The thing about elections

By PATRICK HUNTER
As I get older, I wonder if aging has made me more cynical than before. Or is it that elections, and specifically, electioneering, has changed over the years and has lost its value.
I suspect that it may be a bit of both.
Let me start here: elections are interpreted generally as a sign of good democratic principles. That is in an ideal world. Unfortunately, in our lifetime, as the saying goes, that ship has sailed.
Elections are based on the idea that each citizen of a certain age can, and should, vote for the candidate or political party they believe will respond to their wishes. That is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. Democracy, by virtue of the practice, reflects the combined desires of the majority of the people.
Let me hasten to add that a dictatorship, in theory, could reflect the desires of the people as well, even though it was not voted in by the majority (although the dictatorship may have been engaged after an election. That is another story).
Today, elections are about power: how to get it, what to do with it and how to keep it.
To be fair, I still maintain, somewhat naively, that many enter politics because they have a desire for change for the better for the people they seek to represent, the populace. The problem is that change – or those changes – may not always be for the better.
In essence, political parties are formed around some basic beliefs which purport to serve the people. They seek to rule, based on those principles and often lose their way. The party or parties which lost out on governing do have a part to play in governing. Their role is to bring a balance to the programs and policies of the governing party – either to keep them in check or to let them know they did not go far enough.
The funny thing is that even though parties tend to develop their programs by consensus at conventions through resolutions, it is the leader of that party that is often targeted for attacks. For example, Pierre Poilievre’s favourite words, based on many of the news clips, are “Justin Trudeau” followed by whatever else he can use to fill in the blank. Rarely it seems that anything he says does not begin with those words, and they are never complimentary.
Like the captain of a ship, the leader stands out and bears the blame for everything that goes wrong and never anything that goes right, of course, until the election comes around and the people decide whom to believe.
The United States of America never fails to promote itself as the world’s foremost democracy, among other world-ruling claims. We are watching a very unusual development as that country approaches its general election in November, specifically with the presidency up for grabs.
As you may be aware, the 81-year-old president, Joe Biden, decided not to seek re-election and threw his support behind his vice-president, Kamala Harris, for the nomination to be the next president.
What is even more astounding is that her opponent, Donald Trump, with his history (including 34 criminal convictions), and his conduct as a former president is not only able to seek re-election to the presidency but has a significant following that could see him elected.
Apart from that very strange state of affairs, the Republican leadership of some of the states have been doing everything in their power to ensure that voters who tend to vote Republican win the most votes through gerrymandering – the carving up of constituencies – which would likely reflect Republican support. One may call that cheating. It is also ensuring that racialized voters, who tend to vote for the Democrats, are suppressed.
But here is one of the very unusual things about this version of democracy. The president of the U.S. is not elected directly by the people. In Canada, for instance, and in most other democracies, you vote and the winner of each riding is the person with most votes. The party with the most wins gets to form the government.
In the United States, the president is confirmed through the Electoral College. I won’t go into the finer details of the Electoral College because of its complexity. However, each state is allotted a certain number of Electoral College votes and the candidate that receives 270 votes, a 51 per cent majority, is declared the winner and must be confirmed by Congress.
In the last presidential election, this last process was delayed by the invasion of pro-Trump forces in an attempt to keep Trump in office.
The thing about elections is that they can be manipulated. And the notion of democracy has many interpretations. Still, I will continue to support the more direct voting to elect the party to govern, even though, in the end, that party may not be successful.
Email: pa**************@gm***.com