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Democracy Undone: Unequal Representation, the Threat to our Election System, and the Demise of American Democracy, by Dale Tavris (me) is a short history of the brutal beating our democratic process has taken in the 21st century, with special focus on the theft of two out of three past elections and the expanding influence of the American corporatocracy and their money in determining the outcome of elections in our country. The book will be published by Bitingduck Press, in all e-book formats, soon: http://www.bitingduckpress.com/democracy_undone
Could what happened in 2000 and 2004 happen again in 2012? The short answer is obviously YES. A longer and more interesting answer to that question appears in an article by Ari Berman that I just read today, titled " Voter Suppression: The Confederacy Rises Again". Though the article concentrates on voter suppression in the South, the tactics described are not be any means confined to the South. They are also very much alive in other states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The return of the Old Confederacy
Berman begins by noting two very important and interesting demographic trends in the Southern U.S. First is the rise of minorities: Minorities are increasing in numbers much faster than the white population. While 72% of baby-boomers (age 55-64) are white, only 51% of kids 15 and under are white (the remainder is 22% Hispanic, 21% African-American, and 6% other mostly Asian and Native American). Second is the major Party split in minority composition: While the Republican Party is 88% white, the Democratic Party is only 50% white (the remainder is 36% African American, 9% Hispanic, and 5% other).
Berman notes that these demographic facts represent a ticking time bomb for the Republican Party in the South. How do they respond to this problem? Berman explains:
The methods of voter suppression being attempted for the 2012 and future elections are very similar to the methods used to put George W. Bush in office in 2000 and keep him there until January 2009. These include:
Strict voter ID laws
Laws mandating government-issued IDs as a requirement for voting are reminiscent of the Southern poll tax, which was made unconstitutional by our 24th Amendment to our Constitution in 1964. The poll tax was instituted in Southern states for the purpose of disenfranchising black people. It also tended to disenfranchise poor white people as well, because poor people generally have less access to these IDs (for example, poor people are less likely to drive and therefore own a drivers license). A 2005 study showed that 11% of American citizens of voting age dont own government-issued IDs. Furthermore, these laws are discriminatory, as 25% of African-Americans dont own these IDs.
Restricting voter registration drives
Knowing that twice as many Hispanic and African American voters are likely to register to vote as a result of voter registration drives, states have been legislating barriers to these drives. This is certainly not the first time. Art Levine described during the Bush presidency how Republicans counteracted the efforts of voter registration organizations, through intimidation of the organizations that undertake them:
The GOP in Missouri also turned to prosecutions and lawsuits, most either overblown or groundless . All these campaigns have created a kind of GOP vote-suppression playbook that aims to limit voting rights in the states and attack registration groups such as ACORN. In most states where ACORN wages ballot-initiative and voter-registration campaigns, Republican lawyers, officials, and some prosecutors routinely file dubious lawsuits and complaints The lawsuits seldom if ever succeed, but the bad press they engender creates a climate to pass restrictive voting laws
The (Florida) legislature passed one of the most restrictive voting-registration laws in the country. The new law fined every registration worker $5,000 for any lost application, potentially wiping out the entire budget of the state League of Women Voters if just 14 forms were lost and forcing the group to stop registering voters for the first time in over 70 years.
Disenfranchising felons even after serving their times
Laws disenfranchising felons from voting are one of Floridas favorite ways for ensuring Republican victories at the polls. Often or usually, the felonies these people committed were non-violent, victimless crimes, such as possession of small amounts of marijuana. In 2000 this particular tactic cost Al Gore more votes than any other single factor, thus paving the way for the George W. Bush Presidency. Worse yet, many thousands of the disenfranchised Florida voters in 2000 were never felons at all, but merely close computer matches of felons. And Florida Governor Jeb Bush knew that would happen before his administrations voter purge went into action.
Eliminating early voting
The working poor, composed disproportionately of minorities, are much more likely to utilize early voting dates, when available, than more affluent voters. The reason for this is easy to understand: Voting often is an economic hardship for working people, especially those who need more than one job to keep economically afloat, since it is often difficult for them to get the necessary time off of work. This year the elimination of early voting, targeted to Democratic areas, has been particularly troublesome in Ohio, which required a court ruling to somewhat restore early voting rights.
Redistricting
Berman explains how Southern states have used redistricting to increase their numbers of legislative seats:
Arbitrary voter purging
Lastly, and most ominously (but not covered in Bermans article), evidence from 2004 shows that Republican operatives sometimes dont require any excuse at all to purge voters from the voter rolls. There is much evidence that illegal voter purging provided the Bush/Cheney ticket with hundreds of thousands of net votes in Ohio in 2004, which enabled Bush to win Ohio and therefore retain his Presidency.
A few words about Democracy Undone
I begin Chapter 1 with a statement of the basic problem of our failing democracy:
The most fundamental consequence is that we habitually fail to elect officials who actually represent us:
Here is a graph of Congressional job approval in the United States since 1974.
Note that currently Congressional job approval is bouncing right along the 20% line.
Consequences then flow from the fact that we habitually elect people who do not represent us. These include: severe, record-breaking income inequality; rampant militarism; the highest imprisonment rate of any country in the world; the systematic flouting of international law, and; failure to take measures to control the climate change that is destroying our planets ability to support human life as we know it.
The following chapters include:
Chapter 2: How the 2000 Presidential election was stolen
Chapter 3: Was the 2004 election stolen too?
Chapter 4: Can you trust the corporations that make the computers that count your votes?
Chapter 5: Fixing elections by making 2 + 2 = 3
Chapter 6: Illegal purging of legitimate voters
Chapter 7: More dirty tricks Voter suppression and intimidation
Chapter 8: The Voter Fraud myth and the barrage of new restrictive voting laws
Chapter 9: Shocking testimony on vote switching in the 2004 Presidential election
Chapter 10: Legalized bribery of government officials
Chapter 11: Corporate control of communications Media
Chapter 12: Some actions we can take
I end the book with a warning about being too complacent about our failing democracy, with a quote from Milton Mayer, who studied the thinking of ordinary lower level Nazis during Hitlers rise to power. Mayer explained in his book, They Thought They Were Free The Germans 1933-45, the gradual process by which Germans gave up their freedom to Hitler:
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter
You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time
You speak privately to your colleagues but what do they say? They say, Its not so bad or Youre seeing things or Youre an alarmist. And you cant prove it
In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago.
Ill provide some more detailed description of the book content in a later post, prior to the publication of the book.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)There is so much work we need to do to rebuild our country.
Paper ballots and non-partisan election rules and campaign finance reform are very important in that process.