America's Battle With Electoral Dysfunction

America’s Battle with Electoral Dysfunction.

It’s election day in many places, including my home state of Oregon.

My email is littered with stories of multiple ballots showing up at people’s houses, and people out of state still receiving an Oregon ballot.

In Maryland, tens of thousands of ballots were mixed up and messed up.

We are experiencing a national outbreak of Electoral Dysfunction.

Electoral dysfunction (ED), sometimes called election impotence, is the consistent inability to get or maintain an election that is firm enough to hold up to scrutiny. Experiencing occasional trouble is normal, but persistent ED often points to an underlying physical or psychological health condition.

Our election system is broken.

We listen to the media, the White House, and the political pundits and wonder why we keep electing people who don’t represent us.

Politicians talk of remedies for Electoral Dysfunction, but rather than doing the “hard work” it takes to fix the system, we are handed a little blue pill and sent on our way.

We treat the symptoms but never look at the psychological or spiritual aspects of the condition that is destroying our democracy.

The causes of electoral dysfunction can be traced to a lack of confidence.

Trust is a major component of maintaining a successful election.

We don’t trust our leaders, and without trust, it’s hard to keep it up.

We’d rather give up than fix the system.

When you participate in an election and later find out the thing was rigged, the next time, that’s all you think about, and the cycle is repeated.

Perhaps the reason our elections are so dysfunctional is that we are looking for the wrong qualifications for our leaders.

I’m convinced the reason electoral dysfunction is so prevalent in our system is that we are too focused on the act of finding a candidate who will save us.

We target the best-looking candidates, the people with money, name familiarity, and those who tell us what we want to hear.

Their messages excite us, stir us up, and yet when it’s all over, it’s not enough to maintain the election.

Nothing changes.

A friend heard my frustration with all of this and led me to the 5th chapter of Matthew in the Bible.

It doesn’t talk about electoral dysfunction, but it does spell out God’s qualifications for a great leader.

It says: Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and search for righteousness. Blessed are the compassionate. Blessed are the PEACEMAKERS. Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’sake.

Wow, how many of our leaders reflect any of those qualities?

No wonder few people are excited about the election process.

No wonder so many have given up, and rather than find a cure, allow electoral dysfunction to win.

One reason may be another tidbit God gives us in His list of blessings.

“Blessed are you when they reproach and persecute you, and falsely say every wicked word against you, for My sake.”

Let that soak in for a minute.

Perhaps we’re looking for the wrong character in our elected leaders.

Maybe the candidates with the most money, the best chance to win, and the pundits’ obvious pick, are not out for our best interest.

Electoral Dysfunction is treatable.

Participation, even when everything doesn’t work right, is a start.

The cure is deeper.

It’s a heart issue.

We want to make America great again; that means we need His blessing.

Do our leaders reflect those things or repel them?

What is meekness?

What is a peacemaker?

Is compassion reflected in their tone?

Look at those being persecuted for righteousness sake.

And then, and only then, cast your ballot.

We don’t have to be controlled by electoral dysfunction.

But it’s not something that’s just going to go away with the next brand of leadership or party.

The solution is a lot of hard work.