conventions.

Now we have primary elections which somehow became the way people vying for president win handfuls of delegates committed to them that they then take to the national convention and under the rules each party makes up, use to win the nomination for president.

These delegates come from states where pigs and trees outnumber people. Tiny states, that no one would ever choose to waste a penny on from their campaign treasure chest.

 

Why is it that states with the fewest number of people living in them, get to decide who the nominee will be for their parties presidential pick? Why don’t we ask the citizens of large cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York , Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, who they want to represent them in the White House? Why ask a small group of voters in these other states who they want? I hate to say it, but you folks just don’t matter when compared to the rest of us in the nation. Your days of shucking corn and slaughtering pigs have little to do with the cultural and political concerns of the rest of the nation.

 

Instead of state wide primary elections, let the candidates go to the big cities where voters there would have the chance to select a nominee. This process would be similar to the convention scenario the nation used to rely upon to send someone off to the White House. Horse trading in smoky backroom convention suites was a lot more enticing to the electorate than the dull parade we’ve been forced to watch night after night on the news.

 

It’s time the rest of us had a chance to pick the president instead of the current malarkey of taking delegates from a few insignificant states and declaring a winner before the rest of us even got a good look at them. That way, we could all be part of the action. But then again, the two political parties don’t really want to hear from us . It threatens their homemade monopoly by including all the voters instead of an insignificant few. And that would mean the return of the republic instead of the phony democracy that’s become the rallying call for con artists and demagogues.

 

It’s too bad. By leaving the rest of us out of the process, the Democrats and Republicans continue to marginalize this nations citizens. Soon, a committee from each party might decide who the nominee will be. But by then, none of us will have any interest at all in voting.

 

Just as it is now.

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