Thursday 10 December 2015

Trump's rise is a symptom of an unrepresentative democracy

Donald Trump's current showing as front-runner to be the US Republican Party's candidate for the 2016 Presidential election, is most certainly a symptom of America's democracy, or perhaps a lack of democracy.

His views have offended Mexico, the Disabled, and Muslims to name a few.  I don't consider his views to be representative at all of the United States of America.  What they do illustrate for me is a symptom of all that is rotten with American politics.

The President is currently elected by a flawed process, in which each state generally has a set number of votes determined by the number of Senators and representatives it has in the House of Representatives.  It doesn't matter if there is a close race in a state or a not so close race, the winning party will always take all that state's votes in what is known as the Electoral College.

One consequence of this flawed process is that the winning candidate is not always the candidate who wins the popular vote.  The election of 2000 pays testament to this when Republican George W Bush won more votes in the Electoral College, despite Democrat Al Gore winning the popular vote.

America's rotten politics does not end with the Electoral College.  Elections for state legislatures as well as the two national government houses are done through a Winner-Takes-All system, which is also known as First Past The Post (FPTP).

The use of FPTP has seen widespread gerrymandering, in which electoral boundaries are often redrawn to benefit incumbent elected representatives.  Not only has this enabled Republicans and Democrats alike to fix the vote, it has also suppressed the voices of smaller parties.

Particularly against a backdrop of gun related tragedies, I believe that most American citizens do want some form of gun control, and that little to no progress on this issue is more to do with the power of the gun lobby, who are often believed to be a beneficiary of America's politics.

I also believe as stated that the views expressed at various stages by one Donald John Trump are unrepresentative of the American people.  Whether we are talking about the Presidential voting system or other elections, many citizens' voices just do not get heard.

As much as I hope Mr Trump does not win next year's election, I do hope that the Democrats look beyond their own partisan interest.  They need to look at the bigger picture of what America needs.

Should House of Representatives be elected on a system of Proportional Representation, in which the number of seats a party wins roughly reflects the proportion of the popular vote they win in an election, then it would be a lot easier to build a cross party coalition to restrict the power of the gun lobby. 

Furthermore, if the House of Representatives did become more representative of the American people, then I have no doubt that any views as expressed by Trump would be marginalised.