Voter Participation / Citizen Participation Essay

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S. House of Representatives from that state. Why set up a presidential election in which voters do not directly elect the president? Welch (32) explains that the founders devised this system "…because of their view that the people could not be trusted. The people were seen as an unruly mob threatening stable, orderly government," she continued. Even after Gore successfully petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to have election officials count 9,000 previously uncounted ballots by hand, that may well have given him the victory in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court trumped the Florida High Court and ultimately gave Florida's 25 electoral votes -- and the presidency -- to Republican candidate Bush (the High Court vote was 5-4: 5 Republican justices to 4 Democrat justices).

Meanwhile, according to professor Mary C. Segers (Rutgers University), the U.S. system of government actually "enhances citizen impact on government" (Segers, 2002, p. 182). The Founders "struggled with a conflict between representative government and their fear of majority tyranny" and so they created a system in which "The fragmentation of political power and redundancy of functions within government multiply the points of access for groups attempting to influence public policy" (Segers, 181-82).

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Segers' opinion offers a counterpoint to the view that fragmented government is anti-majority, and somewhat balances the argument.

Conclusion

While the fractured federalist system does tend to isolate voters and citizens, and in many cases takes away the wishes of the majority, thus far a better system -- and the will to institute that better system -- has not appeared on the horizon. The paradox -- fragmented federal power vs. The needs and will of the majority -- is alive and well in America, and in the foreseeable future, nothing threatens that fragmentation from remaining the "powers that be."

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"Voter Participation Citizen Participation" (2011, August 25) Retrieved May 20, 2024, from
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