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Why is America cursed with such a feeble opposition
party? In the context of European politics, our Democrats would
be regarded as a rightwing party, while our Republicans would
be a far-right fringe group. Here we can choose between the
pro-war big business party that supports gun rights but not gay
rights, or the pro-war big business party that supports gay rights
but not gun rights.
The more extreme the Republicans get, the angrier I get
at the Democrats. They keep compromising on bad legislation,
punting close elections, and attacking each other instead of
attacking the GOP. Whenever the Demos lose an election
(and too often, after they win one) they decide that the lesson
is that they must move closer to “the center." This just allows
the Republicans to move even further to the right, and the
GOP's old stance then becomes the new “center."
In contrast, when the Republicans lose, they redouble
their efforts. They attack the legitimacy of the winner, raise more
money for the next fight, and stick to their core principles: lower­
ing taxes, slashing social spending, and beefing up the military.
Whether voters agree with them or not, they “know" that the
GOP stands for these things.
It doesn't even matter that working people end up paying
higher taxes at the local and state levels to pay for the GOP’s tax
cuts for the rich. It doesn’t matter that “compassionate conserva­
tives" promise to boost popular social programs like Pell Grants
or AIDS research, and then pull away the football after the
election. And it certainly doesn’t matter that the Repubs throw
money at useless obsolete weapons systems while cutting
combat pay or veterans’ benefits.
What matters is that the Republicans have an image,
reinforced by our media culture, as tax-cutters who go after
welfare freeloaders, and who are tough guys on military issues.
What is the Democrats' public image on taxes, social issues or
military spending? It’s all over the map.
It has to be said that the Clinton administration set the
precedent for too many of the Bush administration's worst
excesses. Curbing civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism?
Check. Going to war under false pretenses without UN approval?
Check Turning regulatory agencies over to polluters? Check.
Obviously the Clintonistas weren't as fanatic as Bush’s neocons
on these issues, but they helped set the stage for the predations
to come.
Democrats in Congress have teamed up with Republi­
cans to bring us some truly atrocious bills. Under Clinton we had
welfare reform, NAFTA and GATT, anti-terror and anti-crime bills
that gutted the Bill of Rights, and the nasty Telecommunications
Act of 1996 Under Bush, the Democrats have rolled over for a
smorgasbord of tax cuts, an underfunded education bill, the
Patriot Act, the Iraq War Resolution, and a Trojan Horse of a
Medicare bill. The Demos have enabled a so-called “tort reform”
that defunds a large part of their donor base and acquiesced in
a bankruptcy bill that attacks the interests of their key constit­
uency.
It’s true that a majority of these bills were opposed by
a majority of Demos, but enough of them crossed over for the
GOP to claim bipartisan support. Ironically, the GOP then turned
on the Democrats who had cooperated with them, arguing that
their moves to the right showed that their home districts needed
more conservative representation.What the donkey party doesn’t
understand is that the rules have changed: the GOP doesn’t
want to work together, they want to crush all opposition.
The GOP have held both houses of Congress for all
but two of the past ten years. In that time they’ve changed the
standards for what constitutes an impeachable offense, changed
the precedent on redistricting House seats, changed the criteria
for staging recall elections, changed the process for confirming
or rejecting federal judges, and changed the rules whether
indicted Congressmembers can serve in leadership positions.
They’re prepared to change the rules on filibusters, and will
change these rules back and forth to suit their purposes.
While wealthy liberals donate money to a network of
nonprofits like NOW, Greenpeace or Common Cause, wealthy
conservatives have spent decades building up a network of
think tanks and media outlets dedicated to attacking the very
legitimacy of liberalism. Bewildered liberals are only now begin­
ning to play catch-up. And after the loathsome vote suppression
and vile attack campaigns mounted by the GOP in 2000 and
2002, the Democrats should have learned by 2004 that their only
hope of survival was to go for the jugular.
Instead they inexplicably took the high road, presenting
a feel-good convention and a series of positive TV ads. Kerry’s
incisive debate performances could not erase the advantages
given to Bush by the corporate media establishment. The media
enabled Bush by promoting the myths of Al Gore as a serial
exaggerator and John Kerry as flip-flopper, while George Bush
got away with far bigger lies and policy reversals. The media
helped bury Howard Dean by portraying him as an unstable
radical, while the Democratic establishment breathed a sigh
of relief. Then the Demos nominated a war hero who stood by
silently as Karl Rove’s minions demolished his war hero image.
