Karl Mudsam

Professor Kinor

English 121

7/11/20

Dear Stephen Fenberg,

According to a March 20th 2019 Harvard Institute of Politics poll 41% of all students

(who responded) replied disagree to the statement "Elected officials who are part of the Baby

Boomer generation (ages 55 to 73) care about people like me." I, among many others, am not

surprised. Our government has done an appalling job of representing the will of its citizens, and I

feel that many of us can relate on a personal level in that many of us are realizing that we have

no place in the democratic process: "Why does it matter that I vote, It won’t make a difference

anyway" The cause of this misrepresentation has many roots, but one significant factor is the

way we vote Senator Fenberg. Our system is fundamentally flawed. It fails to represent our

population, it destroys the diversity in our political communities, and causes a trend towards

extreme politics.

Although our system of First Past the Post voting has a had a major place in history

seeing as all sorts of societies have used this system of plurality voting from the Ancient Greeks

and Romans to the Italian city states of the renaissance, this system of voting has a number of

deep flaws which has left our democratic nation disgruntled to say the least. It has encouraged

the popular opinion that our government isn’t designed to listen to its citizens but to those in

power and those who surround it like moths to a lantern. This isn’t always the fault of those who
hold office, but rather of the imperfections of the system itself, and if we are to repair the

foundations our crumbling state, we must seek to reform it.

I know many people are interested in politics but feel that our current institution works

against them in various numbers of ways. The effects of our winner-takes-all selection process

helps to aid this frustration. It doesn't require 50% or more of the population to agree on a

candidate; it only needs the candidate with the most votes. Therefore, (and this happens quite

often) a candidate could win an election with a minority of the votes. Take, for example, the

2015 general election in the U.K. More specifically, take the electoral district of Belfast South

where the candidate Alasdair McDonnell won his race with only 24.5% of the vote. Over 75% of

the people in that district did not vote for Alasdair McDonnel, yet he is their sole representative.

He is their only voice in government. It is then no mystery as to why people of nations who use

this system of voting are angered at the institution that contradicts them. In any case, this creates

a list of candidates that aren't relatable to much of the population and leads us to pick "lesser of

two evils" which we have been for nearly all of time.

Now, Alasdair McDonnell was the head of an Irish national party called the SLDP. His

party and those like it, though, have constantly lived in the shadow of the two biggest parties of

U.K. politics: the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. An unseen consequence of First past

the Post is that it causes a trend towards a two-party system. This, in turn, comes as a result of

tactical voting. Tactical voting, as you probably know, is when a voter, even though they like a

certain candidate, votes for a different candidate whom they believe will win even though they

might not represent them as well. This hasn’t just devolved U.K. politics into a two-party system.

The U.S. has also been and remained a strict two-party system for centuries. Although this is

obviously for a different reason than the U.K., it has been a trend in American history that
whenever a third party begins to gain steam, their ideals are either combined into another, more

successful party or they fall into obscurity.

As you may have seen, another result of First Past the Post is that our system of politics

is, increasingly, spitting out more and more polarized candidates. The leverage that smaller

organizations hold over party establishments has caused, in many cases, a growth in extremism.

A perfect example of this is the recent history of the U.S. When a radical faction, in this case far

right members of the republican party, gains power in government other, more moderate,

members of the same party are encouraged to support them, lest they support the opposition by

causing them to lose votes. A famous and hilarious example of this is when senator Lindsey

Graham went from saying that Donald Trump was a “…kook…” “…crazy…” and “…unfit for

office..." to "What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label

the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president..." in less than a year, but in his position it was

necessary to help keep his party in power, which is, in a way, worrying, because it causes a sort

of normalized doublethink. It causes people like you to blatantly ignore their personal opinions,

which is part of what the people voted for, in defense of a larger "truth" superimposed by those

in superior position.

If we do not reform our system of electing leaders, the rest of us will soon realize that

government does not serve the governed, but rather you. It serves those who govern. At best this

will cause dissatisfaction and resentment of the government in whole, and at worst this will result

in a general apathetic attitude towards politics. If we allow this injustice to continue, those in

power will remake our institution into a tool to grow their power, and this has already begun to a

degree. Gerrymandering, restrictions on absentee voting, and requirements related to voter ID

have turned electoral geography into a weapon to bolster a faction's power. In 2016  the U.S. was
reclassified by the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index from a Full democracy to a

Flawed Democracy, and although this was merely a drop from 8.05 to 7.98 on their scale, this, I

believe, is a kind of symbolism that has rung all throughout these recent years and which has its

roots in the way we choose our leaders. 

Best regards,

Karl Mudsam