Disenfranchisement

This is about a feeling and a perception and a de facto thing, because most of the people who feel the way I describe do have the right to vote. They feel effectively disenfranchised on account of geography.

I used to live in a deeply Republican state, Oklahoma. I didn't vote in the first few elections I was eligible for, due to the apathy of youth. I voted for John Kerry in 2004, though, because I felt that George W. Bush and his administration were an active threat to democracy in the US and any chance at global peace. A pretty good summation of my thinking was: "Who's this motherfucker going to invade next, and what civil liberties will he go after next?" So I voted for Kerry, and I was proud of it. Did my vote make a single bit of difference? No. Not even my down-ballot votes made a difference. All of the candidates I voted on and the state questions I voted on lost.

Now I live in a Democratic state, though most of that is due to the people in our larger cities. I voted for Harris in 2024, and I was proud of that too. Again, my vote for Harris made about as much difference as my vote for Kerry made in 2004, except that my down-ballot votes did make a difference. If I'm still alive for the 2026 midterms – a dubious proposition at best – I'll be voting in those. Down-ballot races are important. And down-ballot races are the ones in which your vote has a greater chance of counting. For instance, my congressional district was predicted to go Republican. It didn't, because it's not a solid block for either party.

But how do you overcome the disenfranchisement felt by people who live in districts or states where everyone else tends to vote overwhelmingly opposite from the way you vote?

Some of this problem is being handled by the "big sort", where people are moving to areas with like-minded people. It's what I did.

Unfortunately, people will continue to feel disenfranchised by presidential elections, because they are not decided by national popular vote, as they should be.

People Don't Like Politics

The Perpetual Media Circus

Unfortunately, politics ends up being a long drawn-out media circus which only appeals to political junkies, big donors, and special interests. In 2027, right after the 2026 mid-terms, presidential candidates will be declaring their candidacy for an election in November of 2028. Just to give you an example here, the first time Kamala Harris ran for President, she declared her candidacy on January 21, 2019, more than one year and nine months prior to the general election. She withdrew her candidacy on December 3, 2019 [2]. Trump declared his first candidacy sometime in 2015, but I can't be bothered to look up an exact date for you. By the time you get from announcement of candidacy to general election day, people are going to be burned out with the whole process.

This nonsense may have worked in the era of the horse and buggy and the telegraph. But now we have a barrage of 24-hour coverage, not to mention social media. Let's not forget Citizens United. We need much shorter election cycles.

Though a Short Cycle Hurt Harris this Time

Only because it was artificially short, and only artificially short for one person. It would have been fair if both candidacies had lasted a few months.

Too Few Parties Squabbling over Wedge Issues

It would be easier to do things like coalition building if we had more than two parties here in the US.

I remember Bernie Sanders catching a lot of flak a few years ago for suggesting that Socialists, Democratic Socialists, or whatever, can and should build coalitions with people who share some but not all of our values. In the case in question, he was talking about a candidate who held strongly economically left views but was anti-abortion. And all the liberals on reddit were like "Oh nooo." I'm strongly pro-choice. If I was in Congress, would I be willing to work together with someone who held this totally opposite cultural view from me, in order to promote something like Medicare for All? Hell yes I would. We can have the abortion fight another day, but today, we're fighting together to give us Medicare for All.

When you've got just two parties, you see the hyper-polarization that we have in the US right now. People pick one or the other, often on account of some wedge issue, and they feel like they are forced to choose a side.

In a sane political system, people would fall all over the place. You'd have economic left, cultural left, economic center, cultural center, economic right, and cultural right. And the two centers are kinda big and squishy. I'd call myself hard-left economically, but definitely in the squishy middle culturally (though on the left edge).

I don't know much about parliamentary systems, so maybe somebody who lives under one can help educate me, but if I understand correctly, they tend to have more than two parties typically more than three, and different parties tend to act in coalition. I could see this leading to less of the hyper-partisan-induced gridlock that we have here in the US.

Maybe we need a parliamentary system in the US. I should read more before shooting off my mouth here. But at the very least, I think having a strong mix of parties would help with both the feeling of disenfranchisement and the distaste for politics.

That's not happening without a drastic change or rewrite of the US Constitution. We'll need a Constitutional Convention for that, and maybe the only way we'll get it is via a crisis.

[1] I've seen counts of non-voting eligible ranging from 85.9 million to 92 million. I think it's about 88 million.

[2] Dates taken from Wikipedia.