General Elections are Too Long, and Too Expensive: the Greatest Government Waste of All
Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart
Every four years American voters choose our president. At
least that’s what the media and politicians would like you to believe. The
truth is, states choose the man or woman who will lead our country, and that
will remain a fact as long as the unconstitutional Electoral College exists.
That’s not what this article is all about. The first
presidential election I remember was in 1956 when Dwight D. Eisenhower won a
second term. I was 10 years old.
Richard Nixon did not sign into law the right for 18-year-olds
to vote until 1971. I was 22 in 1968 when I was eligible to vote in my first
general election.
I was a senior in high school when the only great president
in modern history was murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963. In 1968 I was excited.
I strongly supported Robert Kennedy. However on a summer’s day in Los Angeles he
was taken from us by a man named Sirhan Sirhan.
I couldn’t believe that our country had lost two of the
greatest men in our country’s history in one year. Dr. Martin Luther King was
assassinated in April.
I was uncertain about who to vote for in November. I had
watched the debates between JFK and Nixon, and I wasn’t fond of Hubert
Humphrey. I already knew that I would be a lifelong Independent, but I didn’t
make my choice until a week before the election.
I won’t reveal which candidate received my first, precious
vote. It is not relevant to this story.
What is important is what I learned from the experience.
I was alarmed as each general election became longer and
more costly. In the 2024 election, Trump began campaigning on January 6, 2021
when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election, He held hate rallies
frequently until election day, November 5, 2024.
As it always is, the Democratic Party became chaotic in
2024. Biden’s very successful four years encouraged great support from Democratic
voters. However, a number of progressives considered his age detrimental to securing
a victory in November. Alarm grew within the party after his disastrous
appearance on June 27, 2024. A debate between Trump and Biden became the number
one topic on the news for weeks after President Biden seemed to confirm reasonable
doubts about his age.
After President Biden withdrew from the campaign, Kamala Harris
became the Democratic nominee on August 1, 2024. She inherited the shortest
campaign season in history, with just over three months to convince voters that
she was the best choice.
My point is, the average presidential campaign season in the
21st century lasts nearly two years. The money wasted is even more
revolting. The total cost for all candidates in 2024 was $14,804,105,512.
Nearly one-half of that outrageous number was received by the presidential
candidates.
Now for the facts. For decades, studies revealed that most
American voters chose their candidates based on television advertisements. This
fact proves that American voters are the least informed in the world.
The total cost of advertising during the 2024 election was
more than 11 billion dollars. More than 2.3 billion dollars was spent on
television.
Yes, this is ludicrous. Comedy great and satirist Will
Rogers said it best: "Be thankful
we're not getting all the government we pay for.”
Your illegitimate president, Donald Trump, is a perfect
example. He is destroying not only America’s economy, but the economic future
of the entire world for years to come. His fascist agenda is removing the
principles and promises made by our Founding Fathers in 1789. More recently, he
destroyed a huge part of our nation’s most historical building, the White
House.
No other democratic country has a campaign season longer
than three months. This fact is additional proof that the government of the
United States is the most corrupt and incompetent in the world.
Think about this: I keep my readers informed, offer the
truth, and I don’t receive a single dollar. My readers don’t pay a “grain of
salt” for my efforts.
That’s the way it should be.
Op-ed by James Turnage
Follow my blog and be an informed American
My 10 novels are available on Amazon’s Kindle
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