Our friends to the south go the polls today to for their midterm elections. The polls show that the Republicans in general - and George Bush in particular - are extremely unpopular. In any normal democracy, these numbers would indicate a massive rout for the incumbents, but in America, where the political discourse is so twisted by a power-worshipping elite media and a well-oiled right wing noise machine, nothing is certain. And adding to this uncertainty is the Republican Party's well documented dislike for, well, actual democracy.
They are called "dirty tricks". I refer to the widespread voter suppression techniques the Republicans employ. The right wing noise machine has tried to portray electoral dirty tricks as a bipartisan problem, but in fact it is the Republicans who specialize in intimidating minorities, making absurd demands for voter ID, moving polling stations to inconvenience voters, and harassing voters with robocalls, ostensibly from Democratic candidates.
Our own Alec Oveis, who sadly left the Prospect few months ago, calls in from Connecticut, where he's volunteering on behalf of Chris Murphy (one of Tom's "Dropkick Murphys" positioned to defeat GOP incumbents this year). He reports that voter fury over robocalls is amazing and palpable at the polling site he's near. Several people have gone out of their way to tell him and other Murphy people that they're voting for Republican incumbent Nancy Johnson strictly out of anger at the harassing phone calls they've been receiving from the Murphy campaign. Alec and other's explanations that those calls are actually paid for by Republicans have generally been falling on deaf ears (they are, after all, holding Murphy signs while offering these explanations).
Calling these tactics "dirty tricks" minimizes the malignant philosophy that animates such activities. The very act of voter suppression is so fundamentally anti-democratic that it should spark outrage in all voters, regardless of party affiliation, and should prompt a clamor for voting reform. Yet the outrage in entirely on the side of Democrats.
I know this hard for people to get their head around, but the hard fact is that in the United States, democracy is breaking down. The Republican Party has long since lost any true conservative bona fides, and has embraced auhtoritatianism as their driving force. Since power is now the central philosophy of the Republicans, the getting and holding of it requires any and all efforts, inlcudling activites that are clearly illegal.
This is what voter suppression sounds like. A recorded call from the "Virginia Elections Commission" informing this voter -- by name -- that he's registered in New York and will be arrested if he goes to the polling booth in VA. Remember kids, it's not just unethical, it's illegal. [This voter], by the way, has voted in Viriginia for the last four election cycles.
Along with the intentional voter suppression, there are also constant voting problems related to malfunctioning (or hacked?) voting machines, poorly trained election workers, and arcane and confusing identification rules. Everyone acknowledges these problems, yet little is done to correct. In fact, voting problems have now become a standard feature of U.S. elections.
With a third of Americans voting on new equipment and voters navigating new registration databases and changing ID rules, election watchdogs worried about polling problems even before the voting began."This is largely what I expected," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting changes. "With as much change as we had, expecting things to go absolutely smoothly at the beginning of the day is too optimistic. Every problem is one problem too many, but some problems are always to be expected on election days."[Emphasis mine.]
Why are problems to be expected on election day? I have been voting in Canada for more than two decades, and cannot recall a single instance of difficulty in voting. Not one. It has simply never been an issue. And that is as it should be. If we are a democracy, and the exercise of one's vote is the ultimate act of citizenship, then the protection of the integrity of our votes must be first and foremost in our electoral process.
What is at stake in today's election in the United States is nothing less than their future as a democracy. Ian Welsh lays out the stakes in this post at The Agonist:
I've heard people asking, "what do we do if the Democrats don't take back the House?"Here's the brutal truth. If that happens, the US is no longer a functioning Democracy. There is no scenario under which that can happen, given the polls, without massive fraud. At that point you have three choices. You can take to the streets. You can emigrate; or you can get used to living in a one-party banana republic without civil rights or democracy.
I don't expect that to happen - but let's not mince words here; there is no scenario under which the Republicans can hold the House with these sorts of numbers which does not amount to fraud on a massive scale.
That said, odds are you're going to wake up Wednesday morning to a Democratic House, with decent odds (slightly over 50%) of a Democratic senate. In the meantime, get out and vote, and take your cell phone camera or a video recorder with you. And if something dubious is going on, get a recording, call the election protection people at 1-866-OUR-VOTE, send the pictures and video to your local news organization and every blogger you know, and get ready to fight for your country as hard as you can. Because in the end, you have exactly, and only, the rights you are willing to fight for.
Without your right to vote, you have no rights. The right to vote - and thereby throw the rascals out periodically - is the foundation of all rights, and the ultimate power of the people over the entrenched interests in government. The Republican oligarchy knows this, and it frightens them, which is why they do everything they can to remove the uncertain element of voter choice from "elections". These are corrupt and evil people, and today's election represents the best chance the Democrats have to regain enough power to do something about the increasing degradation of the U.S. electoral process. For the sake of the world's oldest democracy (and the rest of the world, as we have all suffered at the hand of unchecked Republican rule), let's hope the good guys win.
Instant update: Here's a fine example of the Republican Party's respect for democracy:
The headquarters for [Democrat] Jay Fawcett's campaign for Colorado's 5th Congressional District was vandalized overnight and a death threat - the third such threat - was also emailed to Fawcett. Both incidents have been reported to the police.As voters headed to the polls, Fawcett campaign volunteers arriving at campaign offices were greeted with a vile "Skunk" aroma, making it virtually impossible to conduct work there. The campaign is expecting more than 200 people to come through the offices today to help with Get Out The Vote and Poll Watching efforts.
"Don't let these hooligans deter you from exercising your Constitutional right to vote," said Fawcett. "It's time to take a stand against these attacks."
This is the second time the Fawcett Campaign has been vandalized. Last Tuesday the Campaign Finance Director's car was covered in the skunk smell, while parked out front of the El Paso County Republican Office.
