how political parties and interest groups serve as channels for popular participation

CHA P TER 14 Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections The U.S. political system is said to be democratic, for we get to elect our leaders in free and open elections. Yet, as a democratic institution, the electoral process is in need of serious upgrading.

DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS: ANY DIFFERENCES?

For generations, professional party politicians ran theparty machinein city neighborhoods and towns, doling out little favors to little people and big fa- vors to realty speculators, business contractors, and party leaders themselves.

The political bosses were occupied mostly with winning elections rather than with questions of social justice. Old-fashioned political machines can still be found in some cities, but over the years party organizations have declined for a number of reasons:

First, campaign finance laws now allocate federal election funds directly to candidates rather than to parties, thereby weakening the influence of the party organization.

Second, now that many states have adopted the direct primary, candidates are less likely to seek out the party organization for a place on the ticket, and more likely to independently pursue the nomination by entering the primary.

Third, because televised political ads can reach everyone in their living room, the party precinct captain is less needed to canvass the neighborhood and publicize the candidate. Today’s candidate needs moneyed backers or per- sonal wealth to pay for costly media campaigns, complete with pollsters and public relations experts, who help select issues and shape electoral strategy.

Candidates expend huge sums selling their image in catchy sound bites, 177 marketing themselves as they would a soap product to a public conditioned to such appeals. As someone once said:“You can’t fool all the people all of the time, but if you fool them once it’s good for four years.” Voters sometimes will support one candidate only out of fear that the other candidate will make things even worse. Thislesser-of-two-evilsappeal is a common inducement to voter participation. Some voters feel that they are not really offered a choice but are forced into one, voting not so much forasagainstsomeone. When presented with issue-linked choices, however, voters in the main are able to make critical distinctions and do respond ac- cording to their pocketbook interests and other specific preferences. 1 It is not quite accurate to characterize the Republicans and Democrats as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They are not exactly alike and do take signifi- cantly different positions at times. But on some fundamental issues, the similar- ities between them loom so large as frequently to obscure the differences. Both the Democratic Party and the GOP (“Grand Old Party,”a nickname for the Republican Party) are committed to the preservation of the private corporate economy; the use of subsidies, tax allowances, and global“free trade”agreements to bolster business profits; huge military budgets; a costly and wasteful manned space program; and the use of force and violence to defend the transnational corporate empire. The two parties have been characterized as“nonideological.” In a sense they are, insofar as their profound ideological commitment to the corporate system at home and abroad is seldom made an explicit issue.

In the last several decades, however, there has been a sharpening of ideo- logical differences between the two parties. The Republican Party has been the more ideologically consistent party, tirelessly launching attacks on every inci- dental issue to demonize their liberal opponents, while preaching the virtues of family values, free enterprise, free market, and superpatriotism. Judging from the performance of the last several GOP administrations, the Republican leadership is dedicated to eliminating taxes for corporations and the very rich, outlawing abortion and gay marriage, undoing environmental protections, eliminating government-run human services (including Social Security), and abolishing all government regulations of corporate activities.

The Republicans have voted for increased military spending and troop allot- ments; for armed interventions in other countries; for enormous subsidies for ag- ribusiness, big oil, and the pharmaceutical industry; against raising the minimum wage; against assistance to homeowners in crisis and jobs programs during recent recessions; against a public option for health care and having the gov- ernment negotiate for lower Medicare drug prices; and against support for renewable energy or other meaningful measures dealing with global warming.

The Democrats, or at least the more progressive ones, favor consumer rights, universal health insurance, human services, labor rights, environmental protections, safe and legal abortions, progressive taxes, cuts in military spend- ing, and gender and ethnic equality.

Generally Republicans get most of their votes from conservatives, White males, rural and suburban dwellers, fundamentalist Christians and other reg- ular churchgoers, managerial professionals, the upwardly mobile, people who earn over $100,000, and those with some college education. 178 Chapter 14 Democrats generally do best among liberals, women, city dwellers, wage workers, African Americans, Jews, people who earn under $20,000, and those who are among the least and the most educated, that is, without high school diplomas or with advanced degrees.

