My fellow Americans, I bring you a better way of choosing our leaders.

It’s really quite simple. Every ten years, the federal government conducts a constitutionally mandated Census that tells us all we’d ever need to know about ourselves. From there, the route to electoral liberation is obvious: Why not just match our nation’s demographic groups with the politicians who obviously represent these groups?

We know, for example, that union members are represented by the Democratic Party. Gun owners are Republicans. Working families are single-handedly served by Tom Daschle, while small-business owners support Trent Lott. African Americans? Liberal. White Southern Christians? Conservative.

Why spend time choosing our leaders when they have already chosen us? The Census can tell us what we are, and our self-appointed leaders can tell us what we want.

Of course, there might be some squabbling over who actually gets to represent whom. In fact, if the contested constituencies were added up, we’d probably arrive at a U.S. population that rivals that of China. So maybe there are flaws in my plan. Or maybe we just need more data.

The funny thing about elections is that they’re not decided by Census results or any other demographic data. All the statistics in the world might tell us that the CEOs of Texaco and Exxon Mobil should be drooling over Bush, but when they head to their polling stations in 2004, they’ll have every right to choose Nader.

Maybe those folks in Palm Beach actually meant to vote for Buchanan.

I’m not suggesting that demographic trends don’t exist. But they are only trends — not the universal truth that much political rhetoric presumes. “The American people” is a popular phrase that can be combined with practically any verb for maximum persuasive effect. “The American people expect us to move expeditiously.” “The American people need,” “The American people understand,” “The American people demand.”

President Bush knows what you and I are thinking, even better than I do. I was surprised to learn, for example, that I “want action on an agenda of economic growth, energy and dependence, patients’ rights, education, [and] faith-based legislation.” And Bush’s press secretary assures me that, “The President is carrying the American people’s message to Congress.”

Campus politicians are not immune to this omniscience. As an observer of and occasional participant in student government, I have sat through meetings in which representatives boldly claimed the exclusive support of “the students,” and I have seen how elections with turnouts of less than 10 percent have produced “mandates.”

But most disturbingly, I have observed the willingness of many campus leaders to homogenize their purported constituencies for the sake of political expediency. I have witnessed this again over the last couple weeks, as student groups minimize the richness of their own diversity in an effort to polarize the funding debate.

Cutting funding to MEChA, for example, is challenged as “a movement to silence the voice of Chicano students,” not a regrettable action that hurts a diverse and credible student organization. I find it difficult to believe that Chicano/a students have only one voice on campus.

Stereotyping is dangerous, regardless of who does it.

There is a fine line between statistics and stereotypes. Statistics is a science; it provides a tool with which to see the trees for the forest and, in so doing, to better understand our world. Stereotypes are about power; they blur differences and diversity to demean a group or create the illusion of total solidarity where it does not exist.

To those who pursue the latter, I would only say, “You don’t represent me.”

After all, my readers demand nothing less.

— Bryant Walker Smith (bsmith@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in civil engineering.