Many US voters have no true representation

  As I walked away from the voting booth on November 2^nd, I couldn’t stop myself from sharing my feeling of hopelessness with another voter as he walked into the front door of the building where my local voting precinct is located.  “Abundance of choices for Senator today” I sarcastically said to the man who seemed to be in his fifties.  “Voting for the lesser evil” he responded.  While I couldn’t tell you who he was going to be casting his vote for, I can tell you that across all issues, his views most likely do not match up perfectly with either candidate that was running for the open Senate seat in Kentucky.  During my short drive home, I attempted to justify, again, why American voters have become content with choosing between two extremes, conservative and liberal.  Now extreme may be a harsh word at first, but if you think about it most candidates strictly follow their party’s platform which for the Republicans is a conservative stance across issues, and the Democrats who share liberal views.  This uncanny trend of politicians not wavering from their respected platforms leaves many voters with no true representation. The number of voters in the sideline position of “central”  seems pretty high as indicated by the constant swings every election cycle.  If the majority of voters were loyal straight ticket voters, whichever party had the majority of supporters would constantly dominate the elections, and this hasn’t happened.  It is likely that even those citizens who vote straight ticket probably don’t agree 100% with their party but are voting on specific issues of personal importance.  But what happens when those secondary issues become primary issues?  What happens when the two issues that are currently at the forefront of politics are not both supported by either party?  We have seen what happens. Some of those voters step across the aisle, feeling betrayed, dirty, angry, and unrepresented.  Sometimes the change is permanent, other times voters return to their original parties.  During the whole process many voters in general feel like democracy in America is failing as the two party system has discouraged any real change.  Yet Americans continue to cast votes for the status quo, only to be disappointed election after election, and I’m still trying to figure out why.