Campaigns in a Limited Democracy

In the United States there are still notable deficiencies in the organization, supervision and function of the institutions in charge of organizing the election — so much so that in many ways, the Mexican electoral system is more advanced. To begin with, the Federal Election Commission has neither autonomy nor a permanent national structure which gives it legitimacy in all the states; nor does there exist a nationally issued photo ID that matches the electoral register.

The country is an indirect democracy, where state-wide electoral votes, without regard to the demographic weight of each one, have more weight than the direct votes of the citizens at the polls. It is a system where fraud is possible and not always punished, as was seen in Florida during George W. Bush’s 2000 election, where, in the end, the Supreme Court confirmed his victory.

There are entire regions and various states where one party — either Democrat or Republican — dominates to such a degree that one could speak of a “system of party hegemony,” states where political patronage, in the purest sense of the term, is a fundamental aspect of politics.

In the American model of campaign finance, public financing is optional. If the candidates choose private financing, as is the case with Obama and Romney, there is no limit on campaign spending. As in many countries, the candidate’s success depends on the resources he is able to raise, only in the United States this activity is carried out in the clear light of day because it is considered legitimate. The result is that in this campaign Barack Obama has raised 6.5 billion Mexican pesos ($500 million); Mitt Romney is approaching this figure in the final weeks of the campaign.

Private sponsorship of presidential campaigns is enormous and also implies a commitment to the policies that the winner will implement. In the case of Romney, his support comes mainly from businessmen in the oil and financial industries, while Obama has sought affinities in the telecommunications industry and with professional groups such as corporate lawyers. The 2012 United States presidential election will probably be the most expensive election that the country has seen in almost two centuries of electoral democracy.

In the media, impartiality is not required; it is evident that there are television networks which openly favor one candidate or the other. However, it seems that this open debate, in which preferences are clearly expressed, leaves the voters satisfied. When one watches the candidates debate and the intensity with which people argue about their preference for Obama or Romney, or about the failings of the policies of the Democrats or Republicans, one gets the impression that the citizens are really quite interested in forming an opinion on the options offered by the candidates. It would seem paradoxical that in opinion polls U.S. voters show a preference for the candidate who offers to cut social security.

Beyond these superficial reflections, there remain questions that we should try to answer for the future of our own democracy, because if the electoral democracy in the United States is so imperfect from the institutional point of view and the Mexican institutions are apparently more advanced, what is it that makes the U.S. democracy so stable? It seems to me that this could be due to the two-party character of the U.S. democracy, which has led to the elimination of positions on the extreme right and left — and even the moderate left — leaving only the center, where the alternation between Republicans and Democrats means very few changes at the end of the day. Is it the fact that Americans have resigned themselves to accepting only these two options which keeps their democracy stable?