Question

Explain the relationship between fair and free election in democracy

Answer 1

Think of elections as the critical part of a competitive game. After all, we have defined the ideal economic situation as “free market competition.” And the common law legal tradition is an adversarial game. So also we have designed our political system as a competitive game. And this is a good thing, considering that all the alternatives leave to some form of autocracy or dictatorship. So all you have to do figure out what are the conditions of a good game are and you’ve got it for free and fair elections. I’ll describe just two such conditions here. The first is that good games MUST have clear rules enforced by impartial judges and referees. Second, a good game must have relative equality among the competitors. Not a good game when the New England Patriots play, say, Harvard. This is why human equality is such an important value to maintain in political society, and why allowing rich people to have much more political power say than poor people in election campaigns is destructively wrong. And speaking of the New England Patriots, they are a great example of why the game needs impartial referees. They cheat whenever they can get away with it, and they diminish our confidence in the game unless they are caught and punished.