Episode 20: REIMAGINING OUR SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS

In this episode we conceive of an entirely new way of electing our leaders that liberates us from the destructive effects of a divisive and corrosive system that no longer serves our best interests and deserves to be discarded.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Sovaida 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we conceive of an entirely new way of electing our leaders that liberates us from the destructive effects of a divisive and corrosive system that no longer serves our best interests and deserves to be discarded. One of our aims in this show is to consider where we find ourselves in life, in our world, assess how we got here, what choices we made to get us to where we are, envision where we would rather be, and then determine the steps that are necessary to take us from where we are to where we need to be. We're all very painfully aware that we live in a world marked by conflict. Much of this conflict these days occurs internally within the borders of our nations. And is driven by political polarization, which is becoming more and more extreme with every passing day. I know this is definitely true for the country in which I live, the United States. Elections, which are the very method by which we strive to elect worthy leaders into whose hands we place our trust, our well being, and our destiny, instead are often the mainspring of conflict and division that tear our communities apart and tear our nations apart. So I thought it would be worth spending some time today imagining what elements of the election processes that most of us have in our various countries we might consider changing in order to get a different outcome. For, as Albert Einstein famously said, "Madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result." if we don't like where we are, we don't like these results that we have been getting over and over again, then maybe it's time for us to consider making some changes to what we do. The question becomes, what would we need to do differently, or might we do differently, because this is a process of exploration, if we wanted, for instance, to experience peace, amity, and social cohesion, and rather than conflict, division, and disunity. Let's start by considering this idea: What would it look like if we were to imagine a world in which we had no political parties? I don't know about you, but I know that I have long struggled from the time I was a teenager and started thinking about these topics. I struggled with the concept of political parties. They just, somehow, they didn't sit well with me. I'd like to share with you some of my thinking. I'd be really curious to know whether any of these thoughts resonate with you. If they do, please drop some notes in the chat, whether you're listening to this live or later when you look at the video, because I'd love to hear what you have to say and get some feedback from you. My primary objection, was that as soon as you become affiliated with any given political party, it seemed that you were automatically labeled and viewed by others through a filter of what that label had come to mean to them. It seemed to me that one, by labeling oneself with the name of a political party, one became reduced to that label. And in some sense, we lost our humanity. People no longer viewed us as human beings with particular qualities or virtues or personalities with likes and dislikes, with contributions that we make to society, but they viewed us through this prism of the label. And one of the other things that it did is that because of this labeling, there's something weird that happens when we label someone. We somehow think we understand the totality of who they are. They become their label. And we become very judgmental of them and very critical. We don't then take the steps to get to know them as human beings and to learn about their likes, their dislikes, their fears, their concerns, their hopes, their aspirations, because we're viewing them through the lens of this label. The other problem I had with this labeling is that as a result of it we automatically pit ourselves against another. In other words, when one dons the label of a political party, you're not just saying that you stand for something or a bunch of ideas or an ideology, but sometimes even more importantly that you stand against others or another group of people or another set of ideologies. And this sets the stage for disunity. Division becomes the watchword of our social fabric. Somehow this just didn't strike me as a very wholesome approach to living. Because the truth is it's very hard to build something constructive on the basis of fragmentation and division. It's interesting to me that the first president of the United States, George Washington, warned the people of the United States against having political parties. In his farewell address to the nation on September 17, 1796, he famously said that political parties, may now and then answer popular ends, but they're likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men, because it was men who ran the country in those days, will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. President Washington had during his own presidency witnessed the rise of the Democratic Republican Party that was the party that stood in opposition to the Federalists and he worried that over time loyalty to the party would come to trump loyalty to the Constitution and would undermine the very republic that we had striven so hard to create. Let's move to the next objection. Let's assume that one gets past this idea of labeling. You say, okay, I am going to sign up to belong to X political party. Here's my next dilemma. Let's say that political party X has two ideas out of six or seven main ideas that you really like, and political party Y also has two ideas that you really like, and the rest you really couldn't care for. And yet you're forced to accept an entire bucket of ideas. The question that I always asked is, why should I be forced to accept an entire ideological bucket if I really don't like some of the ideas, and in fact find some of them very objectionable? Why should I be stuck? Then we have a different eye level. What if you like all of the ideas in a bucket, but you know that if your party wins, the person who is likely to become the leader is somebody whom you don't trust, whom you don't like, and whom you don't believe has the qualities that are necessary to be a fit and worthy leader. The qualities that we discussed in episodes 5 and 6 of this series, like honesty, and uprightness, and lack of prejudice, and freedom from corruption, and so on. This becomes a real problem. These were the thoughts that would run through my head when I was a teenager and in the years after, which is why throughout my life I have always thought I have no interest in being affiliated with any political party, because ultimately they just sow the seeds of division I was delighted to discover that I'm not alone in, in having these thoughts. There are other people and other systems and philosophies and faiths