Why make election season much longer than needed?
Printing ballots can be done quite quickly.
And is 6 months of campaigning really better than 2 months?
Ffffuuuuuuucccckkk no its not better. It’s just that our system predated most parliaments, and as such the founding fathers made some stupid choices that made it utterly impossible to amend basic quailty of life changes for our democracy.
What did the founding fathers decide that made it impossible to have short election seasons in the US?
The process to amend the constitution. It’s all but impossible given modern politics, and that’s largely been true for 50 years and counting.
Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.
Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.
The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.
My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it
Well no, it’s better for the politician’s campaign’s wallets. If people could spend campaign funds however they wanted then Donald Trump would have quite a few less pending felonies.
First of all, there’s TONS of ways to enrich yourself by running for office without technically breaking any of the very flimsy campaign finance laws. That’s why people with literally no chance of winning keep running for public offices up to and including the presidency.
Second of all, the FEC, which is ALREADY as toothless as a nonagenarian who never brushed his teeth due to chronic deliberate underfunding and understaffing, has an EXTREME backlog of cases from having lacked a quorum for the better part of a year.
Third, even if the FEC was otherwise effective, this is TRUMP we’re talking about here. He’s getting away with TONS of campaign finance fraud and legal misuse of donations as is.