The Republican Party leadership, as centered in the Republican National Committee, is a disciplined outfit, run from the top down, with a tight grip on state and county committees. It launches systematic campaigns to achieve a con- servative ideological dominance, targeting both issues and individuals, striving for permanent control of state and national legislatures through redistricting and heavy campaign spending, while stacking the courts with right-wing ideologues.

Unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party lacks a centralized command and ideological attack mode. It seems to have no overall agenda for locking down control of the electoral process and the institutions of government. It is a loose coalition of groups, with state and local committees that often go their own way, supplemented by independent organizations that pursue one or another issue. The Democrats seem incapable of matching the GOP’s uncompromising and relentless attack mode. Indeed, in recent times the Democrats have been led by a president, Barack Obama, who spends much time reaching out for a bipartisan consensus that does not exist.

There also are differences within each party between voters and party acti- vists. Delegates to a recent Republican national convention were more conserva- tive on issues than a majority of registered Republican voters. One in five delegates put their net worth at $1 million or more. Most were White middle- aged males opposed to campaign finance reform, affirmative action, gay rights, progressive income tax, single-payer health care, stronger environmental protec- tions, and legal abortion. They supported a federal law to impose prayer in the schools but not federal funds for school repair programs. The chances of finding a GOP delegate with a family income under $25,000 was fifty to one. At the Democratic national convention the odds were somewhat lower: fourteen to one, but still hardly representative of the wider public. THE TWO-PARTY MONOPOLY A nationwide poll reported that 53 percent of respondents felt we should have a third major political party. 2But all fifty states have laws—written and enforced by Democratic and Republican officials—setting some daunting requirements for third-party ballot access. In some states, independent or third-party candi- dates must collect large numbers of signatures and pay burdensome filing fees.

Sometimes the time to collect signatures is limited to one week, virtually an impossible task. 3 The Supreme Court upheld a Washington State law that requires minor- party candidates to win at least 1 percent of the total primary election vote in order to run in the general election, in effect depriving most minor candidates of ballot access. 4Bills have been submitted in Congress, so far without suc- cess, that would institute a more permissive and uniform ballot access law throughout the fifty states. Over the years, some of the unfair restrictions against third parties have been struck down in court battles. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 179 It has been argued that restrictive ballot requirements are needed to screen out frivolous candidates. But who decides who is“frivolous”? And what is so harmful about such candidates that the electorate must be protected from them by all-knowing Republican and Democratic party officials? In fact the few states that allow relatively easier access to the ballot—such as Iowa, Tennessee, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where relatively few signatures are needed and enough time is allowed to collect them—have suffered no invasion of frivolous or kooky candidates.

The Federal Election Campaign Act gives millions of dollars in public funds to the two major parties to finance their national conventions, pri- maries, and presidential campaigns. But public money goes to third-party can- didates onlyafteran election and only if they glean 5 percent of the vote, something nearly impossible to achieve without funds. In sum, they cannot get the money unless they get 5 percent of the vote; but they are not likely to get 5 percent without the substantial amounts of money needed to buy suffi- cient national exposure.

While receiving nothing from the federal government, minor parties must observe all federal record-keeping requirements. The Federal Election Commis- sion, designated by law to have three Republican and three Democratic commis- sioners, spends most of its time checking the accounts of smaller parties and filing suits against them and against independent candidates. Hence two private political parties are endowed with law enforcement powers to regulate the activ- ities of all other parties in ways that preserve their two-party monopoly. 180 Chapter 14 MAKING EVERY VOTE COUNT The system of representation itself discriminates against third parties. The winner-take-all, single-member-district pluralitysystem used in the United States artificially magnifies the strength of major parties. A party that polls a plurality (the largest number of votes even if less than a majority) wins 100 percent repre- sentation with the election of a district’s single candidate, whereas the other parties, regardless of their vote, receive zero representation. Because there are few districts in which minor parties have a plurality, they invariably have a higher percentage of wasted or unrepresented votes, and win a lower proportion of seats, if any.

