The People's Choice for President

From dKosopedia

For whatever reason, it seems Presidential politics filters down to and overwhelms local issues. For example local school reform cannot be considered without filtering it first through NCLB (no child left behind). The Electoral College means election strategists ignore states that are a lock (barely) by one of the two national parties. Typically close to half of the voters in those states have no say in national politics apart from party primaries. The adage "don't complain if you don't vote" doesn't hold up. A republican in New York or a Democrat in Alabama has no reason to go to vote in a presidential election. As a result, people don't participate and their voice is not heard on the many local ballot choices where their vote does count. The result is that all the attention goes to a handful of swing voters in Ohio (in 04). Millions of media dollars inundate these markets effectively obfuscating the real panorama of issues affecting the country. In the case of '04, every issue was viewed from the buckeye perspective.

To enhance our Democracy, we must adopt a proportional allocation scheme of electors state by state like that proposed by The People's Choice initiative in Colorado. This might bankrupt the traditional big money that frames national issues . Trying to dominate 50 races would simply be too expensive. Grassroots politics could then prevail. The Colorado initiative mandates a partial vote after allocation would go to the majority. But why not let voters rank candidates on these state ballots? Voters could then voter for Ralph Nader or Ross Perot and have some assurance that a split electoral vote would go to their second choice and not worry they were hurting their overall conservative or liberal principles. Fresh political voices could be heard and third party votes could grow to more than a frustrated protest of the status quo.