There is a true problem with a two party system. That is, in order to obtain office, the party has to gain the favor of 50.1% of the voters, and it is not possible to get 50.1% of any diverse population to agree on anything. The only way for the political parties to do their jobs is to find our "hot buttons"...those things which divide us into tight little categories, and then to group as many of these hot buttons into their party platform and hope that all of the little groups will join together and elect them. You know what buttons I'm talking about: abortion, gays in the military, "family values", school prayer, etc.

     Instead of saying anything meaningful like, are they going to do anything to increase the standard of living or make the world a better place to live, they just push our buttons like some chicken at a piano. By playing with our emotions and getting us "all fired up" we stop logically analyzing anything that is being said, and vote in little blocks with other people who have the same hot buttons we do. And it doesn't matter if the hot buttons conflict (like being pro-life AND pro-death penalty), because we are too busy "going off on a tangent" about our particular hot button to be a thinking human being...we become sheep "baaaing" our approval of our candidate, blindly accepting anything else the person says since we cannot bring ourselves to vote for someone who will push our button the wrong way.

     And then, does ANYTHING happen to affect the topics of the hot buttons? No. The US government is structured, like any well-designed government, to freeze up in gridlock until the people can come to general agreement. And do the candidates deliver on their other promises? We don't know, we were too busy being concerned about our hot button to hear anything else the candidate said. And since the candidate couldn't single-handedly make all of society feel the way we do about our hot button, we come to the conclusion that he didn't deliver on his campaign promises.

     And commentators wonder why people are disgusted with the election process and see no sense in turning out.

     But not voting only further polarizes the parties, because the only people who continue to show up are those who are the most fervent about their hot buttons, so the parties have to take more and more extreme stands to get the majority of those who continue to show up. With the take over of the Republican party by religious political extremists, with the demonization of the term "liberal", with the rise of militia groups, and with proven racists pulling strings behind our big name candidates, why can't Americans see that their political system is spiraling towards fascism? They're too worried about the status of their hot buttons to see the big picture.

     So maybe a multi-party system would be better, after all, many European countries do not use the winner-take-all approach to elections. Some have several major parties and they have systems where if party1 got 20% of the votes, party2 got 30% of the votes and party3 got 50% of the votes, party3 does not get all of the seats. The seats are divided based on the number of votes received, so party1 gets 20% of the seats, party2 gets 30% of the seats and party3 gets 50% of the seats.

     On the surface, this seems like a much better system of representation than the US system - but is it still the ideal system? Many theorists argue that a multi-party system is much less stable than a 2-party system, and causes more division among the people. The theory is that with only two parties, the parties are forced to search for some common ground instead of focusing on special interests. (Well it was a nice theory while it lasted.) Essentially, instead of two parties collecting together hot buttons, each party is defined by their particular hot button.

     There will always be hot buttons, once we finally find an acceptable compromise on one issue, two more will arise to take its place. And yes, it is the purpose of the political system to hash out all of these divisive issues. But should our representatives be determined by these hot buttons? If the pro-life candidate is a fascist but the other candidate is pro-choice, does that mean that a person who votes by the hot button of pro-life should vote for the fascist? Or what if the one candidate who believes in protecting social security for the elderly is a racist but the other candidate wants to slash government expenditures, does that mean the elderly should support the racist?

     When it comes to selecting our representatives, we need to throw all of these hot buttons out the window and select the person who will do the job best. The only problem is that this is against human nature, we tend to vote based on emotions and feelings. I like the way he looks, he is a good speaker and I've heard his name before, so I'll vote for him. There is no way that I could ever vote for someone who pushed my hot buttons wrong either.

     And I'm not even going to talk about PACs, corruption, and representatives being motivated by reelection over the good of the people. And what about the fact that once a representative is elected it takes an overwhelming effort to replace him with someone else...the only turnover we get is when the representatives step down from office. There is almost no reason to hold an election unless both candidates are new...and then it is a choice between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.

     So here's my solution. Get rid of elections.

     No, I'm serious, pick your jaw off the floor and just consider this for a moment. What I have to propose is far superior to elections, campaigns, mud slinging, divisive button-pushing, political parties, posturing, and representatives being selected by the few extremists who still show up to vote. Don't worry, you will still be in control of your government, in fact, you will have more power over it than you have ever had before. It IS possible to have a balanced human being as a representative and to push your hot buttons at the same time.