Even voters of the two major parties are shortchanged. In various coun- ties of Northern California, GOP voters compose 20 to 35 percent of the turn- out but receive zero representation because they are unable to elect a member of their party. In parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, Democratic voters cast 30 to 40 percent of the votes, but receive zero representation be- cause all the congressional seats are won by Republicans. Across the country, those living in safe Republican or safe Democratic districts and who support the weaker party have little reason to vote. Of course the same holds for those who support minor parties. 5 In most congressional districts one party dominates over the other. The two-party system is largely a patchwork of one-party dominions—magnified by the winner-take-all system. About one of every ten representatives is elected to Congress with no opposition at all in either the primary or the general elec- tion. Over 90 percent of congressional incumbents who seek reelection are successful in that endeavor. Death and voluntary retirement seem to be the more important factors behind membership turnover.

In contrast to the winner-take-all system isproportional representation (PR), which provides a party with legislative seats roughly in accordance with the percentage of votes it wins. Let us say ten single-member districts were joined into one multiseat district. Every party provides a ranked list of ten candidates.

Voters vote for the party of their choice, and each party is awarded their propor- tional number of seats. A party that gets around 50 percent of the vote would get only five seats (for the top five candidates on its list); one that received 30 percent would get three seats, while one that received 20 percent would get two seats.

Just about every vote would be represented. 6 Some political scientists and pundits argue that proportional representa- tion is an odd, overly complicated system that encourages the proliferation of splinter parties and leads to legislative stalemate and instability. They laud the two-party system because it supposedly allows for cohesion and stable majorities. Actually there is nothing odd or quirky about PR; it is the most popular voting system in the world. Some form of PR is used in virtually every country in Europe, from Austria and Belgium to Sweden and Switzerland.

Winner-take-all is found in only a handful of countries. 7In 1993 New Zealand adopted proportional representation in a national referendum by an over- whelming vote. PR usually produces stable coalition governments that are con- sistently more representative and responsive than winner-take-all systems. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 181 PR voting is not complicated. Citizens simply cast votes for the parties that more closely reflect their interests. Nor is PR completely alien to the United States. Some local governments and school districts have employed it for years.

PR gives ethnic minorities and diverse political groups a better chance of win- ning some representation. In 1945, in the last PR race for the New York City Council, Democrats won fifteen seats, Republicans three, Liberals and Commu- nists two each, and the American Labor party one; public interest in city council elections was high. PR was abolished in New York not because it didn’t work but because it worked too well, giving representation to a variety of leftist dis- senting views. After winner-take-all was reinstalled in New York, the Democrats won thirty-four council seats, the Republicans one, and smaller parties were completely frozen out. 8 To repeat: Winner-take-all elections artificially magnify the representation of the stronger parties and the weakness of the lesser ones. Wedded to the un- fair advantages of the current system, Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed a law in 1967requiringall states to set up single-member, winner- take-all districts for Congress. This system deprives minority parties not only of representation but eventually of voters too, because not many citizens wish to“waste”their ballots on a minor party that seems incapable of achieving a legislative presence. So third parties are locked in a vicious cycle: They cannot win because they lack support, and they have trouble gaining support because they are small and cannot win.

Sometimes it does not seem worth the effort to vote for one of the two ma- jor parties in districts where the other so predominates and will be winning the sole representation. If we had PR, however, every vote would be given some representation, and people would be more likely to vote. This partly explains why voter turnout ranges from 36 to 42 percent for congressional elections, whereas in countries that have PR, turnouts range from 70 to 90 percent. 9 With proportional representation, there is a broader choice of parties, a higher rate of participation, and a more equitable representation than in our winner- take-all, single-member-district, two-party system.

RIGGING THE GAME The electoral system is rigged in other ways. A common device isredistricting, changing the boundaries of a single-member district ostensibly to comply with population shifts but really to effect a preferred political outcome. Often the intent is to dilute the electoral strength of new or potentially dissident consti- tuencies, including ethnic minorities. Thus, the New York City Council split fifty thousand working-class Black voters in Queens into three predominantly White districts, making them a numerical minority in all three. Likewise in Los Angeles County and nine Texas counties, heavy concentrations of Latinos were divided into separate districts to dilute their voting impact.

An extreme form of politically motivated redistricting is thegerrymander.

District lines are drawn in elaborately contorted ways so as to maximize the strength of the party that does the drawing. 10 Sometimes, as just described.

gerrymandering is used to deny minority representation by splitting a 182 Chapter 14 concentrated ethnic area into different districts. Other times it is used toassure minority representation by creating a district that manages to concentrate en- ough African American voters so as to allow the election of an African American.

