dreamy …
Wouldn’t it be great if, just one election cycle, the one-person-one-vote idea was enlarged to mean that you (as a valid, of-age voter) had one vote to spend on a candidate of your choice? Which is to say, you wouldn’t be constrained to the representatives in your state — instead, you could vote to remove from power any representative or senator from anywhere in the country.
Would you choose Door Number One: Ted Stevens (R-AK), he of the bluster, the bombast, the Bridge to Nowhere?
Or perhaps Door Number Two: Rick Santorum (R-PA), who brought his dead baby home from the hospital and forced his live children to meet it?
Don’t choose yet! Consider Door Number Three, behind which stands Tom “Death Penality for Abortionists” Coburn (R-OK). His disappearance would free up a seat on the oh-so-important Senate Judiciary Committee.
Would you throw your vote where it might do the most good, in a tight swing state race like Daschle’s was last cycle, or would you not be able to stop yourself from gleefully contributing to the demise of a high-profile target like Delay?
If New Yorkers all followed your lead and forced the smug Texan to go back to killing bugs for a living, what would happen to Hilary? Would other Americans pick up the slack? If not, and Hilary were ignominiously boosted, would it still be worth it? And wouldn’t it be funny if, a la The Apprentice, all ejected congressfolk had to share a Cab of Shame home from the capitol?
Suggested slogan: Why choose the lesser of two evils when there’re so many truly fantastic evils to choose from nationwide?
As you may already be aware,
last cycle there was a whole internet campaign through a website where people could “trade” their votes from tight swing states to not so tight ones. I don’t remember the details of how it worked, but no one seemed to raise any questions of legality. I must go a-Googlin’ to refresh my memory.
Oh never mind. That’s right. It seems to hinge on the existence of a spoiler third party candidate. Good thing we haven’t had any of those!
Ha – yeah. Vote swapping. Not as cool as being able to choose which asshole to help shoot down, but a noble idea.
this plan could get really out of hand. so many possible candidates are springing to mind already!
my own idea was always to resettle willing college students whose home state was somewhere useless (massachusetts, new york, vermont, DC…) into swing states for just long enough to allow them to vote there during the election. this would be far more effective than their just volunteering in those places before the election.
personally, i love me some proportional representation. which is basically, sort of, what you’re proposing. OH IF ONLY!