So the end is near for what has been a really long Presidential campaign in US. Tomorrow is the Election Day and we will hopefully know by tomorrow night who the next President is going to be. As a foreign national living in this country for 9+ years, with so much at stake in this election that will have an impact on my life – and yet with no vote to participate in the election process (heck, I am not even a permanent resident here; being able to vote is still a very long way out) — I stand on the sidelines and watch what is guaranteed to be a cracker of an election.
I live in California and it is a foregone conclusion that Democratic Party is going to win this state. So much so that neither of the candidates are making much effort to talk about Californians and local issues, except for blanket statements about country’s problems in general. Barack Obama sees no need to spend time/money in these final days of campaigning here because his party has a lock on this state. John McCain doesn’t bother because his Republican Party has simply given up on California. Instead, they focus almost entirely on a few swing states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida where winners in past elections were decided by couple percentage points.
I am just curious if voters in non-swing states would feel disappointed about lack of “importance” in the election. How would it feel to be a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, knowing you hardly count in their calculations? Why should Ohio’s Joe the Plumber get so much more attention compared to a school teacher in California about to lose his job because the State can’t afford to keep those schools open? Nothing against the Joes and plumbers of this country, but why this disproportionately huge focus on just a few states and almost nothing on California?
The whole issue is rooted in the fact that the candidates get ALL electoral votes from a state if they are backed by majority of voters of that state. They are not allocated in the same proportion as the percentage of votes each candidate got. For example, even if Republican party manages 49.9% of polled votes in California against 50.1% votes for Democrats, they get NONE of the electoral votes from California. All electoral votes go to Democrats. That seems like a fundamental flaw in the way US practices democracy, even more so because California is the most populous state in the country. For all the preaching they do to rest of the world about democracy’s importance and virtues, I don’t understand why the US doesn’t fix that flaw at home. Democracy is supposed to be a reflection of majority’s opinions, but the large, non-swing states like California don’t count for much in this election.
So what are Californians doing in this election? Judging by the campaign noise I see on the roads here, the biggest issue seems to be whether or not to vote for Prop 8 – a measure that would ban gay marriages in the state!
