Politalks

Politicians are liars.

While most of you would say that this is an obvious fact, let me ask you a question. Have you ever lied? Yes you have. So you are a liar. Do you believe you have been lied to by someone you trusted? Most likely. So people we think we can trust are liars. Do you believe you have ever been lied to by your parents? Almost certainly, especially if you had parents like mine. So our parents are liars. What is my point?

People are liars.

So if you're a liar, I'm a liar and we're voting for liars, does something not click here? How can we trust anything that we're actually saying about the people that run our lives? I've spent the past hour or so arguing with a friend about whether or not I should go out and vote tomorrow (today) and have come to the conclusion that he's voting because he believes that that is what fixes things. Which leads me to my next point.

The system is broken.

If there are two voting districts, each given 1 vote by the electoral college and containing 10,001 people and in 1, Obama gets 5,001 votes while McCain gets 5,000, Obama gets the 1 electoral vote. Meanwhile in district b, McCain gets 10,000 and Obama gets 1; McCain gets the 1 electoral vote. So while McCain has about 10k more votes, he's tied with Obama. Flawed system? Just a little. So how do we fix it?

Scrap the system.

Translation: No more electoral college. Popular vote for getting people elected. Would this change election results? Maybe 1 in 100 times. Would it matter a lot? No. Would it be a lot more work for the government? Certainly, because the government would have to make sure that every ballot was counted correctly, rather than hope they had the general gist of it and then count on the electoral college to get it right. But the government has never been a group that has liked to do lots of work. Which leads me into my final point.

The system won't fix itself.

Congress will not vote to change the electoral system. If a system gave you a position to change over a million people's lives, would you want to scrap that system? I wouldn't. I like power. And power corrupts. Which is why it has to be done by people like us. The average joes, the little guys, rising up, joining together and speaking up. If enough people want change, then change will happen, even if it has to be by force.