Cancel the elections-- the REAL contest is for money anyway

Isthmus
Oct 5, 2006
Madison, WI

Cancel the elections!
Let's put all that TV ad money to better use
Bill Lueders on Thursday 10/05/2006,

If we were honest about the sorry state of our democracy, we would admit that elections have become mostly irrelevant. In almost every contest, we could avoid a lot of fuss and bother - and get the same result - if, instead of holding an Election Day vote, we just tallied which candidate raised the most money and declared that person the winner.

"It would save us the facade of going through the motions," agrees Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. Who spends the most wins the race. That's almost always the case."

[...]

For the big, important races, money rules the day. And nearly all of this money goes to the same end: buying ads on TV. Our democracy has been subverted into a battle for the hearts and minds of people so politically shallow they actually make choices based on 15- and 30-second TV spots.

Since you're reading Isthmus, you're probably not in this category. But if you know folks who are - people who cite a TV ad when explaining how they plan to vote - you need to grab them by the shoulders, shake them violently and scream into their face: "You should not be voting! You don't know enough! Stay home, and leave the job to those who know what's going on."

It's probably hopeless. There are multitudes of Americans who feel entitled to vote even though they don't pay any real attention to the issues or candidates. Most of the media encourage this irresponsible behavior at every turn. As a result, our democracy is being destroyed from within.

"Studies show that 75% to 80% of voters in the country get most of their political information from television, and most of that is from commercials," says Heck, adding that the public's level of political engagement has been declining for decades. "Most people, their lives are too busy, too distracted. They don't tune into politics until the very end." And then the ubiquitous TV ads are there to tell them how to vote.

[...]

Maybe the argument could be made that the system is working as it should — that candidates win by getting individuals and special interests to give more money to them than to the other guy. If that's the kind of democracy we want, we should be thrilled with the one we have.

But why bother with the voting? Let's just pick the winner based on cash totals and give the money that would have gone to those commercials to worthy causes...

Full article at http://thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=4369