Democracy, US Style
- Thread starter Haggis McBagpipe
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Nice! 
Well, in terms of democracy in the United States of America, I would assert that they have some certain undemocratic principles in place — for example, the Electoral College strikes me as a particularly odd institute.
Well, in terms of democracy in the United States of America, I would assert that they have some certain undemocratic principles in place — for example, the Electoral College strikes me as a particularly odd institute.
Rewriting Our Rotten History of Elections
By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted February 15, 2006.
Depending whom you ask, the state of the union's elections are either peachy-keen or in dire straits. With voting irregularities fast becoming the norm, election officials moonlighting as campaign leaders and highly suspicious differences in polling places from region to region, there is an ill-disguised sense that perhaps our democracy is not quite as strong as politicians and their mouthpieces would have you believe.
As of now, with Republicans in control of every branch of the federal government, much of the finger-pointing is aimed at the GOP. After all, if election reform has stalled in Congress since the 2000 election, it's likely that Republicans have built and maintained the roadblocks holding it up.
But it hasn't always been that way; in fact, as recently as 12 years ago, Democrats were the ruling party, riding out the tail end of a political dominance that stretched through much of the century. And Americans voted to give Congress to the GOP partly in response to widespread Democratic corruption. Now that cycle has turned again, and the Republican Party is staring down the barrel of voter wrath.
These kinds of cycles, the regular booms and busts of American politics, are at the heart of Andrew Gumbel's book "Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America," published last year by Nation Books. Gumbel, a reporter for the British newspaper the Independent, wrote extensively about the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. But in Steal This Vote, he looks at elections throughout this country's history, and although the picture he paints is not pretty, it offers solid hope for solutions. Gumbel spoke with AlterNet recently on the phone from Los Angeles.
Matthew Wheeland: I know this is a terribly complex and loaded question, but I feel like I have to ask you this first, to get it out of the way: Do you think that the 2004 election was stolen?
Andrew Gumbel: Well, a lot of people saw the kind of shenanigans that went on in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, and were so appalled by what they saw that they concluded that the outcome of the election must have been compromised.
I think the question that you've asked, which a lot of people have asked, is actually the wrong one. And the reason for that is that we have a vast amount of evidence that the Republican Party in particular played very dirty in Ohio, they played very dirty in Florida. And the really urgent thing that needs to be addressed are those tactics and the rules that make those tactics possible, and in particular the political structure that enables the party in power with the means to be able to play dirty to do so. There's no real oversight by Congress or anybody else on how elections are conducted on the state and local level. That's the key point that needs addressing.
As far as the outcome of the results is concerned, we have the evidence about crazy rules that were issued by the secretary of state in Ohio, who was doubling as the co-chair of George Bush's reelection campaign. We have evidence of strange things going on in certain counties, as regards the counts, the functioning of the computer tabulation machines, the distribution of the machines to enable people to vote in the first place, the number of provisional ballots were issued, the number of provisional ballots that were rejected, both of which were abnormally high in Ohio and on and on and on.
These add up to a deeply dysfunctional electoral system. They do not, however, add up to proof that the election was stolen. The numbers just aren't there.
And you ask anybody, you ask Mark Crispin Miller, you ask Bob Fitrakis, any of the people running around, desperately wanting to believe that Kerry was the rightful winner of the election. They don't have the evidence either. When you press them, they will admit that they don't, and to insist that because there was this manipulation of the system, therefore the outcome is wrong, I think is absolutely disastrous in terms of political strategy.
Then you are guaranteeing yourself marginal status, and it means that the Republican Party and others who want to believe that the voting reform movement is somehow a bunch of kooks on the extreme left fringe making outrageous claims that they can't back up only get extra evidence to further those allegations.
What we need is very cool, clear accusations for which there is substantiating evidence in terms of the various malfeasance and foul play and lack of oversight. That needs to be the focus. This would create a situation where you can get on board not only Democrats who wish that George Bush hadn't been reelected for a second term, but also Republicans, because if we're talking about voting rights, then it is of burning interest to all voters, not just voters from one party or on one side of the political spectrum.
MW: I'll come back to this in a minute, but I think that one of the strengths of your book is that it shows that it is not limited to either side. But at the same time I can see how it's easy to reduce all these circumstances of shady play or just partisan politics structure for election systems to this -- it was stolen, it was this conspiracy, and it's very comforting for people to be able to limit it to that.
