America's Election Handbook 2024 is a crucial guide for today's voters. It delivers an unbiased, deep dive into the top twenty issues of the upcoming election, all through the lens of our founding principles. Years of exacting research made this truth clear: only through replacing confrontation with conversation can America heal its divisions.
This book is crafted to break down barriers, offering everyone the means for well-informed, balanced decision-making and fostering environments where constructive dialogue thrives. Civil discourse is not just a path to change—it's the foundation of our collective progress.
This isn't a campaign for your vote but for your voice—informed, considered, and impactful. Dive into this essential read, enrich your perspective, and join a movement toward a unified, forward-moving America. The time for change is now; let your journey start with America's Election Handbook 2024.
America's Election Handbook 2024 is a crucial guide for today's voters. It delivers an unbiased, deep dive into the top twenty issues of the upcoming election, all through the lens of our founding principles. Years of exacting research made this truth clear: only through replacing confrontation with conversation can America heal its divisions.
This book is crafted to break down barriers, offering everyone the means for well-informed, balanced decision-making and fostering environments where constructive dialogue thrives. Civil discourse is not just a path to change—it's the foundation of our collective progress.
This isn't a campaign for your vote but for your voice—informed, considered, and impactful. Dive into this essential read, enrich your perspective, and join a movement toward a unified, forward-moving America. The time for change is now; let your journey start with America's Election Handbook 2024.
Representation Dilution
Since the days of our founders, the voice of the people is being heard less and less.
Change in Ratio of Citizens to Representatives
For example, the number of representatives has not kept up with the growth of our population. When our government was founded, one house member was elected for every 20,000 citizens. This number was later amended to 30,000, and then to 40,000, after which Congress stopped amending the rule. If we still had one representative for every 40,000 citizens today, the number of representatives in Congress would be 8,298. Instead, each of the 345 representatives represents on average nearly a million people. There is no way that they can adequately represent us while understanding and reflecting the needs of a million diverse people. One might argue that representing a valid illustrative sample of a million people is as good as representing each of them, but that makes each of us feel like a number not a citizen, and we all know how unreliable polls are.
Congress only nominally represents America’s citizens in the creation and passage of laws. The best we can do is to vote for a political party that represents as much of our viewpoint as possible. Unfortunately, most of us do not know what all our viewpoints need to be or do not know enough about the positions of our preferred political party. So, we vote for the party closest to our opinions based on what we hear from friends or those who influence our lives, TV, news sources, or social media, most of which is slanted toward a specific political agenda (i.e., propaganda) or badly biased. Or we vote against the party whose positions we perceive as unfavorable, often influenced by that party’s pundits, negative propaganda, and media buzzwords. As a result, we may find ourselves choosing the lesser of two evils and in doing so we go against our own values.
Change in Ratio of Senators to Citizens
The House of Representatives is not the only instance of our representation being diluted. The number of states in America has grown from 13 to 50 since the founding of our country, and the number of senators has grown from 26 to 100. This is appropriate because according to John Adams, senators are intended to represent the interests of the states. However, each senator who had to represent about 25,000 people in 1787, on average, now must represent more than six million citizens. We would need 12,220 senators to have the same level of representation as we had originally. Or, alternatively, the states would need to develop some system to accurately inform their senators of the needs of their citizens.
Members of Congress are already so distant from the people they represent that they are now highly susceptible to the influence of the limited few who do have access to them – lobbyists and wealthy donors. Kristina Karamo, Michigan’s Republican party chairwoman, said of their party’s top donors, “You are required to do their bidding to get their funds, and so we just simply wind up destroying the country slower than the Democrats.”69-01 And, of course, the needs of different parts of the country differ widely (urban Chicago versus downstate agricultural Illinois, for example).
In politics, voters sometimes reevaluate their principles and beliefs. Just as Catholics may reconsider their positions on issues such as priestly celibacy or the role of women in the clergy, voters may contemplate their stances on matters such as population control versus birth control, the importance of stem cell research for medical advancements, or the equal treatment of LGBTQ individuals. Reevaluating one’s political principles and evolving perspectives can be a natural part of personal growth. Similarly, as voters, we are forced to compromise our standards when we pick one of just two political parties who have a realistic chance of winning. In considering the issues of the day and trying to sort out the genuine concerns from the hype, we should be mindful of our basic American principles: We need a better form of representation – a new way of representation.
In 2024, America has entered a crucial year; the upcoming election in November will bring seismic change to not only the nation, but perhaps the entire planet. Charles Patton aims to cut through the polarisation and sensational stories with an extended handbook. For the most part, he succeeds.
Split into three main parts, the handbook starts by discussing the history of American democracy, laying out the situation the founding fathers dealt with in the late 1700s. This context serves up an important and reflective opening as the reader considers how the nation was formed and what it means in the modern day. How relevant is the constitution? What did Jefferson, Adams and other key individuals mean when talking about adapting this document over time?
From here parts 2 and 3 delve headlong into the Democrats and Republicans, explaining the party lines on every single issue affecting the US today. From the economy to military, immigration to abortion, every single point of debate is included and presented in a clear, unfiltered manner. Patton makes frequent use of boxes to put the two party perspectives side-by-side while also putting many of his own proposals to the reader. He never slips into favouring one party over the other while encouraging voters to engage in their own critical thinking skills.
The only major gap in the book is potential side actors and more radical politicians currently influencing the bigger picture. The party line is not necessarily shared consistently and other events can muddy the water. Misinformation, foreign hacking, political attacks on social media; all of these have become major concerns in recent years. Going into these elements may have tipped into bias or thrown the objective viewpoint off-balance, but it would have been helpful to include them as they may have a dramatic effect on the way the 2024 election is conducted.
Recommended?
YES: With the exception of major curveballs and actors that could throw a spanner into the works of democratic procedure, America's Election Handbook 2024 is detailed, well-researched and balanced. It lays out the two major parties and their positions while promoting a constructive and rational understanding. It's highly recommended for Americans who are set to vote in November this year.