The American Presidential Elections

What a topic… As I’m writing this, I don’t even know where to start, or what I’ll even cover/discuss. This current presidential election cycle in the US has staggering repercussions regardless of who winds up actually winning.

I am a Canadian citizen, which means that I do not possess the right to vote in this election. This being said, I know many people who are eligible to vote, and I must say that I am very very happy that a large majority of those people have either already voted, or are going to do so tomorrow. It may sound harsh, but I believe that if you are eligible to vote, and DO NOT do so, then you entirely forfeit your right to be discontent with the result or repercussions of that election. Given what’s at stake in this one, please don’t make the mistake of assuming that your vote won’t count or that it doesn’t matter. There are MANY MANY more things at stake tomorrow than who becomes the next POTUS.

Even still (and possibly rightly so), all of the media coverage, and a majority of the concern and focus of the general populace is centered on the two candidates for the presidency. This election has been characterized as choosing the lesser of two evils in many cases. The political divide between the two major parties has grown considerably in the past few decades, along with the animosity between voters and politicians alike. Both candidates in this election have been described as downright dangerous for this country by their opposition.

Clinton is seen as dishonest, corrupt, and purchased by corporations and moneyed interests on Wall Street. Trump is seen as racist, mysogynistic, ill-tempered and inexperienced. The fact is, even without addressing the shortcomings of the individual candidates or their policies, there are many problems with this election and elections in the US in general. Specifically, I want to point out that this election has been progressing for about 2 years now, and has cost a combined price tag of approximately 2 billion dollars. It’s also important to note this only accounts for the campaigns of the two major party candidates, and does not include costs for primary election candidates who dropped out or lost, and does not include the campaign costs of third party candidates.

In contrast, the most recent Canadian federal election concluded in a total of 78 days, or about 11 weeks. The total combined cost, even if you include fringe parties like the New Democratic Party, Green Party and Bloc Quebecois totalled at less than 300 million dollars. This number isn’t specifically skewed towards the Liberal or Conservative parties either - there is a spending limit imposed on parties during federal elections in Canada. During the most recent election cycle, this limit was just under $55M each for the NDP, Green Party, Liberal Party and Conservative Party, with the cap for the Bloc Quebecois being around $14M (because they only really have a presence in the province of Quebec, which is as a result of their own doing). This is all without even pointing out that the exchange rate at the time was about $1.30 Canadian to the US dollar, bringing the overall cost of the Canadian federal election down to about $231 USD.

Canada isn’t the only country that has shorter election cycle, or mandated election spending limits. For example Belgium, France, Ireland, Japan, Italy, New Zealand, the UK and many other countries all have mandated spending limits for national elections. With regards to the length of the election cycle you need only look at Canada, the UK, the Netherlands or Italy again - these countries all have election policies and rules designed to discourage lengthy elections, either by directly limiting the length (British elections are strictly limited to 17 working days) or by making it difficult and inefficient to have a lengthy cycle (Canada has a base spending limit which increases along with the length of the election cycle, but at a rate slower than is necessary to keep the campaign going).

To me, what’s even more absurd is that this whole process will begin again in about 24 months. Regardless of the winner of this election, how is the President of the United States supposed to focus on the matters most important to the country if they have to spend half of their first term in office campaigning to keep their job? The entirety of this upcoming campaign cycle will need to be devoted to being re-elected if this election is any indication of what’s to come. Just by itself, this means that their focus will, at best, be divided on important issues, and their performance during those last 2 years can be called into question and used as reasoning as to why they are not a good fit to serve as POTUS. They lose if they don’t campaign, but their performance is likely to drop and be used as an example of why they shouldn’t be elected if they do campaign.

I’m not going to, but I could easily go into more technical and messed up election topics such as Gerrymandering, the Electoral College, voter disenfranchisement and suppression, all of which make the state of the democracy in the US worse.

There are many things in the US that are great - I wouldn’t be living here if I thought otherwise. And the state of democracy around the world isn’t perfect anywhere else, but in many cases it’s pretty easy to argue that it’s better than here in America. I think it might be time to re-evaluate what it is we are trying to accomplish with the elections, and compare that with how the system actually works. I have a feeling you either are already aware of many of these absurdities, or you are about to be enlightened by how complex and messed up some of them are once you put a little bit of research into them.

What are your thoughts? What should we focus on first? Do you disagree that the system has many inherently outdated or broken facets (I’d love to hear a dissenting opinion)? Please leave a comment and start a discussion! Thanks for reading.