Let's Do Away With All These Undemocratic Delegate Systems

In listening to the primary and election coverage, I am amazed (re-amazed?) that we have a system that is so complicated that the news anchors don't even try to explain it, or make some half-hearted attempt before saying that the bottom line is that Clinton and Obama are effectively tied. Is it just me, or shouldn't we have a system that is easily explainable to the general public? Really it should be easily explainable to a 5th grader (or whenever it is that they are first exposed to civics). Super-delegates who have no responsibility to cast their ballots with the popular vote? Huh? Not to mention the Electoral College! How unbelievably stupid and undemocratic are these institutions? We tell people that their votes count and that they should vote because their votes matter. But unless you are in a closely contested state, your vote really doesn't matter. So in the primaries, we have a system that is too complicated for media to explain to the public, and then we are told that the super-delegates can cast their vote with whoever they want, so if you are in a closely contested state, it will be decided by the ultimate party insiders. What?! And my vote is supposed to count?! And I am supposed to have confidence in a system like this? This is the system for the supposed shining example of democracy? What nonsense. We need to eliminate these undemocratic, nontransparent delegate system at both the primary and especially the general election level! How hard is the concept that the popular vote should simply decide who wins? Granted we need a reliable, tamper-proof voting system to accomplish this, but that shouldn't be that hard either. The Carter Center has said that the U.S. would not pass muster for its standards applied to other countries for free and fair elections, which to me is just absurd, not to mention hypocritical, when we are running around the world pretending to spread democracy and sitting in judgment of the elections in other countries. But for some reason, even this is not enough of a wake-up call to make the changes.

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