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The Right Kind of Election ReformWhat Do We Need from Election Reform? In May 2006 when I was invited to speak at the "Cleaning up our Statehouses" Conference sponsored by the Progressive State Network, I spoke about the role that community and local involvement play in building our political structures. I began by telling about Democracy for New Hampshire, a statewide grassroots organization that I helped to found in the early days of 2004. The sentiments I held then still hold true for me now and I include some of the words I spoke at that conference in this piece. Democracy for New Hampshire is a true grassroots organization. We are 100% volunteer-powered sustained by small donor funding. As a people-powered organization, we are intensely and directly connected to community needs and values. In New Hampshire, we know a lot about the importance of community and community-based political engagement. We have the largest citizen legislature in the nation, our elected representatives are eminently accessible, in many of our towns we debate community and political decisions in open town meetings, and in 45% of our polling places we count our ballots by hand with community members and volunteers pitching in to keep the count honest. Looking at electoral reform, we face three challenges directly related to this question of community-based politics:
America finds itself today in an electoral crisis. Faith and trust in our voting systems have eroded to the point where the question of campaign funding almost becomes irrelevant. Indisputable testing and evidence have proven that the privatized computer-based systems controlling more than 90-95% of the nation's electoral outcomes are easily hack-able. Given this situation, it may not even matter how much money one does or doesn't spend on a campaign, if the outcome can be systematically altered. This state of affairs, combined with the role played by money in our political system, is possibly the greatest threat ever posed to our democratic processes and therefore to the existence of the AmericanRepublic itself. How did we reach this point, and what does it have to do with this notion of community? Over the past thirty five years a series of national election reform legislation has progressively shifted power from community, we-the-people-based politics, to more centralized and questionable influences. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 created the Federal Election Commission, which pre-empted states rights in the area of campaign funding. It also precipitated a 1976 Supreme Court ruling equating money with free speech, bringing a whole new twist to the notion of centralized power in the hands of the moneyed. (Buckley v. Valeo) Since this ruling, virtually every political decision is saturated with the influence of money. With each successive election "reform" instituted at the national level, the corrupting influence of money led to ever-increasing centralization of power and control.
If we are to save American democracy, everything we do needs to incorporate the value of community and give deference and voice to the power of we-the-people. As a true grassroots organization, DFNH provides a pathway to community-based political connection. Our focus on state and local issues appropriately keeps the center of power with the people whose lives are affected by political decisions, and helps to maintain the checks and balances etched into the DNA of American democracy. American democracy depends on a system of decentralized power. Cleaning up our statehouses depends on local control. Community political engagement does not require a rural New England environment, or even an organization like DFNH. Everybody in every place intuitively and innately longs for community attachment. When parents hold their school boards accountable, when teenagers unite to demand a community meeting place, when neighborhood crime-watch coalitions are formed, when all people have equal access to influence their elected representatives, only then can we attain the necessary elements of transparency, accountability, and checks and balances that sustain and nourish our cherished democracy. What Kind of Election Reform Should We Fight For? In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election a stunned American populace witnessed the brazen insider violation of every essential process in a "real" election. The insiders perpetrating these crimes included e-voting industrialists, election officials, the Supreme Court and the Congress. In response a new election reform movement was borne. Since then the movement has sought and lobbied for legislative reforms. But these reforms both proposed and, in the case of the "Help America Vote Act", enacted - have almost universally promised to protect and expand rather than eliminate fraudulent election systems. Why would the election reform movement and its leaders get behind such harmful legislation? It's simple. They have forgotten, or are simply afraid, to ask for what is really needed. As long as today's election reformers focus on technology or industry reforms ("better" technology, industry standards, and the like) they miss the real target: public elections. This error has caused the movement and its leaders to spin its wheels; at best today's election reformers are stuck and at worst they are expanding the damage. Real Election Reform Supports Real Elections The only election reform voting rights advocates should lobby for is that which will protect real elections by ensuring what Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting calls "the essential public processes":