Conservative opponents condemn such practices as“racial gerrymandering”and “reverse discrimination.”But defendants argue that such districts may look bi- zarre on a map but are the only way to abridge a White monopoly and ensure some Black representation in states where Whites remain disproportionately overrepresented even after a supposedly equitable redistricting.

The courts have ignored the gerrymandering that shapes so many districts around the country. After the 1990 census, the Republican administration of Bush Sr. directed certain states to maximize the number of districts packed with African American and Latino voters. Bush had an ulterior motive. By corralling minorities (who voted heavily Democratic) into electoral ghettos, the GOP would have a better chance of carrying the more numerous sur- rounding White districts. 11 Redistricting occurs every ten years, as a function ofreapportionment.

The Constitution mandates that every decade a national census shall be taken and House of Representative seats shall be reapportioned, according to the shifts in population between the various states. When states lose or gain seats in the reapportionment, they must then redistrict after the census, a task per- formed by the various state legislatures, subject to veto by the governors. If a state neither gains nor loses seats after a particular census, there still may be population shifts within it that warrant the redrawing of district lines.

In 2001, after the 2000 census, congressional district lines were redrawn in Colorado and Texas in a way that federal courts decided was fair, as did the Texas GOP governor and GOP attorney general. But just two years later, after Republicans won complete control of state legislatures in both states, they took the unprecedented step of redrawing district lines already ratified by the courts, and doing it in a severely partisan way, especially in Texas where the congressional delegation went from seventeen to fifteen in favor of Democrats to twenty-one to eleven in favor of Republicans, a shift unparal- leled in the annals of gerrymandering. In 2006 the Supreme Court upheld the newly imposed redistricting, setting aside the practice described in the Consti- tution of redrawing districts once every ten years after the national census, and opening the door for a partisan redistricting scramble any time a state legislature might change hands. 12 Only about a dozen states have constitu- tional prohibitions against multiple redistricting within the same decade.

Even if districts are redrawn by a neutral computer method, under the winner-take-all system large numbers of voters are still without representa- tion. Proportional representation provides the more equitable system. Thus Democrats living in a 65 percent Republican district in the Dallas suburbs are effectively gerrymandered out of an opportunity to elect a person who re- presents their interests. But with PR, the five Republican Dallas suburban dis- tricts would be made into one composite district with five representatives, and Democratic voters would be able to elect one or two of the five, thereby at- taining representation roughly proportional to their numbers instead of being entirely shut out. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 183 The decennial national census itself introduces distortions because it often undercounts low-income voters, missing more renters than homeowners and many poor residents in overcrowded neighborhoods and remote rural areas, who tend to be less forthcoming with census takers. Undercounting means underrepresentation in Congress and the state legislatures, and less federal aid. According to the Census Bureau, one national census missed an estimated 8.4 million people and double-counted or improperly tallied 4.4 million, in- cluding many affluent Whites who had more than one residence. 13 If, despite rigged rules, radical parties gain grassroots strength and even win elections, they are likely to become the object of official violence. The case of the U.S. Socialist Party is instructive. By 1918, the Socialist Party held twelve hundred offices in 340 cities including seventy-nine mayors, thirty-two legisla- tors, and a member of Congress. The next year, after having increased their vote dramatically, the Socialists suffered the combined attacks of state, local, and federal authorities. Their headquarters in numerous cities were sacked, their funds confiscated, their leaders jailed on trumped-up charges, their immigrant members summarily deported, their newspapers denied mailing privileges, and their elected candidates denied their seats in various state legislatures and Congress. Within a few years the party was finished as a viable political force.

While confining themselves to legal and peaceful forms of political competi- tion, the Socialists discovered that their opponents were burdened by no similar compunctions. The guiding principle of ruling elites was and still is: when change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed. MONEY, A NECESSARY CONDITION A huge handicap faced by third-party candidates—and progressive candidates within the major parties—is the lack of funds needed to win office. Money is the lifeblood of present-day electoral campaigns. A race for a seat in the House of Representatives can cost several million dollars. Senatorial and gubernatorial contests sometimes are many times more than that. In the 2008 presidential and congressional campaigns, spending by all advocacy groups and candidates and party committees totaled $5.3 billion, a record amount that did not include the many millions spent on hundreds of state and local contests. 14 Sometimes millions are expended not to win office but merely to procure a party nomination in a primary contest against other members of the same party.