To beat Bush, the Democrats should have been on
offense all year. Moreover, the proven lies of George Bush and
the debacle of the Florida election theft should have been
merged into a hybrid message: that Jim Crow Republicans can't
be trusted to run free and fair elections. Not only do they lie and
cheat but they win by keeping minority votes from being counted.
Forgoing this opportunity left the Demos unable to either prevent
or contest the more audacious fraud of 2004
There are signs now that the Democrats are starting to
get it: Their leadership under Howard Dean and Harry Reid is
more combative, their party discipline is stronger and their
grassroots funding initiatives may allow them some independ­
ence from corporate agendas It’s too soon to say if this will allow
them to regroup from their losses.
But it would be nice to have at least one party that says
the USA doesn't need to be an empire, that the global economy
ought not to be organized according to Reaganomics, and that
a progressive tax system and robust safety net would benefit us
all. If the Democratic Party can't save us from returning to the
Gilded Age, Manifest Destiny and the Robber Barons, maybe the
best thing they could do is just disband. If we have to live under
one-party rule and fixed elections, why maintain the illusion of
democracy?
-MARK ZEPEZAUER
‘I beg your pardon,” said Alice, “but which one of you is the Democrat?’
5 IDEAS FO R ELECTORAL REFORM
BY MARK ZEPEZAUER
Sure, the Mexican election was a huge mess, but we
can't really talk, can we? A wildly irregular vote counting process,
an outcome where nobody really knows who won, a “winner”
who had obviously engaged in massive electoral chicanery?
Been there, done that.
Right here in the US of A we have one of the most
dysfunctional electoral systems in the Western world —
but hey, at least we look good compared to Zimbabwe and
Myanmar. To elect a President, we don’t just go through 50
different state elections, but some 170,000 different precincts,
each of them run by local officials with varying degrees of
partisanship, corruption, obtuse contempt for democracy,
and fallible voting machinery.
Still, we could learn a thing or two from our neighbors
— to the north, that is The Canadians can count (and recount!)
a national election in about four hours. They do this using a
unique voting technology known as the paper ballot. Each vote
is marked with an X, the same ballot format is used nationwide,
and every precinct hand-counts the results in public in front
of witnesses, and continues recounting them until there is no
dispute as to the tally Four hours. Done.
Compare this, not just to the failure rates for punch-card
and optical-scan ballots, but to the nightmare of having our votes
counted on hackable computers owned by partisans of a particu­
lar political party (symbolized by an elephant), with the software
controlling the process kept secret due to corporate proprietary
rights, and the results tallied in secret, and then simply reacces­
sed from the same insecure hard-drive if a recount is called for.
Of course, that ain’t the half of it, because as discussed
before, the system for selecting and promoting candidates is
as dysfunctional as the system for counting the votes. There
is virtually no aspect of our current system that couldn't be
reformed, and while some of the obvious solutions are damn
near impossible to enact — especially with that elephant party
in control of all three branches — others are at least somewhat
feasible. Let's run through some of each kind, in no particular
order.
Direct elections: The Electoral College is an historical
anomaly, and no other nation on earth has decided to emulate it.
It produces outcomes where voters in a handful of small states
have more say than those in more populated jurisdictions. It has
given the White House to the loser of the popular vote on several
occasions, and distorts The campaigning process so that candid­
ates generally ignore places like New York,Texas and California.
Until recently it was agreed that it would be all but impossible to
abolish the EC, since at least some of the small states would
have to sign off on a constitutional amendment
Now it looks as though an end-run around the College
is possible, since the Constitution gives each state the right to
decide howto apportion its electoral votes. If the ten largest
states agreed amongst themselves to give their electoral votes
to the same candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide,
the mathematics of the EC would become a moot point. Had
such a system been in place six years ago, Albert Gore, Jr.
would have been elected the 43rd President A bill to enact
this proposal is before the California legislature Pass it.
Clean elections: Arizona and Maine have enacted
clean elections laws that give full public financing to candidates
who establish their credibility by collecting a minimum number of
small contributions from ordinary voters. Candidates can opt out
of the system and raise their money from the big boys, but the
public financing of their opponents will grow proportionately.
