Dear Editor,
When all the rhetoric, confetti and euphoria (much akin to a circus) of the US Democratic nomination contest is over, the post mortem will reveal whether the US passed the “democracy” test.
At present, we see a fierce competition between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. This has led some on the sidelines to marvel at how splendid American democracy is. They have pointed to the large voter turnout in all the contested states; the rapid counting of ballots and early availability of the results and the acceptance of those results by the winners and losers. “This is exactly what democracy is all about,” said one television commentator when discussing the wins on March 4th by Hillary Clinton.
“A model the world should emulate,” he went further. Well, from my perspective I would have to say “wait a minute.”
You see, democracy is a very complicated concept and by no means would I want to trivialize its conception. However, at the most rudimentary level, electoral democracy is premised on the notion that whoever amasses the most votes in an electoral contest should be declared the winner. That simple! But wait a minute; let’s examine the situation in the US Democratic Party contest.
Instead of relying on the will of the majority, the votes are awarded proportionally by geographical constituencies in the form of “delegates.” So, where one candidate might win the popular vote, he or she can still lose the delegates’ race; take Nevada, Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the delegates race to Obama.
We also have a situation where Clinton is arguing that delegates and the popular votes really don’t matter. What matters to her is where you have won. If you win the big states like California, New York, Ohio, etc
