Reading Response #2
The Fifth Challenge: Elections Without the People’s Voice
In the book “American Democracy in Peril,” the author William E. Hudson discusses eight challenges that America would face sometime in its history. In the fifth challenge, Hudson argues that, just like the Separation of Powers (discussed in the first chapter), elections are not an indicator of democracy but a tool that has become a major challenge to it. Hudson also argues that in order for elections to be democratic all citizens must have equal representation, elections must enforce deliberation about public policy issues and must control the government’s actions.
The equal representation in elections comes with the equal right to vote, where each individual has the same amount of power (one vote). However, what Hudson wants us to take out of this chapter is that equal representation seems to be violated in many ways. One of them being the way that the Senate is organized. Since the Senate is composed of two senators from each state, voters in the least populous states are more in control of the Senate than voters in larger states. As a result, twelve states containing less than 5 percent of the US population have control of a quarter of all the votes in the senate. Similarly, the House of Representatives also fails to represent a large number of people using the single-member plurality electoral system. This system gives “the victory in an election to the candidate who wins the plurality of votes in a district,” the result being that the individuals who didn’t vote for the winning candidate don’t get represented also violating equal representation. Hudson also accuses the Electoral College system of violating equal representation since it fails to represent all the voters, just like the Senate, and uses “the single-member plurality” electoral system’s tactics.
Still analyzing equal representation, or the lack of it, Hudson talks about money elections which I found very interesting. I was unaware that the candidates in political campaigns depended on funding to keep their campaigns alive. After reading the passage “The Money Election”, my opinion is that, in fact, campaign funding prevents equal representation and that all candidates’ political campaigns should be worth almost the same. This would allow all the candidates to have the same opportunities and, therefore, a fairer campaign not only for the candidates but also the voters who will have the chance to vote without a money election made first.
Similar to the equal representation, individuals in our society participate in public deliberations by voting. During the political campaigns, candidates will express their ideas and views so that the voters can vote. This vote is a way for the individuals to express what they expect their society to be and what changes they want to see, by voting in one candidate that has the same expectations and beliefs, and wants to achieve the same results. Also, the goal is for elections to enforce deliberation about public policy issues, however, it can get tricky when the sources that the voters use to get the information necessary for them to make a decision or deliberate are ineffective. According to Hudson, there are two main sources of information that the voters use for democratic deliberation–the news media and the campaigns–and they both have been failing to provide voters with useful content for democratic deliberation.
I completely agree with Hudson that the news media nowadays is not a reliable source of the candidates “serious proposals for addressing the country’s problems” (CITATION). I believe that this is mainly because the news industry main focus is not to deliver important and serious informative content, rather, its main focus is making news attractive and controversial to hold the attention of the viewers so that it could make more money. It cannot be forgotten that viewers are also guilty since they are the ones who feed this kind of news. As a result, when it comes to presidential elections, the news media has become a reliable source of drama between the candidates, political scandals, and all the less important issues that cannot be used for deliberating about public issues.
Campaigns are another source of information that the voters use for deliberation on public issues. However, these campaigns are being used a tool to transmit messages that will “stimulate a positive or negative reaction” on voters, where the ultimate aim is to win votes. Just like the news media, many campaigns don’t focus on promoting serious discussion on policy issues which makes it harder for individuals to deliberate over these same issues/policy issues and make a decision about who they are going to vote for.
After analyzing how elections are connected to equal representation and public deliberation, there’s still a need to understand how it controls the government’s actions. Hudson argues that since the elections are decided “on the basis of sound bites, debate gaffes, and campaign image manipulation” they fail to really give us an idea of what the elected officials’ specific agenda is, and since they are already in power, these officials decide for themselves without the “democratic electorate’s control” (CITATION). Political parties tend to be the ones who/that try to enforce the voters’ control over the government’s actions by making policies that reflect their voters’ preferences. Also, these parties help the voters to hold someone responsible if they don’t agree with what happens after the elections. One thing that makes this possible is that now political parties have different sets of “principles, ideas, and policies” that allow voters to differentiate them, and also allows parties to compete in elections. In conclusion, Hudson believes that if the elections fail to control the government’s actions is/it’s not because the parties stopped being in favor of the voters, but because there was no equal representation or significant deliberation during the election.