"I find it disgusting that, as we are fighting for Democracy in Iraq, people are besmirching Democracy here in Colorado Springs," said Fawcett Campaign Manager Wanda James. "Death threats and childish illegal activities will not deter us from getting out the vote to victory today."
Fascism is born out of the sort of mentality that would countenance things like this.
I believe one of the major issues in the US is a total lack of an "institution" comparable to Elections Canada. The US situation is a dogs breakfast of state and county systems with no national standard. Add to that the completely insecure, unverifiable, and unauditable electronic systems being employed ... Third world Latin American countries have better accountability.
Absolutely, Smurf. The presence of a professional, non-partisian organization like Elections Canada gives us a huge step up in the intergrity of our system over that of the U.S.
«I know this hard for people to get their head around, but the hard fact is that in the United States, democracy is breaking down»
is breaking down? That's certainly an optimistic view of things; I'd claim that it has already completely broken down, and the 2006 election is just part of the death throes of the system.
Aren't people trying to push the Wonderful! New! Reliable! Electronic! Voting! Machines! in Ontario? I read (somewhere, and didn't save a link) that some of the Toronto suburbs were buying votomatic 2000(tm) boxes in place of the icky unreliable paper ballots.
You know, I'd view the situation in the US with sympathy and a sort of sense of tragedy if it weren't for the fact that their failure to clean up their domestic messes always results in their domestic fungus trying to grow all over Canada.
We get their private health care companies trying to kill our public health care, their out-of-control religious wingnuts funding the expansion of religious wingnutry in Canada and trying to tell us which Canadians are allowed to get married, their vicious foreign policy infecting ours in Afghanistan and Haiti, and now their anti-democracy forces trying to get us to use their democracy-undermining devices (read: voting machines). Seems like half the corruption in Canada can be traced directly to the US--but of course if anyone complains about any of it, we're "anti American"!
Shit.
On an unrelated note, I see Tim in a generally excellent post hoping the "good guys" will win. I have news, old bean--the good guys aren't in the election. Well, barely, in a few places, but really, the Greens aren't gonna get elected. You're hoping the slightly less worse will win, and twig to the notion that it's in their interests to clean up so the other side can't pull as much BS. Given the track record, I'd say for the first, a decent chance, but not a clean enough win to be very useful, and for the second, not a chance in Hell.
Fair enough, PLG. How about a rewrite:
"Let's hope the slightly less evil guys win."
Seriously, I know the Democrats are fucked up too, but the Republicans have taken it an order of magnitude beyond fucked up. They are quite simply monstrous.
I agree that "democracy is breaking down" in the U.S. Also that supposedly third-world countries may be doing better. Also that our system in Canada is immensely satisfactory.
Isn't it interesting how upset Americans get with the results of democratic elections in, say, Palestine, or Nicaragua, even to the point of threatening (Nicaragua) that they could experience dire consequences if they elect someone U.S. disapproves of.
Democracy broke down in 2000. Let's hope that we will be able to speak of the "interregnum" of democracy between 2000 and 2006.
Kerry's 2004 concession was more than cowardly. It was abominable.
A Democrat win is the first step in repairing that country's politics to the low level it was in 2000. Our system is terrible, theirs is just about hopeless.
And let's hope that the perpetrators of these crimes are all punished in their lifetimes.
*Sigh*
I wish I did not have to completely agree with you Tim, I really don't, but the evidence is overwhelming. These days tens of millions of Americans are using a system that can be described in this analogy. A voter goes to a booth; a curtain obscuring the identity of the recorder sits on the other side. You tell the person who you are voting for and then leave, never seeing the person record the vote, the record of the vote, or even that the vote was recorded at all. Now, who in their right mind would trust this process for a fair and honest count? When you consider that the electronic counting software is the man behind the curtain thanks to their software being proprietary and in still too many cases no paper trail you have a fair comparison to what America is using today. Given the clear support for the GOP by the CEOs and owners of these businesses making these machines why should *ANYONE* trust the final record?
As you said the knowledge that your vote is honestly counted goes to the very heart of being able to exercise any power in a representative democracy which both our countries are, even if the style of government is different. It is the one way we the average citizens have to making our views not only heard but impact the direction of our societies. Lose that and there is nothing protecting the citizen's ability to effect change in the society anymore in how it governs itself and only the powerful will have any real ability to be heard and heeded.
America these days scare the devil out of me on this point, and the idea of it being another one of the fungi their domestic politics throws up in our nation as you put it is something I will be up in arms about if it is brought into any element of my vote. As it is I make clear my feelings about an accountable vote system whenever this topic comes up wherever it is. I have worked in various election campaigns over the years from municipal to federal and I have even been a vote counter. I appreciate the essential honesty of our system and it is what allows the CPC for example to be seen as a legitimate government despite 2/3rds of the voters rejecting them at the polls. Without that faith in the integrity and transparency of the election process and especially the vote counts no government will be seen as legitimate nor should it be.
Excellent post Tim, I know I will be referring back to it down the road as I have other of the work here at POGGE. Thank you very much for it.
Yo thwap:
When you say: "Kerry's 2004 concession was more than cowardly. It was abominable" you have revealed a monumental truth.
This is the guy that is supposed to be a War Hero - and it turns out he has the backbone of a rag.
Concessions seem to be his forte. I spent days expecting him to snap back at all those pretend pundits by observing that the real insult to the American troops was to put them into an unwinnable situation for spurious reasons. But all I heard was .. "OOPs, I made a mistake with a joke."
Day-am - just when you think something fundamental is about to happen - it turns out to be a PR dream - a chimera owing to Saatchi & Saatchi than Thomas Jefferson.
croghan27