To this end, election reform efforts must have a laser-sharp focus. The legislation itself must be clearly written and very simple, just like the U.S. Constitution! Here are some initial guidelines to ensure that election reform legislation asks for the right thing:
In March 2010 the Town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire passed a very simple little law that demonstrates these principles. The town law focused on the right to public vote counts and public elections. In the Town Meeting, Lyndeborough citizens overwhelmingly voted "Aye" to the following question:
In stark contrast to this piece of election reform, look at the focus of the following law passed by the New Hampshire House of Representatives. This bill was endorsed and supported by election reform activists serving in the NH House:
This NH legislation passed by the NH House and Senate did nothing more than establish an evoting committee is designed to cement into place the unconstitutional and fraud-friendly evoting system. It was written under the direction of the NH Secretary of State, with Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan's consultation and advice, to replace the previous language of the bill which in fact called for transparent vote counting processes. The bill passed because even those state legislators who believed there was a real problem with the evoting machines used in the state were afraid to ask for what was really needed. It's time for election reformers to ask for, or really to demand, what is really needed for our nation. It's not a popular stance, and it may take a long time, but the only way out of this mess. A community member from Wilton, NH speaking about the public hand count process used to count the town's votes, hit the nail on the head when he summed it up like this:
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While honesty and accuracy are highly desirable,
the voting booth is actually much too late in the process to insure we elect competent and reliable persons to represent us in public office. The real selection process occurs when candidates are prompted to file for (apply to) an office. RSOP (Reject Social Obligation Party) have developed on a strategy of promoting multiple incompetents who are good at following the orders of their handlers and "higher ups." Consequently, on election day, the electorate has a choice of "six of one; half dozen of the other"-- not even comparable to "paper or plastic."
Democrats, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of promoting incumbents or "party hacks" -- people who do the bidding of the political "experts."
What we are trying to come out of is a tradition where conservatives aim to rule the people (government of the people) and Democrats aim to dole out benefits to the people (government for the people), leaving "government by the people" on the cutting room floor.
In some quarters, the focus on who votes where on election day is a distraction from the fact that the candidates are all pre-selected hacks, serving the interests of private or public corporations (DSCC and DCCC are examples of influence by the latter).
Private and public corporations actually have much in common. Both hanker after secrecy and un-accountability, but, since the advent of the universal suffrage and FOIA and Federal Tort Claims Act, the private corporations are advantaged in, so far, having escaped closer regulation. Which is why public corporations (federal, state, county governments and homeowner's associations) have gravitated towards contracting with private corporations to carry out necessary obligations. "Privatization" was "sold" to the public under the guise of "saving money" -- a rationale that's turned out to be useful in disguising much of what people don't want to do -- mainly because it wouldn't have been politic to admit that people seeking to hold public office are aiming to acquire power and avoid being held accountable to the public. Fiscal constraints are, like efforts to control the participation of voters, part of the overall strategy to conserve power for the ruling class. Not letting people know what you are doing is the key to authoritarian rule -- i.e. dictatorship.
(The advantage to having dictators selected at the ballot box is that the pool of candidates is slightly larger and neither DNA nor ecclesiastic designation need be relied on. A "man of the people" has a better chance to rule and he doesn't need to eliminate all potential challengers to do it. All the dictatorially inclined can take turns, as McCain was hoping to do, last time around).
We need to remember at all times that dictators, like all successful crooks, don't show their hand and don't rely on violence. Distraction and dissembling is what works for them every time. After all, the object is exploitation, not extermination. Dictators can't be ruthless killers because the dead can't be ruled. Indeed, the experience in Iraq should tell us that killing is a poor predicate for dictatorship. Killing humans tends to reach a tipping point, after which the remaining population becomes unruly. Ironically, too many Iraqis were killed to set up a successful dictatorship at the ballot box. Meanwhile, here in America, too many people were deprived of adequate sustenance to maintain the regime of the traditional ruling class and the "natives" are restless. Which is a good thing.
The reason dictatorships and monopolies of all kinds are ineffective in the long run is because these are un-natural arrangements (nature is essentially diverse) and too much energy has to be expended just to maintain the status quo, leaving little to counter the natural forces of deterioration and change.