AG: I think you're absolutely right. It is very comforting for people, and it becomes a substitute for other kinds of political desires, most notably the desire not to have George Bush president anymore. But I think strategically it's a big mistake.
Having said that, lets not make any bones about it -- the Republicans are in control in some of the key states, they're obviously in control in the Congress, in the White House, and what I've discovered in the course of my historical research is that the problem is not with one party rather than the other. It's not that the Republicans are inherently bad and the Democrats are inherently better, or for that matter, vice versa.
What it is is a problem with the two-party system where one party is in control and where the stakes are high enough to give them the motivation to try and cheat in close races. That's where you're going to see the shenanigans.
If you look at the historical record, it really doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans in charge. Where those conditions exist, cheating happens. There are fundamental underlying structural problem with the U.S. electoral system that have not been addressed ever, and we're seeing the fruit of them now.
I would say that there are a couple of things that are different about the situation that we're in at the moment. One is that both parties have a long history of being surprisingly non-ideological, certainly by European standards. Both parties represent a broad coalition, very different interests on the state and local level across the country that have come together in these two big grab bags in the Republican and Democratic parties.
I do feel that that's been changing in the last few years, and its been the Republicans that have been making a run on that. They've become highly ideological. It's a curious kind of ideology, unlike European parties where the ideology is something that is open and shared by the supporters and by the party leaders alike. I think what you see is an ideology that exists on the level of leadership in the Republican Party but isn't necessarily represented in their communications to the voters or in the motivations that the voters have in voting for the Republicans. It's a sort of intriguing setup.
MW: Sure, like even if you were to spell out the agenda of the Republican leadership, most of the items on their to-do list would not likely be repeated on your everyday Republican voter's list of things they want to accomplish.
AG: Right, they have this rhetoric. This very populist rhetoric which is what both parties talking about standing up for American values and the common man against the nasty elitist liberals, where in fact, when you look at what they're doing, they're representing corporate interests. Very much it's a matter of defensive power against popular interest in my view, and I think in the view of a lot of people on the left.
But the way this effects the electoral setup is that I think you see that not only do the Republicans have a very specific ideology, but it's an ideology at the leadership level that is based to some degree on a "take no prisoners" attitude to power. And I think you've seen a much greater ruthlessness in the way that they have waged their political battles, including their electoral battles, than you ever did in the past.
One thing I write about in the book is that you've seen evidence of a kind of an unspoken pact between the parties. Neither has ever really talked about the dirty electioneering of the other. For a couple of reasons, one because they both do it, so to reveal the others' secrets is to risk exposure of your own. And also there's this sense that the system needs to be safeguarded, the belief in the civic religion of America as the greatest democracy on earth needs to be upheld, and its in nobody's interest to put a dent in that.
Richard Nixon, after the 1960 election, which a lot of people believed was stolen from him in Illinois and possibly elsewhere, actually took steps to stop a friend of his who was a journalist investigating shenanigans in Illinois and Texas and elsewhere. And his name was Earl Mazo, and he worked for the New York Herald Tribune, and Nixon turned to him and said, "They're very interesting stories that you're writing, Earl, but nobody steals the presidential election in the United States." And I think that sense that we need to preserve the veneer of the greatness of the system is very powerful.
That has changed to some degree since the 2000 election, I think. The deep concern over the tactics that were deployed in Florida by the Republicans and the strong feeling, certainly, among Democrats. And I think among many, many foreign observers that George Bush didn't win that election for a number of reasons has blown open this issue, and then on the heels of that was all the concern that has grown up about the safety of a new generation of electronic voting machines. Suddenly, we have the first real debate in this country about how elections are conducted that has ever existed.
MW: You give the example of the 2002 elections, the OSCE's ten-person team that came to monitor elections and all the many obstacles they faced because there are no centralized, national standards conducting elections.
That's right. First of all, one of the things Jimmy Carter talked about was the fact that the United States has no provisions for international observers. Or for that matter, almost no provisions for observers of any kind other than members of the two political parties, and it varies a little bit from county to county, and some counties are more liberal than others, but it is absolutely standard in international electoral procedure to have a provision for international observers.
In fact, the United States, through the OSCE when it conducts monitoring missions, say in the Balkans or in the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, they expect full access for international monitoring. They have no such provision domestically. And yes, you're right, when you see what can happen at the local level, what essentially has happened historically is that the two parties have filled electoral offices with party hacks, usually not the brightest bulbs.
