Are elections where campaigning is prohibited fair and legitimate?

This is the basic fundamental ethical question that has to be asked and answered when considering the voting results as they stand in Michigan and Florida.

The playing field was level in Florida, as neither campaigned. People received their impressions from the ordinary news channels, which were hardly ignoring the contest at its national level.

Especially not when one candidate has basically universal name recognition.

of any kind other than what was presented in "ordinary news channels", you would be ok with that?

Hmmm...

Remember this is not a question of whether the Florida "primary" was representative of the will of the voters or not. That is a different debate altogether.

My question is the fundamental one that needs to be answered when weighing what to do with the results in Michigan and Florida.

Would be regulation on English lines limiting campaigns to a sixty day period, with severe restrictions on advertisements, allowing basically only speech by the candidate in a straight on head-shot, and resurrection of the old 'Fairness Doctrine' as a condition of holding a broadcast license or cable franchise.

For the rest, you may refer to my reply below to Mr. Swamp Rat.

that henceforth no more campaigning is allowed and all information to voters will come through approved television channels.

Worries me much more than hackneyed exercise in hypothetical horribles....

But that aside, it's common in discussions revolving around ethics and laws to discuss in terms of hypotheticals for the purposes of illustration. There's nothing wrong with it.

Sir.

As does the over the top hypothetical you want to be taken seriously as a consideration that should have some bearing on anyone's view of this matter....

It is a signature quality of this particular individual.

Of course, it could be sort of like the way McCain uses "My Friends." That can mean different things, depending on the context!

I think there are worse things to call people, actually!

:spank: :D :hi:

Elections are government functions. Primaries are political party functions which are carried out by arrangement with the government. They cannot be equated legally or even politically, but that hasn't stopped some from taking advantage of the general voter's lack of knowledge about the primary system to fuck with public perceptions.

Primaries are governed by party rules, not election laws. The only right the general public has to vote in a primary for the purposes of choosing a candidate is bequeathed by the political parties involved.

Using "election" in your poll questions makes it a bit hinky as well. Since the Democratic Party had already nullified the FL and MI primaries months before, the question of campaigning is moot.

Problem solved.

On the other hand, we are talking about ethics and Free Speech. I think it's fair to say our primaries should be ethical and respect Free Speech.

for one reason or another, or perhaps ignore those sources until right before an election.

I really wish there was a way to have a re-do in FL and MI, a completely new election paid for by everyone involved. There is no need to allow a GOP strategy (which instigated this whole fiasco) to succeed - we can unite and solve this problem.

By now, any resolution of it is going to be of benefit to someone, and disadvantage someone else. The one thing we can be sure of is that 'fairness' will not guide the resolution, but rather that the rawest of political calculations will dictate the chosen course of the Rules Committee. What seems to me to provide at least a modicum of fairness combined with the best political calculation concerning November would be to seat Florida 'as is', with perhaps a half vote for each delegate, and to seat half the Michigan delegates in a fifty-fifty split between the two contenders.

We can discuss ethics all day long, but in the end, as you said, "the rawest of political calculations will dictate the chosen course." There will be a great gnashing of teeth in the coming weeks.


Count Ugolino: "But if my words are seeds, with fruit of infamy for this traitor that I gnaw, I will both speak and weep within your sight." - Canto XXXIII

even campaigning doesn't necessarily relieve that.

But nonetheless the question is that if an election is held where campaigning is prohibited is it a legitimate election or not.

If it is, I'd like to see how people would feel if we did all elections that way.

If it's not, then how can you "count votes" in an illegitimate election.

I think the Magistrates amoralism or relative moralism on this basically avoids the hard choice that needs facing.

On a practical level, Clinton is going to be handed a majority of delegates in both states but Obama is still almost certainly going to win the nomination. However, practicalities aside the first principles of this matter need to be debated.

"Imagine this headline: President Bush enacts law in emergency crisis that henceforth no more campaigning is allowed and all information to voters will come through approved television channels."

So, what does "campaigning is prohibited" mean, if it is allowed "through approved television channels" in the hypothetical? Doesn't this scenario insinuate a loss of information access?

1.) It seems fairly obvious from the poll results that most people here readily agree that a pre-requisite of free and fair elections are free campaigns.

2.) If we are to "count" Florida and Michigan votes then we have to consider the legitimacy of the election processes under which they were held.

3.) If we agree that Michigan and Florida did not meet the basic fundamental criteria of a free and fair election then it would call into question the legitimacy of the results themselves.

4.) If the results are illegitimate, then how can they be used to sway the outcome?

There are certain posts here that act as if this is some irrelevant academic exercise, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. Further, any hypotheticals that I've proferred should be taken seriously because this is the sort of thing that happens in sham democracies throughout the world. They may not totally prohibit campaigning but they make any campaigning less effective than the "approved media outlets" so the effect is the same. In essence, Freedom of Speech is squashed. It's one of the myriad ways that dictators throughout the world are "elected". Wouldn't prohibiting campaigning altogether be the ultimate form of restricting free speech? And if so, what kind of democracy runs elections and uses the result of elections that purposefully prohibit free speech?

For anyone to act like this isn't an ethical situation is preposterous. It's like saying the 1st Amendment doesn't matter.

:D

I already suggested a complete re-do of the election in those two states.

campaigns affect results. These contests took place when there were how many people on the ballot? Back in January? I think that you are trying to say that local press doesn't have any effect, when I think it most certainly does.

We can only speculate, and once opened, that door is hard to close. Had there been a hard-fought contest in Florida, its result could well have had a great effect on the subsequent course of the campaign.

No effort by both, and all-out effort by both, amount to about the same thing, namely no particular advantage enjoyed by either side.

But again, concern for the 'legitimacy' or the 'ethics' pf the thing will have no bearing at all on the decision of the national Party via its Rules Committee: that will be a political decision in favor of who holds the balance of power in the Party when the committee meets.

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

"No effort by both, and all-out effort by both, amount to about the same thing, namely no particular advantage enjoyed by either side."

Except that some enter the competition with established advantages, such as name recognition. Which would be the entire grounds for the election if no campaigning was allowed.

If any country ruled out campaigning in an election, the rest of the world would immediately call them not valid democratic elections.

It is so glaringly obvious that not allowing campaigning invalidates the result.

To think otherwise makes you personally a threat to the idea of democratic elections.

"I hate flattery, especially the sort that makes you work hard to believe it...."

Anyone accepting that cornerstone principles in democratic elections be suspended - is a threat to democracy as we understand it today.

It's not like they blacked out cable and c-span.

This isn't gonna end well.

Along the lines that other countries do.

The endless, hyper expensive, campaigns are downright undemocratic in that they allow only candidates with substantial backing from moneyed interests to control the "democracy".