The Orbis

Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: News/Features

As we inch closer to knowing for certain who will be the Democratic nominee for president, we might also scratch our heads at Ralph Nader's announcement that he will again enter the presidential race. Here is a man hated by some Democrats with more intensity than they direct even at Republican opponents. Is Nader simply a masochist? Or does he have a larger point to make with a hopeless presidential run?

In this issue, the Orbis staff looks at some troubling electoral issues that have reemerged during this primary cycle, including the undemocratic nature of primaries with superdelegates and election fraud. These are problems that are not new, and they tend to crop up in different ways in each election. Similarly, love him or hate him, Nader's presidential bids always at least remind me how limiting the dominance of a two-party, winner-take-all system can be on our politics. This too is an issue that seems to reemerge in our discourse every election cycle, and making any sort of reform seems difficult, but I think remembering these issues are important even after election day is the key. Asking for fair, democratic elections is really the very minimum standard we should expect to achieve, and we should be worried about that in between elections as well as in their midst.

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