By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted February 15, 2006.
Depending whom you ask, the state of the union's elections are either peachy-keen or in dire straits. With voting irregularities fast becoming the norm, election officials moonlighting as campaign leaders and highly suspicious differences in polling places from region to region, there is an ill-disguised sense that perhaps our democracy is not quite as strong as politicians and their mouthpieces would have you believe.
As of now, with Republicans in control of every branch of the federal government, much of the finger-pointing is aimed at the GOP. After all, if election reform has stalled in Congress since the 2000 election, it's likely that Republicans have built and maintained the roadblocks holding it up.
But it hasn't always been that way; in fact, as recently as 12 years ago, Democrats were the ruling party, riding out the tail end of a political dominance that stretched through much of the century. And Americans voted to give Congress to the GOP partly in response to widespread Democratic corruption. Now that cycle has turned again, and the Republican Party is staring down the barrel of voter wrath.
These kinds of cycles, the regular booms and busts of American politics, are at the heart of Andrew Gumbel's book "Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America," published last year by Nation Books. Gumbel, a reporter for the British newspaper the Independent, wrote extensively about the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. But in Steal This Vote, he looks at elections throughout this country's history, and although the picture he paints is not pretty, it offers solid hope for solutions. Gumbel spoke with AlterNet recently on the phone from Los Angeles.
Matthew Wheeland: I know this is a terribly complex and loaded question, but I feel like I have to ask you this first, to get it out of the way: Do you think that the 2004 election was stolen?
Andrew Gumbel: Well, a lot of people saw the kind of shenanigans that went on in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, and were so appalled by what they saw that they concluded that the outcome of the election must have been compromised.
I think the question that you've asked, which a lot of people have asked, is actually the wrong one. And the reason for that is that we have a vast amount of evidence that the Republican Party in particular played very dirty in Ohio, they played very dirty in Florida. And the really urgent thing that needs to be addressed are those tactics and the rules that make those tactics possible, and in particular the political structure that enables the party in power with the means to be able to play dirty to do so. There's no real oversight by Congress or anybody else on how elections are conducted on the state and local level. That's the key point that needs addressing.
As far as the outcome of the results is concerned, we have the evidence about crazy rules that were issued by the secretary of state in Ohio, who was doubling as the co-chair of George Bush's reelection campaign. We have evidence of strange things going on in certain counties, as regards the counts, the functioning of the computer tabulation machines, the distribution of the machines to enable people to vote in the first place, the number of provisional ballots were issued, the number of provisional ballots that were rejected, both of which were abnormally high in Ohio and on and on and on.
These add up to a deeply dysfunctional electoral system. They do not, however, add up to proof that the election was stolen. The numbers just aren't there.
And you ask anybody, you ask Mark Crispin Miller, you ask Bob Fitrakis, any of the people running around, desperately wanting to believe that Kerry was the rightful winner of the election. They don't have the evidence either. When you press them, they will admit that they don't, and to insist that because there was this manipulation of the system, therefore the outcome is wrong, I think is absolutely disastrous in terms of political strategy.
Then you are guaranteeing yourself marginal status, and it means that the Republican Party and others who want to believe that the voting reform movement is somehow a bunch of kooks on the extreme left fringe making outrageous claims that they can't back up only get extra evidence to further those allegations.
What we need is very cool, clear accusations for which there is substantiating evidence in terms of the various malfeasance and foul play and lack of oversight. That needs to be the focus. This would create a situation where you can get on board not only Democrats who wish that George Bush hadn't been reelected for a second term, but also Republicans, because if we're talking about voting rights, then it is of burning interest to all voters, not just voters from one party or on one side of the political spectrum.
MW: I'll come back to this in a minute, but I think that one of the strengths of your book is that it shows that it is not limited to either side. But at the same time I can see how it's easy to reduce all these circumstances of shady play or just partisan politics structure for election systems to this -- it was stolen, it was this conspiracy, and it's very comforting for people to be able to limit it to that.
AG: I think you're absolutely right. It is very comforting for people, and it becomes a substitute for other kinds of political desires, most notably the desire not to have George Bush president anymore. But I think strategically it's a big mistake.
Having said that, lets not make any bones about it -- the Republicans are in control in some of the key states, they're obviously in control in the Congress, in the White House, and what I've discovered in the course of my historical research is that the problem is not with one party rather than the other. It's not that the Republicans are inherently bad and the Democrats are inherently better, or for that matter, vice versa.
