Published: April 01, 2008 09:45 am         

Letter to Editor for 04-01

Dear Editor,

Please share these concerns with your readers.

In my opinion, we, the citizens of the Unites States of America, should wake up and change our method of electing the officers of our government. Our method of electing officers is too cumbersome, unfair, and divisive. It is too long, which encourages mudslinging and unsavory personal attacks upon candidates. These attacks usually have no relevance to the ability of the candidates to perform the duties of the office. The length of our election period gives to it boredom and non-productiveness. The period is too expensive and seems to favor the candidate who has the most money at his/her disposal, which opens doors to lobbying and selfish corruption.

It seems to me that what we need is to eliminate political parties, the electoral college, the primaries, caucuses, and super electors, and adopt national election guidelines that are based upon the principles of democracy.

These guidelines should be written in simple terms and should include limitations, especially upon the length of campaigns, amounts of contributions to candidates, and the amount that a candidate may spend. These guidelines should be rigidly and justly enforced.

In presidential elections, it seems to me that the candidate who receives the most popular votes should be declared the president. The candidate who received the second highest number of votes should be declared the vice. This could reduce or eliminate the enormous expenditure of time and money that is spent in inner fighting annually by Congress today. This would also ensure that the interests of the people of the United States of America would be served.

Wilbur Thirkield Titus

Fairfield, Texas