Democracy & the Electoral College Term Paper

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The fact is, people vote outside of their party regularly. Consider the Reagan Democrats or the Clinton Republicans, who crossed party lines to support presidential candidates. Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, has been repeatedly re-elected in New York, one of America's most liberal states, and Michael Bloomberg has twice been elected mayor of New York City, one of the country's most liberal cities. These types of scenarios play out at the national, state and local levels across the country. But such anomalies would be impossible if people completely identified ideologically with their own political parties, which would seemingly preclude voting for another party.

If many people are not ideologically committed to their political parties, why do they register as members of those parties at all? The answer is that the financial power of the Republican and Democratic parties give them a stranglehold on the American elections process. For example, it has been estimated that for the 2006 Congressional midterm elections, the Republican and Democratic parties will spend approximately $2.6 billion (U.S. Midterm Election, 2006). Obviously, no other party in the United States could compete with that level of spending.

In the end, American voters are forced to identify with one of the two major parties because it is their only way - through primary voting - to have any say at all in who runs for office.

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Identifying with a fringe, third-party candidate, who typically has no chance of winning, can take the voter right out of the main political contest.

So, one may argue that the two-party monopoly in American politics keeps American democracy from being "of the people" or "by the people," as Americans can be forced to identify with political parties whose ideologies those Americans may not really espouse. America is a diverse nation, but the political choices put before voters are limited.

Conclusion

America takes great pride in the democratic ideals under which it was founded and operates. However, certain inadequacies within the American political and electoral systems prevent American democracy from truly being "of the people, by the people and for the people."

The Electoral College can prevent the popular will of the people from deciding the presidency - and, in fact, it was designed to do just that. Also, the two-party monopoly that dominates American politics does not express the diversity of the American public and forces Americans to identify with and vote for candidates who may not represent the voters' true positions. In short, there is a lack of choice.

There is democracy in America, without question. However, serious changes would need to be made to electoral and political processes before we could claim that democracy, in its ideal form, had been achieved in America.

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