Voting for Baseball All Stars
By Bob Branco
I really shouldn’t have to say this, but I will say it anyway in order to make the point. When we vote for President of the United States, Mayor, High School Class President, corporate board member or any other elected office, each of us casts one vote. I am not going to say any more about that because there is nothing further to explain.
As simple a concept as this is, Major League Baseball apparently doesn’t get it. Whether it knows better or not, Baseball makes a mockery out of the voting process when it comes to selecting players to participate in the annual Major League all-star game. When we are asked to vote for our favorite players, we are allowed to vote once, twice, or even a thousand times. You can sit at your computer or use your smart device and vote for the same player all day long. How does a reputable organization such as Major League Baseball think that this makes sense? What happened to fairness and proper procedure? I’m pretty sure that the players don’t care. If I am a player with reasonable talent and want to play in the all-star game very badly, I would be thrilled to know that you can vote for me a thousand times so I can get on the team.
We have all this wonderful technology out there, so I am very sure that those people who keep encouraging me to accept this technology would know that there must be a way to prevent us from voting more than once. Why not? Today’s technology is so amazing that there has to be some mechanism to stop one person from voting again for the same individual. Either we haven’t progressed to that point or Major league Baseball is extremely lax in its thinking. Can you imagine if the Presidential elections were run that way? Let’s say that Donald Trump was elected because someone was allowed to vote for him ten thousand times. What a warped political process that would be.
I know that some people don’t mind how the baseball all-star players are selected. They would likely tell me that if I didn’t want another player on the team that was voted for ten thousand times by one person, then I should vote for someone else ten thousand times so that the player could be replaced. This is so ludicrous that I feel like screaming.