and groups of people who also believe the same thing. One of the people whom I came across as I started to research and search, investigate the truth and reality for myself, was Simone Weil, who was a female French mystic and social philosopher who was considered a moral idealist. committed to social justice. She lived in the first half of the 20th century. And during that period, she wrote a radical essay calling for the abolition of political parties, an essay, which wasn't published until 1950, and I think she died in 1943 from tuberculosis. So she concluded a whole bunch of things which I found very fascinating. She referred to political parties as destroying any vestige of democracy and any opportunity for freedom of thought. She also believed and argued very eloquently that political parties had become self serving entities that elevate power and control above justice and truth. She had this lovely phrase, she said the sole purpose of political parties was to quote, "Kill in all souls, the sense of truth and justice." And she said that political parties dishonored three critical principles in life. Remember, we talked about the importance of founding our societies and institutions on the basis of principles or set of global ethics. Well, she said that political parties dishonored the three principles of truth, of justice, and the public interest. She referred to political parties as being an intellectual leprosy. Rampant partisanship was a kind of intellectual leprosy is killing us. She said political parties only have one goal, which is to promote their own growth. This really resonates with me as I look at what's happening everywhere in the world. Their one goal is to promote their own growth without limits. And she said, consequently, every party becomes a means to an end, and that end can only be totalitarian in nature. She said, by actively preventing party members from speaking out for truth and justice, because you put the interests of the party first, so you say whatever is necessary to say in order to preserve the interests of the party, we cultivate mendacity, which is lying. And that was another really interesting thing, she says. She argued for the abolition of political parties and said, quote, "One recognizes that the partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice, pushes even decent men cruelly to persecute innocent targets." She says one recognizes this and yet nobody suggests getting rid of the organizations that generate such evils. And she adds, I've looked at this question carefully and a careful examination reveals no inconvenience that would result from the abolition of political parties." And she comments, "Isn't this a strange paradox? We know that something like this, abolishing political parties presents no inconvenience, and yet it's the least likely measure to be adopted, because, and she really put her finger on the nub here, people think if it's so simple, if it's as simple as abolishing political parties, why hasn't it been done? Why wasn't it done a long time ago? And yet, she concludes, "Often great things are easy and simple." Now, one of the bright lights that's happening, I think, in our world, I think we're starting to slowly recognize that our systems as they are are not working, including the whole system of elections and voting for one political party versus another. It's only once we're convinced that something isn't working that we're willing to start exploring and entertaining the possibility of other options. And one of the things I have noticed is that various nations, various cities and countries have started experimenting with other methods of voting to try to dull the extreme political polarization. One of the things we've been experimenting with is a system of voting that is called ranked choice voting. We started experimenting with it in the United States with one state, the state of Maine, and right now there are 18 cities in this country that use ranked choice voting. There are countries in the world that have used it, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Malta being among them. What is Ranked Choice Voting you may well ask. Well, here's what's so interesting about it. It's an electoral system that allows people to vote for multiple candidates in order of preference. Instead of just choosing the person you want to win on the ballot and, saying, this is the person I vote for, you fill out a ballot saying, this is my first choice, here's my second choice, third choice, fourth choice, etc. for each position. The candidate with the majority, more than 50 percent of first choice votes will win outright. But what if no one person gets 50 percent at least of votes of the first choice? Then something interesting happens. A new counting process starts. You go to the person who received the least number of votes and you basically eliminate them. But the people who voted for them, their choices don't get eliminated. You look at those people and you say, okay, this person was their first choice. Who was their second choice? And all of the votes of the people who voted for this candidate who came last get redistributed to other candidates who were their second choices. In other words, even if you ranked a losing candidate as your first choice, your vote still counts, because then we go to who was your second preference and who was your third preference, if necessary. And in this way, you dilute this extreme polarization. It's really a fascinating system. It means that the winning candidate almost always ends up with a majority of votes because of the way that the votes are calculated. I'm not advocating that we use rank choice voting. What I'm excited about and what I'm advocating is that we continue the spirit of exploring different systems that keep us away from the pernicious effects of the voting systems we currently have, which cause disunity and division. Exploring alternatives that are likely to bring us closer together and to cultivate unity. And to do it in a humble posture of learning to try things. If they work well, great. If aspects don't work well, modify them or get rid of them. There are all these different approaches that we can take. All right. What would we do if we had no political parties? We would vote for individuals who possess the qualities and motives that made them fit and worthy leaders, as we discussed in episodes five and six. For those of you who haven't heard them, I would urge you to go and listen to them. So that's the first thing we would do. The second thing is, let's imagine a system where there is no nomination and no campaigning. This would be part of this new system of elections that we're envisioning. As we have talked about before, humanity as a whole is going through a collective process of development and maturity, going from infancy to its collective maturity. At this stage in our evolving maturity, we have to develop some key capacities that are commensurate with the stage of our development. At this stage of our development, one of the things we need to start honing is to learn that the mass of the electorate should be the people who decide who should