If anything, our current political climate – not even limited to President Trump, but considering the entire establishment as a whole – confirms that the United States desperately needs election reform. And fast.
Because it’s painful to see just how fragile the institution of our great electoral system really is…
- Voter ID laws, cutbacks on early voting, and new voter registration rules being used to restrict access to voting.
- Gerrymandering to guide regional votes in a particular direction.
- The opinion of the people being so easily swayed by widespread information regardless of its accuracy.
- Campaign finance abuse and corporations buying political favor.
- Questions of the validity of the Electoral College 200+ years after its introduction.
- Lackluster voter turnout in general
It’s clear that our current voting system isn’t electing the right people to these offices to actually drive meaningful governance in our country, and I’d like to think that these most recent allegations of foreign interference would lead us to take a step back and figure out what really needs to be done to fix the process from the top down. And it’s complicated because not only do we need a new election process, we also need better candidates that aren’t as dramatically tied to party lines and can help to bridge the nuance between the left and the right so that we can start making things better across the board.
I’d love to see these problems solved during my lifetime because they’re really vital to the core of our democracy, but it’s forever going to be a struggle if uprooting the existing system also means uprooting the politicians who’ve established their careers based on these antiquated systems…