Enter
the primary season ends with a
few completely meaningless plebiscites in the states that got rooked
by getting scheduled at the end.
Then, the long and drawn-out
primary process is followed by the
long and drawn-out everything
else. The presidential campaign
season goes on for months longer
than makes sense. There’s just no
good reason to take so long. In fact,
it’s the length of the process that
causes all of the things that everyone really hates about presidential
campaigns to happen. It’s the reason why the media gets obsessed
with nonsense, and why the debates degenerate into gaffe-fights,
and why key issues don’t get attention, and why a lot of pointless
money gets spent on terrible ads,
and why there are so many dumb
stunts. (A Republican National
Convention that had to be over and
done with in 48 hours wouldn’t
have had the time to offer to Clint
Eastwood to make a joke out of his
entire career.)
And so it came to pass that Gallup conducted a poll about voter
reform, and lo, they discovered that
the majority of Americans would
prefer to un-suck this process. Election reform, in fact, is a perennial
issue for the folks at Gallup:
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
07.21.13
The July 6-7 poll comes at a
time when Americans are highly frustrated with the federal
government. The reforms are
three Dr. George Gallup promoted in a 1978 “Reader’s Digest” article entitled “Six Political Reforms Most Americans
Want.” In addition to the three
reforms tested this month, the
other reform ideas Dr. Gallup
advanced were congressional
The presidential
campaign season goes on for
months longer than makes
sense. There’s just no good
reason to take so long.”
term limits, abolishing the Electoral College to elect the president based on the popular vote,
and campaign finance reform.
Back then, a majority of Americans favored all six reforms.
At various times this year, Gallup has retested public support
for the reforms using slightly
different question wording and
format and found that half
or more of Americans still favor each of them. In January,