Tuesday, November 4, 2008

elections!

http://berkeleycarroll.org/news/detail.asp?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=3614&ModuleID=183
my brother sent me this link. too good to not share. he voted nader i think, but i'm sure it's due to my influence over the years. he's a good brother. he introduced me to that movie about nader that made me want to live a more noble life.

3 comments:

jenniferhoiyin said...

this is so interesting... thanks for the link.
loving all your updates, btw. i read them all :)

plainoldsarah said...

glad you all enjoyed. and glad that you (jen) are enjoying my updates. i enjoy yours as well - lots of cooking and crafty - sounds like fun!

Marie said...

Veeeery interesting. Elections in democracies have always been about personality, but if there were a way to eliminate the publicity games without also losing the ability to have full knowledge of the candidates' reputations, accomplishments, political careers -- that would be very exciting. I don't think it would work well to just state their stances on issues without some context, however, because we can only decide whether we think a person can deliver on their Great Ideas based on how they've acted in the past. There's also a need to elect someone that we think is wiser than most of the electorate -- who, no matter what his current position on "the issues," if elected will be ready do things that win our hatred if he truly thinks, given his greater share of information, that it is the best thing to do. And we can only know that he has that quality if we know how he's responded to the unexpected in his own past.

If this system were adopted, I wonder who would get the weighty job of deciding which details about each candidate's career were included in the voter information? Do we mention that John McCain is a war hero? Do we mention that it was an unpopular war? Do we mention that he and his wife adopted an orphan from Bangladesh? Do we reveal that he's an adulterer? Which of these things, if any, have bearing on his integrity and his ability to lead? Do we mention that Obama attended a school run by Muslims? If McCain gets to use his prisoner of war experiences as proof of his tenacity, is it fair to then not allow Obama to volunteer the fact that he also has had to triumph over great odds (the color of his skin) to get to where he is today, since that would give away forbidden racial information about him? Sounds tricky. But I still think it would result in decisions less tainted by celebrity and sensationalism. Thanks for the thought-provoking link!