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- Common Sense
- Exchanger
Offline - Registered: 2/16/2015
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Poll: Half of Americans View Primary System As Rigged and Undemocratic
Poll: Half of Americans View Primary System As Rigged and Undemocratic
We have previously discussed the bizarre situation of two candidates (Trump and Clinton) with historic negative polling numbers emerge as the frontrunnersfor the general election. Six out of ten voters say that they are unwilling to vote for either Trump or Clinton.
Now a new poll shows that over half of American voters believe that the primary system is “rigged” and more than two-thirds want a new system for electing their leaders. What is remarkable is how detached the system appears from the voters. The GOP primary is advancing a candidate with high exceptionally negatives for the general election. In the meantime, the public is in open revolt of the “establishment” so the Democratic leadership has lined up to guarantee the selection of the candidate who is the ultimate establishment figure.
It is ironic that the GOP race appears the most responsive to voters. While Trump has huge negatives with the general population, he is clearly the anti-establishment candidate. He was able to crush a series of establishment figures and he is correct that the reason is the demand for a radical change in the system. Trump is the face of such change.Many young people, including many of my students, view the Democratic party as a lock for the establishment this election despite its counter-establishment image from the 60s. While Clinton clearly has support among some core democratic voting groups, the independent and young voters are particularly estranged from her and the party. Many are not likely to show up in November though the Clinton camp is betting that most will ultimately come back into the fold. If true, the Democratic establishment could ultimately have engineered the one candidate that might elect Donald Trump. The fact is that we simply do not know. While incredibly popular with many GOP and independent voters, Trump is wildly unpopular with many groups in the general public.
He has clearly tapped into this movement and the establishment seems in denial. Turnout is down on the Democratic side but the Democrats believe that they can win the “lesser of two evil” voters. As exciting as that uncertainty will be for commentators, the majority of voters are right: we have a system that has become dysfunctional and unresponsive to the majority of citizens.I have previously written about reforms that we need to make in our system. However, the resistance of the establishment to change has never been more clear during this period of growing anger and unrest.
The chilling fact is that these polls appear to have little impact on the parties. The isolation and unhappiness of the majority of the voters in this country seems immaterial.While this is not a pure democratic system, it is supposed to be a representative democratic system where leaders represent the voters. It is that feeling of being unrepresented that is driving the passions and unpredictability of this election cycle.
What do you think?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” former vice president Biden said during a campaign event in Texas on Monday. "All men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing.”
- Rongone
- Sentient Being
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- From: Keeping Calm, Sailing On
- Registered: 1/31/2015
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Re: Poll: Half of Americans View Primary System As Rigged and Undemocratic
As I stated in a different threads, I think the way the 2 major political parties have set up elections through extensive gerrymandering virtually ensuring the re-election of incumbents, engineering closed primaries, the excessive cost of lengthy campaigns enabling undue influence of big money corporations & individuals plus causing elected officials to spend up to 5 hours a day fundraising for their campaigns rather than performing their duties, and further complicating election rules, laws, and procedures for the sole purpose of disenfranchising groups of voters are all resultant of over-the-top biased, partisan political structuring designed by Republicans and Democrats alike.
My question is: if over 50% of voters believe the primary election system is rigged and over 2/3rds of them want a new system for electing representatives, what are they doing about it?
In our representative republic the people clearly have the power to initiate change. People complain, but take no action. Especially in these times of widespread availability of social media, it seems to me a campaign for changes would be rather easy to initiate. Unfortunately most voters complain based on whatever 24 hour news channel they favor tells them to complain about, especially in our compartmentalized world flooded with election year politics. Beyond that, a lot of people are more interested in who won on the voice or dancing with the stars than who their elected representatives are and what they are doing.
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