Joe Levi:
a cross-discipline, multi-dimensional problem solver who thinks outside the box – but within reality™

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles

Yes, folks, it’s politicking season again. :: sigh ::  What’s worse? It’s time for another political blog post.

So the big news is the Primary caucusing in Iowa

We have a whole bunch of Presidential Candidates trying to convince people they should be their party’s nominee… in Iowa.

What does this have to do with any other state in the Union? Well, the way things carry out, two things happen:

  1. The public’s opinion will be swayed based on the "winners" of the primary in some other state, and
  2. The candidates will eventually drop out of contention because they don’t have much chance of winning (based on the primaries in the states that have held their primary election already).

Why are holding primaries this way a bad thing?

By holding caucuses (or any kind of election) at at different dates/times than somewhere else, public opinion is being swayed by the reported outcomes of those elections. If you’ve done your research and you support Candidate A over Candidate B, but your election is after someone else’s,  it’s human nature that your opinion will be swayed based on how Candidate A did in the earlier election. You don’t want to cast a vote for a loser, right? Neither does anyone else, so we all (or a goodly number of us) cast aside our research and our support for the candidate that we feel would do the best job, for the one that we think is going to win.

Any candidate that can successfully win over the earlier voting states/precincts has a snowballing advantage with subsequent states/precincts.

That’s not Democracy!

So how do we fix it?

First, we eliminate primaries. Why do we need them? Primaries only empower parties, not candidates. Why do you want the party to have power. Are you voting for a party or for a person? If you eliminate the primary, you empower the candidate.

Second, we pass a Federal Law that  does a few things:

  1. Mandates that all elections be held on the same day and at the same time.
  2. We make polls and polling about political questions and/or candidates a crime — the only reason they exist is to sway the opinions of those who haven’t voted toward the side that’s currently ahead.
  3. We outlaw the counting of ANY ballot until after the polling has closed — again, we don’t need to know who’s ahead, we need to know who has won, after all the votes have been cast.

What are your thoughts?

Please comment! All opinions, even crazy ones (like mine) will be accepted!

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