Electoral mockery in the United States: a view from within

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

The U.S. presidential primaries being held by both Democratic and Republican parties have once again exposed all the flaws of the American electoral system. Party conventions erupt into mass protests because of unfair allocation of delegates.

“No, this isn’t a picture of the North Korea Party Congress. It’s from today’s #nvdemsconvention #NevadaConvention”

And it’s easy to understand the people, Nevada’s democratic delegate allocation process is not only intricate and complex – this year the rules had been changed at the last moment which enabled Hillary Clinton to steal most part of the delegates from Bernie Sanders.
Before that Senator Sanders beat former U.S. State Secretary Clinton 56% to 44% in Wyoming. Yet, due to absolutely irrational rules of the Democratic Party Clinton was awarded 11 out of 18 delegates.

“Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths?” – MSNBC commentator is wondering.

Democratic superdelegates are even more controversial. For reference, the Democratic Party has got about 4763 delegates, who will choose their nominee for President at the National Convention taking into account the results of primaries and caucuses. However about 712 out of those 4763 are superdelegates, who will vote for whoever they like, regardless of who won in their state or district. Who are those superdelegates? These are party bigwigs, former presidents, governors, members of Congress etc. Basically they can switch their allegiance at any moment, just as it happened back in 2008, when most of Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates defected from her to Barack Obama. Does the system have anything in common with democracy? Average Americans don’t think so.

Yet, the Republican Party cupboard is full of skeletons as well. If you pay no attention to all the scandals caused by the most likely Republican nominee Donald Trump and look at the facts without any prejudice, it appears that Trump’s words about the party’s rigged electoral system absolutely make sense. So, during the Louisiana primary despite Donald Trump’s advantage of 3.6% Ted Cruz could potentially get more delegates from the state if he stayed in the race and Trump by any chance failed to win majority of the delegates in the first round. And in this case an extremely complex process of voting through various party committees would begin, while delegates from most states become unbound after the first round no matter who their voters favored.

It is even funnier in the state of Pennsylvania – 54 out of their 71 delegates are unbound from the very beginning. Therefore people choose the delegates blindly. They have no idea who their delegates will eventually vote for – it is simply not listed in the ballot!

Republican delegate from North Dakota that had neither a primary nor a caucus speaks openly that delegates at the convention choose the nominee not the voters in the primaries.

Basically, both parties are private clubs that can change the game rules as they please. In theory, they can choose anyone to run for President, paying no regard to the public opinion. It is indicative that although a half of Americans can’t make head or tail of the system, while the rest are constantly criticizing it, things stay the same from election to election. Grumbling over the electoral system flaws has become a routine of election campaigns, but as soon as the winner appears, everyone prefers to forget about them.
“Here is the way I look at it. I won, so I don’t care anymore…,” – Donald Trump said during one of his speeches.

And this is happening in the country that considers its model of democracy as the most suitable for the entire world…

Source