Voting, Campaigns, and Elections (Question down below)?

[jordi]

“Voting, Campaigns, and Elections” and begs the question of whether elections can actually ensure that governments will do what the people want?

The chapter then presents several models of voting behavior. For example, the ‘responsible party voting model’ is based on the notion that elections should present a real choice between parties so that the winning party will carry out the mandate of the voters. Alternatively, the ‘electoral competition voting model’, otherwise known as the ‘median voter model’, suggests that unified parties compete for citizens’ votes by taking the most popular positions they can, thus appealing to the median voter at the exact midpoint of the political spectrum guaranteeing that both parties end up standing for the same policies, i.e. those favored by the most voters. A third model, the ‘retrospective (or reward and punishment) voting model’ predicts that voters judge how well a group in power has governed and decide if they want this group to continue in office, thus rewarding the party they feel has governed well and punishing the party they feel has governed badly.

The chapter then goes on to talk about how the United States has more elections than any other democracy, how each particular office is elected separately and independently from others, how each office has fixed terms, how elections are held on fixed dates, how most elections in the US are almost always “First Past the Post” type of elections in which only a single person is elected, and then talks about low voter turnout in US elections.

Greenberg and Page note that the disturbing fact is that today a much smaller proportion of people vote than did during most of the nineteenth century with only about 50 to 65 percent of Americans voting in presidential elections since 1912, whereas between 1840 and 1896, usually 80% of the American people voted in presidential elections.

Given the above discussion about voting behavior and the role of elections in a democracy, do you believe that the will of the people, as expressed in elections, should always be honored and the people’s choices implemented? For example, what if it is determined by a wise group of rulers that the actions of the people—for example, their choice of a president—would be detrimental to the body politique, and the wise group of rulers hence intervene to prevent the people’s choice from taking office?

Some elite theorists believe that popular elections should only be used to confirm what the ruling class has already decided, and if the people do not follow accordingly, then it is the right—even the duty—of wise rulers to intervene and “correct” the people’s choice. What do you think about this? Explain your answer.

[fyfe]

i think it is a problem.