Your voice counts

What would happen if we didn’t vote for president?

The UK already follows this model. The head of the executive branch of government, the prime minister, is not chosen directly by the people’s vote, but by the party in power in Parliament.

This has some powerful implications in British politics. Perhaps the most important is that the prime minister is always of the same party as the majority party in Parliament. This must seem an elementary deduction, but think how a policy like this in the United States could streamline the passage of bills through Congress.

Granted, the Democrat-controlled Congress teamed with Democrat President Obama has had trouble with the health care reform bill, but there is still more cooperation than with a division between the White House and Congress.

Another important implication of the British system is that the party in power chooses as Prime Minister the person they can best work with – not the person they think will garner the most votes in a general election. This would eliminate radical choices of past U.S. elections, such as Sarah Palin and others chosen more for voter appeal than for an ability to work with Congress.

And because Parliament chooses the prime minister, the prime minister must depend on them not just to back a political agenda, but also for their continued support while in power.

This difference between the British and American executive branches reflects a more general difference in their political systems: the British system centralizes powers while the American system emphasizes a separation of powers.

Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century authority on British government, said this unity of powers was “the efficient secret” of the English constitution. But many in America might fear that this unity of powers could threaten to undermine the checks and balances of each branch upon the other.

What is really at stake in these checks and balances is a minority voice – the check of the minority upon the push of majority. This ensures that the majority party in the U.S. stays in equilibrium rather than running roughshod over opposing ideas. 

The early 20th-century British constitutional authority Sidney Low recognized that in America, “the right of the minority may not in practice amount to very much, but it is at any rate not ignored.”

Though the voice of the minority may seem a trivial thing, it is nevertheless an integral part of the American political system. Even in an election as large and publicized as that for the presidency, a small, minority voice is part of the balancing act that is American politics.

Many citizens in this country may feel that their voice as a voter goes unheard because someone they didn’t vote for becomes president or senator or representative. But remember in next year’s elections that in America, even a minority voice counts for something.