We often hear that in a democracy, a majority rules. It should be more properly stated that in a democracy, a majority of those who choose to participate rule.
On Saturday, approximately 1.3 million people went to the polls to determine who would guide Louisiana’s government for the next four years.
Assuming that the current population of our state is 4.3 million (adjusted by 200,000 to allow for the impact of the flooding of New Orleans by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), then approximately 30 percent of the people in LA participated in the democratic process. Thus, in the case of our next governor, 16.5% of the population of LA voted to make Bobby Jindal our next governor.
The media and pundits refer to Jindal’s win as a “mandate.” It was not a “mandate” if one believes in democracy as a form of government. Even if it was, what was the mandate?
Jindal won convincingly. I look forward with an open-mind to learning what are his plans (and the implementation thereof) for taking our state from the bottom, not to the “Southern Average,” but to the top state in the country.
C.B.
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