The case for Blind Voting in the 2020 Election.
It may make it as boring as jury duty, but we will have actual quality candidates.
The political marathon to the White House is leaving us with candidates more concerned with publicity, popularity, and percentages rather than the one “p” word that really matters: policy.
Is this all a result of the type of people that make up our society? Or is it because of the selection process that we rely on to find the right people to govern our society?
We need a system of selecting the candidates for our next commander-in-chief that is based on the positions taken on current issues and their perseverance to pursue these policies, rather than the physical characteristics or the mud-slinging tactics used to garner support against their opponents.
How do we fix this?
We start by changing how the primaries are conducted. An independent body should be created that registers those running for president which would include three phases: Heath Screening, Security Clearance Screening, and an Interview.
First: a health screening
A panel of independent doctors to run health screenings on interested candidates. This panel will be made up of experts in not only physical health but also mental health and stamina.
The panel of doctors will be unknown to the public and administer physical exams, look at previous health records, and assess the overall mental and physical health of the individual. Then, with a pass or fail grade, they will be allowed to continue to the next stage. As of now, there is no regulation that a candidate running for office must hold a security clearance, nor must they possess one when they secure their party nomination and receive national security briefings by US intelligence officers. This step would assess the credibility and reliability of the candidate, while also allowing the electorate to trust that this candidate is genuine and authentic.
Second: a Security Clearance Interview
This interview will be done by a panel of experienced Security Clearance investigators. The process will be exactly the same as if you were applying for a civil or foreign service position. The Security Clearance process will also look for a candidate's main public weaknesses (e.g. racist tweets, sexual assault lawsuits, default on loans, tax returns, etc.).
This part of the process will make certain that candidates are eligible for a Top Secret Clearance and higher. The public weaknesses that are uncovered will not be published but will need to be explained during the process.
Third: a Panel Interview
A double-blind panel will be held when interviewing prospective candidates on all issues a president will have to take charge of or make policy on. This panel will ask the same question to all candidates to discuss views, takes, and experience on all current policy and future possible matters facing the U.S.
After health and reliability screening comes the real interview. This should be a panel which field questions to the candidates on their positions of foreign and domestic issues. The questions asked should not be the same for any of the candidates, nor should they only be asked in one way to each candidate. The variety of both the same question and overall types of questions will find the true position of the candidates and will eliminate the possibility of memorizing perfect answers from other sources prior to the meeting. Then all of this information would be recorded and published so the public can make their decisions on the candidates.
Candidates will also have to submit written policy memos on all major topics that will come up on the election they are wanting to enter.
Then comes the primary election.
The candidates who passed their interviews and tests will be published by this independent body without their pictures, names, races, ages, political or social affiliations, or any other physical characteristics. The primaries would then be an election of the top two candidates for office, regardless of their political party.
Then once the primary election concludes and the two candidates have been chosen, their names are revealed. Then the voting in the general election continues as usual.
Our presidential candidates today spend the majority of their time working to craft the perfect image of themselves in the shortest and most attention-grabbing sound bite. All of this is done while showing how unhealthy, incompetent, or old their opponent is. Then, the short amount of energy that is left, if any, is dedicated to laying out clear positions on policy and issues that they will have a large influence on once in office.
The candidates who have clear policy positions and actual steps to correct problems in our society are often dismissed as “not looking presidential enough” or some other reason related to publicity and funding.
However, when we look at the men and women who are working non-stop on international relations issues, domestic issues, and everything in between — they have had to go through extensive interviews, testing, and probationary tasks to get to where they are. Why don’t we require this when electing the highest held position in our country’s government?
When asking a voter who they are most likely to vote for and why there is a higher possibility that the voter will remark on a candidate’s physical characteristics (“They look presidential”) or candid remarks about the opponent than what that they see as the future of the country.
In an election where a reality TV star is able to garner as much, if not more, support than a former Secretary of State, it is evident that red herring remarks are more efficient than political experience and perseverance. This isn’t laying blame on either the electorate or the candidate, it is just the end result of the way that our politics and media have evolved together to produce the over yearlong system our country takes to elect the next president.
Gone are the days where the office seeks the candidate, not the candidate seeks the office. Long gone are the days that it would be feasible that the runner-up to the presidential election would simply become the vice president. And even further gone are the days that a fact-checker is used as a threat rather than a necessity.
This new system would shift the focus from judgments of a candidate solely based on things like physical appearance to a true comparison of what each candidate brings to the table.
Yes, we might elect a boring candidate. And yes, this might turn into just another boring obligation, like jury duty, that we have to partake in. However, if we continue to complain about the embarrassing remarks candidates say about each other, or worry about the possible impact these candidates are having on our foes and allies before even being elected, or just tired of the entire charade in general, then maybe it is time to make the candidates go through a more complicated interview process before being elected to one of the highest positions possible in politics.
