PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REFORM
Salvaging the Original Intentions of the Founding Fathers
through Modern Electronic Technology
Introduction
The 1998 six volume, 10,000 page, multimillion dollar report of the Thompson committee on corruption in the Presidential election process reached a conclusion which everybody already knew. The two-party process of candidate selection, campaign, and election of the president and vice-president is so money-dependent that the super-rich few can buy the candidates which they then allow the electorate to choose between. As a result, the people feel left out, alienated, and resentful. Less than half of those who are eligible to vote bother to do so. Why should they dignify the deception that we have a democratic process?
This is not what the American people want. Furthermore, it is not what the Founding Fathers intended.
A great disparity exists between the original intentions of the Founding Fathers for the mode of electing the president and the vice-president, and the actual process currently followed. The Founders, as both makers and products of the Enlightenment, intended presidential elections to be an exercise in REASONED JUDGEMENT. They abhorred the partisan spirit precisely because it can corrupt reason. They rejected the direct popular election of the president because they felt that the people were not fully capable of rational deliberation. Instead, they envisioned the direct election of the president by elites after orderly deliberation in the electoral college.
The plans of the Framers of our Constitution for electing the president were abandoned by the ambitious soon after Washington's retirement. Since then the two-party system has come to dominate the process. This condition is just what the Founders had hoped to avoid. Now, however, the original intentions of the Founders for a NONPARTISAN, ORDERLY, and RATIONAL mode of electing the president can be realized with the use of modern electronic technology and a new game plan.
Under this plan, the candidate selection process would not depend on the whims of the rich class of big contributors, as it does now; rather, the process would be fully open to self-selection. Also, a written test would be required. A series of electronically broadcast elimination debates would follow. After each debate the people could vote from home, by modem or phone. The social conditions which made the Framers chary of popular elections have changed significantly, thus justifying a departure from this aspect of their original intentions. The American people are now far more politically sophisticated than they have ever been. We the people are now ready to directly elect our president and vice-president. We have the electronic means to do it. If we have the will, we shall get our way. Only the beneficiaries of the two-party system will oppose us.
HOME ABOUT THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION THE NEW ELECTION GAME THE PRESIDENTIAL LITERACY TEST THE STATE ELECTION DEBATES THE REGIONAL RUNOFFS
THE NATIONAL NOMINATING DEBATES THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATES