Is Our Representative Democracy Healthy Today?

¶ … Voting Reform Today

Since the complications counting ballots for the 2001 presidential election, both voters and the media have shown increased interest in the issue of exactly how we elect our presidents. Three areas have received close scrutiny either since that election. Two issues received serious scrutiny before the election: the Electoral College system and campaign finance. Since November of 2001, the actual method of casting one's vote has been closely looked at as well.

Two senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mien Spector, announced that they would sponsor legislation designed to eliminate the Electoral College, where the president is actually voted in by representatives from each state, to a direct popular vote, where all the votes from all voters are tallied into one number, and the victor becomes President. While all voters easily understand the second approach, the Electoral College system gives more ability to influence the outcome of the election. They get more attention from candidates during presidential campaigns, and those working to change the system would need their cooperation to remove that power. It seems unlikely that they will act against their political interests in that way. Clinton and Spector have predicted that it would be a difficult bill to pass for that reason (Glassman, 2001).

The second issue, campaign finance reform, has received new interest since the fall of Enron and the subsequent revelation that Enron contributed heavily to many individuals' political campaigns (Ellperin & Dewar, 2002). As Congress has begun to investigate what went wrong at Enron, many elected officials have had to work hard to avoid the appearance of favoritism toward a corporation who contributed 'soft money,' or money that does not have to be reported. Democrats tend to favor the legislation proposed so far, and Republicans tend to oppose it (Ellperin & Dewar, 2002), but party lines may be softening some. One Republican, Petri (Wisconsin) has said that the Enron fiasco has made the idea of soft money more understandable to the voters. But other Republicans see eliminating 'soft money' as an attack on the First Amendment rights of the politicians to speak to the voters. They also argue that some of this money is used to encourage all citizens to vote.

The final issue involves the voting machines that got so much attention in Florida during the last election. Although Florida was widely criticized for using the machines, which use voter-generated punch cards to tabulate the results, the fact is that many states use these machines. It only became an issue in Florida because the vote tabulation was questioned.