RIGHT TO VOTE? WRONG, PART 1: A SYSTEM IN SHAMBLES

The US presidential election is coming up in a few weeks or something (we really don't care enough to know the date), and according to The Media, it's going to be a huge (or)deal. The election to end all elections. The Big Kahuna. All the other ones were funny one-liners leading up to this joke, and it'll have you in stitches.

We don't know what this means, but it came up in our search. By James S. Baillie, via Wikimedia Commons.

We decided to take you through a few of the reasons why voting is one of the dumbest things you can do this polling season in this three-part series: "RIGHT TO VOTE? WRONG".

PART 1: A SYSTEM IN SHAMBLES

In case you hadn't noticed, the US voting system is a joke. It's broken in so many ways, it was hard to know where to start this article. There's the awfully conceived electoral college. Oh, and the security problems with the voting machines themselves. Of course, there's also The Media's evil hand in things. But at the base of it all is arguably the biggest problem: the two-party system.

Fill in the blank. By Tomwsulcer , via Wikimedia Commons.

Freedom of choice is not a freedom granted to Americans. You can speak your mind (ha ha), assemble and protest (lol), have wheelchair accessibility (XD), and vote for your leaders, but you can only choose between these two. The red one or the blue one. Republican or Democrat. You have to shape your views to fit with one of these parties. There are other political parties, but they don't get to hold office. It's true. There are currently two Independents in Congress, and zero in the House. Everyone else is Red or Blue. So pick a party (of the two) and get fired up for politics!

One of the reasons this atrocious two-party system is still in place is because of The Media. They polarize everything. They make every argument two-sided, and for most of the mindless masses, that's fine. It's black or white. Republican or Democrat. There is no grey area portrayed between the two, so there is no grey area between the two.

The Media are told who the choices are and they cut everyone else out. Look at what happened to Ron Paul (two elections in a row!). They lied about voting results, pulled reporters who talked about him, altered polling figures, and downright ignored him. The Mainstream Media have funneled the rats to a choice between two doors, and those are the doors without cheese behind them.

"Publicum" by Sv, via Wikimedia Commons.

Say you reconciled with the fact that you can only choose between two people. You go out to vote and your vote counts. Everyone votes, and the guy with the most votes wins. Democracy, right? Wrong. We have a representative democracy. People who represent us do the real voting in the electoral college. Learn how it works in more detail here, but basically, we peons vote. People look at those figures and cast votes to represent the majority's wishes. Each state has as many votes as it has members of Congress and the House. So, California gets 53 votes, Ohio gets 20, Montana gets 3, and on and on. This is how states like Florida can decide entire elections. All those old people (who are deeply concerned about future generations) stand in the way of one member of the two-party system getting the 270 votes needed to become POTUS. The rest of the states almost always give their votes to the same party, year after year after year.

If those idiotic problems weren't enough, there's the actual voting process itself: the physical process of voting. Ever heard of hanging chads? The culprit of a botched election in 2000. Just one problem among many, though. Did you know just about anyone can hack a voting machine? Fox News told us that years ago! And, no, they haven't fixed the problem. Rigging an election in the US is about as easy as buying two pounds of fried meat at a drive-through.

Read more on Russia Today.

Feel free to dig deeper into these issues for yourself, but we're getting depressed. The bottom line is NO, your vote does not count. The system is a mess. You'd have better luck getting your candidate elected in Athens, circa 500 BC. The way political parties in the US works is biased and anti-freedom-of-choice. How those parties are portrayed by The Media is even worse. And to top it off, the system itself is in shambles. If your vote gets through, and isn't diluted by thousands of fake votes, it is only used as a suggestion for a representative in a ridiculous electoral process that takes entire college courses to explain in full.

We know, it's only part one and things aren't looking too good. Just wait until you see why your vote really doesn't matter in "RIGHT TO VOTE? WRONG, PART 2: LEGITIMIZING AN ILLEGITIMATE SYSTEM".

Click to read PART TWO.

Click to read PART THREE.