Combine a nationwide version of this with a mandate for free
advertising for valid candidates over the nation's airwaves, and
you've gone a long way towards establishing a more level
playing field. The net result in Arizona and Maine has been a
greater diversity of candidates, though speaking as an Arizonan,
it may be awhile before the quality of our legislature improves
enough to make a difference Still, compared to the Byzantine
reporting requirements of the McCain-Feingold reform, which
even Senator McCain is accused of violating, this has the beauty
of simplicity.
Greater access: African-Americans and other minorities
have had their votes suppressed since the ink on the 15th
Amendment began to dry, a shameful legacy that continues to
this day. People have fought in the streets and died for the right
to register and vote, and we owe it to them to make it easier to
do so. Plenty of countries have same-day registration without
major difficulties. Plenty of countries make Election Day a
national holiday so people don’t have to give up work to exercise
their franchise. Plenty of countries have universal poll closing
times across time zones, and keep polling places open for 24 to
48 hours to improve access. Is there some reason we couldn’t
do these things? Hint: it has big ears and a long trunk.
Not only that, but excluding felons from the franchise has
a peculiar effect when you combine that with disproportionate
sentencing in the War on Drugs: lots and lots of black males lose
the right to vote. At the very least, that right should be automatic­
ally reinstated once the ex-con has paid his/her debt to society,
rather than requiring the voter to jump through hoops in order
to win back their rights. Coincidentally, towns with large prisons,
public or private, are allowed to use the warm bodies within
when reapportioning Congressional districts on the basis of
population — even though many of the residents are ineligible
to vote.
Proportional representation: There are only a handful
of competitive Congressional districts in the country, because
incumbents have gerrymandered this nation’s map within an inch
of its life using sophisticated mapping software to carve out safe
districts for one party or another. Rather than go through the
highly politicized process of reapportionment once every decade
— or, as Tom DeLay’s example suggests, every time a state
legislature changes hands — why not do away with districts
altogether? Simply allocate the seats for each state based on
a party slate’s proportion of the vote.
That is, if the elephant’s party gets 60% of the vote in
Texas, give them 60% of the seats. And if the Greens get 5%
of the vote in California, give them 5% of the seats. That elimin­
ates gerrymandering forever, though it doubtless creates new
problems. Some of these could be ameliorated by increasing
the number of available seats in the House, something the
Constitution suggests we do from time to time, but which hasn't
happened in about a hundred years. To have each represent­
ative serving the same number of constituents as they did in
1910, we'd have to triple the size of the House (to about 1300
seats). One side effect of this would be to make elections in
each district much less expensive.
Instant runoffs: The city of San Francisco and many
other jurisdictions have experimented with this system, in which
voters weigh or rank their choices among a list of candidates.
If no candidate gets a majority, the last-place candidate is
eliminated, and his or her votes are distributed to the others
based on whom his or her voters had named as their second
choice. This continues winnowing out minor candidates, until
a winner is selected This might double the length of Canadian
count to eight hours, but would have the virtue of ending the
“spoiler" role of third party candidates. That is, you could vote
for your favorite candidate in good conscience, even knowing
he or she didn't have a chance to win, but knowing that if your
second (or third) choice did win, he or she would know where
their votes came from.
This would have, the effect of building some interesting
coalitions. Combine this with fusion voting, as in New York
state, which allows multiple parties to endorse the same
candidate, so that, again, the winner gets a better picture of
different constituencies to which she or he is beholden. Add in
a series of nationwide regional primaries (south, west, northeast,
southwest, central) spaced a month or so apart, and then use
instant runoff voting (IRV) to pick a President from a list of the
five or six top candidates. Depending on how many of the other
reforms discussed above had passed, you could get some
very different results. In 2000, it probably would have given the
election to McCain, which is arguably somewhat better than
what we got instead
Now, back in the real world, we have no hope of getting
any of this considered, let alone passed, unless we can get that
elephant’s foot off the levers of power. And that means working
with the maddingly flawed system we’ve got in place. But what
the hell: Rome wasn’t sacked in a day
Mark Zepezauer wrote this as an editorial for the Santa
Cruz Comic News, published in Santa Cruz, California.