What it is is a problem with the two-party system where one party is in control and where the stakes are high enough to give them the motivation to try and cheat in close races. That's where you're going to see the shenanigans.
If you look at the historical record, it really doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans in charge. Where those conditions exist, cheating happens. There are fundamental underlying structural problem with the U.S. electoral system that have not been addressed ever, and we're seeing the fruit of them now.
I would say that there are a couple of things that are different about the situation that we're in at the moment. One is that both parties have a long history of being surprisingly non-ideological, certainly by European standards. Both parties represent a broad coalition, very different interests on the state and local level across the country that have come together in these two big grab bags in the Republican and Democratic parties.
I do feel that that's been changing in the last few years, and its been the Republicans that have been making a run on that. They've become highly ideological. It's a curious kind of ideology, unlike European parties where the ideology is something that is open and shared by the supporters and by the party leaders alike. I think what you see is an ideology that exists on the level of leadership in the Republican Party but isn't necessarily represented in their communications to the voters or in the motivations that the voters have in voting for the Republicans. It's a sort of intriguing setup.
MW: Sure, like even if you were to spell out the agenda of the Republican leadership, most of the items on their to-do list would not likely be repeated on your everyday Republican voter's list of things they want to accomplish.
AG: Right, they have this rhetoric. This very populist rhetoric which is what both parties talking about standing up for American values and the common man against the nasty elitist liberals, where in fact, when you look at what they're doing, they're representing corporate interests. Very much it's a matter of defensive power against popular interest in my view, and I think in the view of a lot of people on the left.
But the way this effects the electoral setup is that I think you see that not only do the Republicans have a very specific ideology, but it's an ideology at the leadership level that is based to some degree on a "take no prisoners" attitude to power. And I think you've seen a much greater ruthlessness in the way that they have waged their political battles, including their electoral battles, than you ever did in the past.
One thing I write about in the book is that you've seen evidence of a kind of an unspoken pact between the parties. Neither has ever really talked about the dirty electioneering of the other. For a couple of reasons, one because they both do it, so to reveal the others' secrets is to risk exposure of your own. And also there's this sense that the system needs to be safeguarded, the belief in the civic religion of America as the greatest democracy on earth needs to be upheld, and its in nobody's interest to put a dent in that.
Richard Nixon, after the 1960 election, which a lot of people believed was stolen from him in Illinois and possibly elsewhere, actually took steps to stop a friend of his who was a journalist investigating shenanigans in Illinois and Texas and elsewhere. And his name was Earl Mazo, and he worked for the New York Herald Tribune, and Nixon turned to him and said, "They're very interesting stories that you're writing, Earl, but nobody steals the presidential election in the United States." And I think that sense that we need to preserve the veneer of the greatness of the system is very powerful.
That has changed to some degree since the 2000 election, I think. The deep concern over the tactics that were deployed in Florida by the Republicans and the strong feeling, certainly, among Democrats. And I think among many, many foreign observers that George Bush didn't win that election for a number of reasons has blown open this issue, and then on the heels of that was all the concern that has grown up about the safety of a new generation of electronic voting machines. Suddenly, we have the first real debate in this country about how elections are conducted that has ever existed.
MW: You give the example of the 2002 elections, the OSCE's ten-person team that came to monitor elections and all the many obstacles they faced because there are no centralized, national standards conducting elections.
That's right. First of all, one of the things Jimmy Carter talked about was the fact that the United States has no provisions for international observers. Or for that matter, almost no provisions for observers of any kind other than members of the two political parties, and it varies a little bit from county to county, and some counties are more liberal than others, but it is absolutely standard in international electoral procedure to have a provision for international observers.
In fact, the United States, through the OSCE when it conducts monitoring missions, say in the Balkans or in the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, they expect full access for international monitoring. They have no such provision domestically. And yes, you're right, when you see what can happen at the local level, what essentially has happened historically is that the two parties have filled electoral offices with party hacks, usually not the brightest bulbs.
Re: RE: Democracy, US Style
http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecmenu2.htm
FiveParadox said:Nice!
Well, in terms of democracy in the United States of America, I would assert that they have some certain undemocratic principles in place — for example, the Electoral College strikes me as a particularly odd institute.
http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecmenu2.htm