Making Elections a Fair Game

Equality: the one main principle that this country was established upon. We run our government off of principles such as “everyone is equal under the eyes of the law” and that our elections are democratic because they are supposedly fair and equal. The fact of the matter is that elections are no longer democratic because they are no longer fair nor equal. Equality is not just a matter of skin tone, religion, or even sexual orientation. Equality means equality, and yes, that does include social and economic standing. So shouldn't people from every economic background have the same opportunities to have their voices heard? Shouldn't they have the same opportunities that rich kids of Beverly Hills have to run for mayor, congress, or even president? Our constitution is founded off of these principles of equality, yet people like celebrities do the crime, but don’t serve the time. And why are only wealthy politicians continuously elected? Maybe there is nothing to do about celebrities not serving their time, because the people love celebrity drama. They eat that stuff up. But politicians: who even likes politicians? We could make elections democratic, fair, and equal by removing the money from campaigns and therefore removing the wealthy politicians from our electoral system.  

Currently, congress receives an income that puts them at the top five percent of highest paid workers in the U.S. So if all of our congress people represent the top five percent, then who is really representing the rest of us? If this country is truly democratic and equal, then it is surely not reflected through our descriptive representation. Our government cannot truly reflect the people if the government is filled with rich politicians. The only solution to make sure that we are electing the most qualified candidates and not just the candidates with the most money is by removing the money and having publicly financed elections.

Publicly financed elections would make elections fair, affordable, and would force elected officials to focus on policy and not focus on raising money to run for re-election. So I for one don’t see the big fuss that people make against the idea of it. The ballot box should show no bias, and the only way that will happen is through public financing of elections. The only main complain about this idea is the same worry that everyone has about everything: taxes. The concern of taxes getting raised is always the first thing that people tend to worry about. The question, however, still begs why people tend to care more about taxes than they do about fair elections? Well since there are two things guaranteed in life (death and taxes) people would care more about taxes than something that most people don’t even think affects them.  But how come people don’t seem to notice when big companies like Verizon, for example, raise their phone bill. Because that extra money that comes from raising your phone bill, goes directly to political campaign anyways. Like in 2011 when Verizon donated over 35,000 dollars to the house Tea Party caucus and to Tea-Party backed campaigns including Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and Pat Toomey. So basically, raising the taxes to finance the elections would affect pretty much nothing except for our democracy. Unfortunately, this perfectly practical idea will not ever be implemented because the same people that could vote this into effect will never ever vote it in because all it would do it kick their rich butts out of office. This so called democracy will never have an equal or fair election because the only solution to the problem will inevitably never happen.