be in a position of authority, rather than individuals saying, "Hey, vote for me," or other individuals saying, "Hey, vote for this person." Putting oneself forward or putting someone else forward isn't the way, rather all of us get to decide who are the candidates we're going to vote for based on their actions, their spirit of service, their motives, and their qualities that we have observed over the years. Adopting such a system would train us as members of the electorate to become intelligent, well informed, and responsible electors, and to rely on our own investigations into the individual's fitness for service. Because the practice of nomination and campaigning actually hinders the development of these qualities and these skills and really stunts our growth as human beings and as a collective society. And it leads to corruption and partisanship. We also start to develop the habit of distinguishing between a person who becomes well known because they engaged in public service, and the fact that they became well known was just as a side product that was unintentional. They didn't set out to become well known, as opposed to someone who's just tooting their own horn and making an exhibition of themselves just in order to attract votes. In other words, somebody whose ego is what's driving them and whose self interest is what's driving them. Also in this system it would, everything would have to be done by secret ballot. And, very importantly, there should be no discussion amongst us individuals about who we're voting for. Because that discussion itself leads to division, especially within families, where different members of the family may want to vote for different people. And if they start having conversations about that, it undermines unity. Really, unity is the watchword as we try to imagine a system of elections that works. Another element is imagining a system of elections that is free of the taint of moneyed interests. Imagine if we could avoid the pitfall of politicians being beholden to minority interests who have funded their campaigns and paid them to get elected, because now those elected feel obliged to make decisions that benefit those who funded them. This problem compounds. It's actually a chicken and egg situation. It compounds the problems of inequality and inequality leads to decreased democracy. This is a well studied phenomenon. There was a really interesting article a while ago in the Economist magazine, in which they reported that as inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich. Listen to this. It's absolutely unbelievable. In this article, they said that in the United States alone, fewer than 30, 000 people, this is in a country of 330 some million people, right? So 30, 000 people account for a quarter of all national political donations from individuals and for more than 80 percent of the money raised by political parties. 30, 000 people have that much influence, have the majority influence on who gets to be in government, who we elect, who becomes president, etc. So this inequality really has a corrupting influence on democracy. It's quite astounding. And the people who are then elected just demonstrate no interest or very little in grappling with the problems of inequality because they're now beholden to the few rich who elected them. Another element of this new system of elections: Imagine a system in which every member of a national community has input into the system of decision making by bringing up topics for consultation and making suggestions and recommendations for consideration by elected bodies. There's clearly a crying need for this in the world. One of the evidences of this is something they do in Denmark and have done for years. Four days a year in the month of June, Danes gather for what they call, and I'll probably butcher the pronunciation, something called Folkemodet It's a political festival where the prime minister and chief executives of top companies and other respected leaders mingle with members of the public on a remote island in the Baltic Sea. They have frank debates about the state of their democracy. Anyone can attend and it's totally informal. You walk around, there are all these tents with food and so on and conversations and everybody's dressed down including the prime minister and including all these top executives and there are very blunt questions asked of them by folks, like why did you undertake this policy? Why did you make this decision? Why didn't you fix this problem when it became apparent to you that it existed? So a lot of frank Consultation, something we talked about in one of our previous episodes on consultation about the importance of frank but unwritten rule to be respectful and keep the whole atmosphere of this folk festival such that you're not tearing down people even though you're asking very to frank and blunt questions. So these are some ideas as we think about a new system of elections. Now I can hear some of you thinking, "Oh, this is crazy. This is impossible. This is idealistic. It's never going to happen." But when we stop and think about why we think that, why we're skeptical and cynical, we come to see that what's really happening is that we have gotten stuck with an identity that we've formulated for ourselves at some point in our collective growth as human beings. About who we are and how we show up, and in this instance, how we show up in elections and how we vote for leaders. Even though it's patently not working, even though it's patently rotten and is sowing the seeds of division before we even get started, we're so attached to this identity of how we do things that we sabotage ourselves. It's time to recognize that, bring that to awareness and say, "Hey, you know what, the system is no longer serving us. So maybe it's time to explore other options and stop this madness of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result." And you combine that with the view that we've mentioned before that whatever a human being, man or woman can conceive and believe then they can achieve. We have to start with the ability to envision something new and different, to have trust and faith that it will work, and then to make an a conscious commitment, a decision to start taking the steps This is an opportunity for us to bridge the gap between where we are and where that vision is of where we would like to be. Because frankly, the way we're going is unsustainable, the stakes are way too high, and so we now need an act of vision, of courage, of determination, and unshakable commitment to create a new and better world for ourselves, one that we deserve. That is all I had for today. I'm looking to see if there are any comments and questions. I don't see anything at the moment. So, again, if you like the ideas that you're seeing here, please consider picking up a copy of the book, the Alchemy of Peace. It is available on Amazon, around the world. Share it with your friends. Tell your friends about it. It's available on Kindle and in paperback Thank you very much for having joined me today. Have a wonderful rest of your weekend Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.