Counterfeiting
Equal Protection:
Democracy
Devalued
By Ben G. Price
March 13, 2001
"George
W. Bush may have won the office of the presidency,
but not without disgracing the memory of a
democracy that,
had he participated in its preservation, might
have sweetened
his or another man's victory with the aura of legitimacy."
Election reform isn't just for
third world banana republics with little experience in democratic practices.
The American experience with the national election of 2000 made it clear that
even in the world's oldest ostensible democracy it's imperative for citizens to
remain vigilant against fraud and ballot manipulation. It is also abundantly
clear that the mechanics of voting must be re-examined and revised when and as
needed so that they never fail to secure and guarantee the legitimacy and force
of every vote.
In all but the U.S. version of
democracy it would be ludicrous for any faction to challenge election results
if a universally admitted majority of voters had fairly chosen another
candidate. Such a challenge would be easily dismissed for making a ridiculous
argument that the challenger should take office despite having received fewer
votes than his opponent. Unless, of course, a clear fraud, a preference for
some political option other than the democratic method advertised were being
perpetrated. In this country it is not only possible, thanks to the Electoral
College, it actually happened.
Actually, what happened is that
the Supreme Court sided with the loser of the popular vote who insisted that
votes in a crucial state (Florida) that had been ignored by mechanical counters
should continue to be ignored. A legal, in fact mandatory recount was
initiated, and hand-counts were begun where machine error was suspected. In a
few counties it seemed clear that many legally cast votes had not been
mechanically registered. Had George W. Bush's campaign not insisted that these
votes NOT be counted nor even examined by people sworn to impartially determine
their legitimacy, a true determination of the winner of the Electoral College
would have been completed in time to meet all legal deadlines. But a fair
outcome was disallowed through legal maneuvering and hoodlum outbursts
orchestrated within the party challenging the fair vote count.
We might briefly entertain the
arguments of those who violently and legalistically stopped the vote counting
had their tactics been less patently self-serving. What should have been the
culmination of democracy devolved into a mockery. A thick fog of fraud and
obfuscation billowed out of the Everglades, giving cover to Jeb, George, and
their co-conspirators. For lack of an independent media, the fraud was not
challenged. In the heart of Disney (both the state and the corporate network)
fantasy ruled. It was not a legal challenge that won the presidency for George
W. Bush. It was, in the final analysis, a nation's reluctance to face the truth
and put up a fight to
defend it.
It is not enough to
nostalgically congratulate ourselves that "the system worked," or to
bless our lucky stars that our "Founding Fathers" set the wheels in
motion that created the train wreck of an election we have just endured (I
might have said "survived," but that remains to be seen). The two
iron horses of American governance that plowed into each other headlong on
November 7th (and continue to smolder to this day) are identifiable in the
wreckage: Personal Ambition backed by Moneyed Sponsors, and Citizen
Sovereignty. Only one has survived intact, its blunderbuss boilers having been
reinforced by a windfall of cash from demagogues, ideologues, plutocrats,
pulpit-bangers, knob-headed anti-intellectuals and speakers in tongues who
believe in endless natural resources and a whole 'nother agenda than the one
their candidate ran on.
Ironically, the U.S. Supreme
Court, defending its split decision to throw the election to the loser of the
popular vote, argued that not to do so would violate the principle of Equal
Protection. On the question of whether only those voting districts with ballot
irregularities should have their votes counted manually, a bare majority of
justices argued that to do so would unfairly discriminate against voting
districts and counties where rampant irregularities had not occurred. Clearly a
Freudian case of fraud envy. The court was not interested to question whether
an even more malodorous violation of the Equal Protection principle would
result from preventing tens of thousands of Floridians from having their votes
counted with equal weight along-side their fellow Floridians simply because the
machinery in their districts was inferior. Nor did the court wonder publicly if
choosing a president through the Electoral College might similarly violate
Equal Protection, granting as it does a heavier weight to votes cast in
Montana, Idaho, and Delaware than votes cast in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio.
States' rights, party politics,
conservative ideology, generalized animosity...these were some of the box cars
hooked to the locomotive of ambition that ran Individual Sovereignty off the
track of democracy. Every historical effort to broaden the franchise in America
has been met by conservative resistance. From women's suffrage to literacy
tests to poll taxes to felony disenfranchisement, the same impetus to reduce
those represented and eligible to participate in democracy has been at work. It
is the same ideology that found voice in the Bush campaign's battle to prevent the
vote count, and the same elitist undercurrent that possessed the Supreme Court
to invent new law when it protected George W. Bush's candidacy from having its
rights violated by counting the votes that might have ended it.
We hear apologists for the
Electoral College hailing the wisdom of the nation's founders who created it.
What wisdom is reflected in the Electoral College? I suspect only the mythical
kind attributed to idealized progenitors and traditions considered above
suspicion and error. In short, I suspect a theology of the "word"
parallel to the fundamentalist religionist viewpoint that finds its comfort in
victimizing people of other beliefs and lifestyles. The error, and it is real,
exists not in the stars of our patriarchal history, but in the selves of those
who think of themselves as our betters, and from that false religion attempt to
institutionalize the opinion through PR, well-funded self-promotion, and other
dog-eared methods of tyranny. A little help from influential friends and
parent-appointed bench sitters doesn't hurt either.
We have a new form of government
now. We used to have a crypto-plutocracy masquerading as a democracy. We now
have a de facto plutocracy sprouting on the grave of a decimated republic,
disguised as a privatized democracy. George W. Bush may have won the office of
the presidency, but not without disgracing the memory of a democracy that, had
he participated in its preservation, might have sweetened his or another man's
victory with the aura of legitimacy.