Sunday, September 18, 2011

Elections, voting, and the Problems Contained Therein

I have this problem. I get these 'obsessions' from time to time. Something will get in my head and it will consume a large portion of my thought. It distracts me from the other things in my life, spanning both work and my free time. Part of the reason that I started blogging more prolifically was so that I could work my way through these obsessions (see Adventures in Amateur Game Design), because that seems like the most effective way to stop them from consuming me.

It's not secret that there are problems with politics. I think that everybody has problems with politics. My problems with it I believe stem from our 2 party dominant system. Because there are only two real parties, they are bitterly opposed. It seems to me like they have to split every issue halfway and instead of promoting their position, they attack the other position/party. Right now, when people to negative campaigning, anyone who is convinced can only really switch over to the negative campaigning party.

I would make changes to our voting/electoral systems to promote a wider distribution of parties. I feel that having multiple parties would reduce negative campaigning because when people decide to leave the attacked party/individual, they aren't necessarily going to change over to the attacking party. I feel that if we had multiple parties, they'd be more able to cooperate to get important legislation passed, since it wouldn't be as much about pride.

I have particular ideas for what to do about the presidential election and about the elections for congressional positions. This will comprise a series of posts, because it's a very broad issue and I have obsessed about it. So expect more of this in the future (I'm sorry).