Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics Book

Was the lesson of Florida punch-cards that we need better machines, or that there's something deeply wrong with a system where the candidate with fewer votes wins the office? "Fixing Elections" shows why it's not just the Electoral College that's outdated, but our entire 18th-century Winner Take All political system, including the way we elect our legislatures. While voter turnout plummets to single digits (even episodes of "Survivor" drew larger audiences than cast votes for either Gore or Bush), analysts have blamed the growing apathy of the American electorate. But as provocative political critic Steven Hill so eloquently argues, we're not a lazier, less civic-minded people than our grandparents. Voting just seems pointless to many citizens because they recognize the truth: their votes really DON'T count. A vote for Nader may have been a wasted vote, but so was a vote for Gore in solidly GOP Texas, or Bush in Democratic New York, where the state's winner was a foregone conclusion. In legislatures, rigged district lines render impotent the votes of millions of Americans, Democrat, Republican and independent alike. Democrats in safe GOP legislative districts all across the West and South, and GOP voters in safe urban Democratic districts, have become "orphaned voters" with nowhere to turn, no less than third party supporters everywhere. Entire regions of the country are becoming balkanized political monocultures, dominated by one political party or the other as the political landscape fragments into the "Red and Blue America" that emerged from Election 2000. Steven Hill argues our geographic-based, Winner Take All political system is at the root of many of our worst political problems, including: * Single-digit voter turnout in elections all across the nation... * A Congress that doesn't look or think like America... * National policy dangerously adrift from public opinion... * A president who won with less than a popular majority, and fewer votes than his main opponent... * A growing divide between city-dwellers and middle-America... * Bitter national division and regional fragmentation that hasn't been seen since the 1960s... * Political consultants producing McCampaigns of poll-tested blandness... * Campaign tricks and tactics (polling, focus groups, and the 30 second TV spot) sinisterly suited to Winner Take All's "divide and conquer" incentives... * Undermining of campaign finance reform... * An alarming loss of innovative political ideas... These are some of the disturbing trends highlighted by this pathbreaking and challenging work of political analysis and deconstruction. In the face of cynicism about the American political system, "Fixing Elections" is a refreshing blueprint to resurrect our founders' democratic vision. It will change the way you think about American politics.Read More