And before the actual primary there is what some call themoney primary. The candidate who amasses an enormous war chest or who has an immense personal fortune thereby discourages would-be challengers. He or she is treated seriously as a candidate and is likely to be designated the“front runner”by the media.

During the 2000 Republican presidential primaries, Bush Jr., son of a former president,“won”the money primary by raising $50 million four months before the first primary in New Hampshire. That sum came from just a small number of superrich donors. 15 Several other GOP primary opponents dropped out after they discovered that most of the fat cats had already committed their checkbooks to Bush. By the time Bush won his party’s nomination in July 2000, he had already spent over $97 million—and the campaign against his Democratic opponent had 184 Chapter 14 yet to begin. 16 Thus, well before the actual election, a handful of rich contributors winnow the field, predetermining who will run in the primaries with what level of strength and plausibility. Only the very rich get to“vote”in the money primary.

That may be a little less true with the advent of the Internet. Nowadays fundraisers for less-established candidates are able to access larger numbers of potential supporters without incurring big costs. Still there remains the need to convince potential donors, even small ones, that the candidate is a“serious one,”something not easy to do if the media have designated the candidate as a minor fixture not to be taken seriously as the nominee to be.

Every four years both major parties receive millions of dollars in federal funds—allocated to them by a Congress dominated by these same two parties— to finance their national presidential nominating conventions. The Democratic and GOP conventions also receive substantial sums from their host cities, and large cash gifts from corporations, including buffet lunches, hospitality rooms, and postsession celebrations for the convention delegates. 17 Big corporations bankroll the televised presidential debates, which usually are limited to the two major-party candidates.

As mandated by law, as of January 2009 an individual can contribute to the campaigns of as many candidates as he or she wants, but not more than $2,400 in a primary and $2,400 in the election for a total of $4,800 per candidate. That same individual can also give $30,400 to the national party committee, $10,000 to state and local party committees, and various other contributions. In sum, one person can contribute $45,600 to all candidates and $69,900 to all party and political action committees within a biennial period. 18 In addition, there are the fat speaking fees, travel accommodations, and other free services that companies are happy to provide to needy or greedy legislators.

There is alsosoft money, which consists of funds that can be used only for “issue advertising”and for singing the candidate’s praises—as long as the ad does not urge us to vote for or against anyone. Difficult to distinguish from campaign ads, soft-money ads provided an enormous loophole for campaign expenditures, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars to the major parties. The McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 banned the solicitation and spending of soft money by national parties and federal candidates. Though designed to plug loopholes in spending, the new law spawned loopholes of its own. Indepen- dent committees could still raise money apart from any party or candidate.

And individual contributions could be passed along to future nominees in “bundled”amounts that exceeded the $5,000-per-candidate limit.

In national elections, business generally outspends labor by more than seven to one. When it comes to soft money and state initiatives and ballot propositions, the ratio of business over labor spending is more like twenty-one to one, with most of that money finding its way into the coffers of the more conservative can- didates of the two parties. 19 To hedge their bets, corporations and other big do- nors sometimes contribute to both parties, though usually substantially more to the Republicans. 20 Contributions often are doled out even to lawmakers who run unopposed, to ensure influence over the preordained victor.

A candidate needs funds for public relations consultants, pollsters, campaign travel; campaign workers, offices, telephones, computers, faxes, mailings; and, Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 185 most of all, media advertisements. Yet some say that money is not a major influ- ence because better-financed candidates sometimes lose, as demonstrated by bil- lionaire Steve Forbes, who spent $30 million of his personal fortune in 2000 and still failed to gain the GOP presidential nomination. Electoral victory, the argu- ment goes, is more likely to be determined by other factors such as party label, ideology, issues, and incumbency. The largest sums go to entrenched incumbents who are expected to win, so money does not bring victory, it follows victory.

In response, we might note that candidates who are the bigger spenders may not always win but they usually do, as has been the case over the last fifteen years in more than 80 percent of House and Senate races. Even in“open races,”with no incumbent running, better-funded candidates won 75 percent of the time. In the 2008 congressional election, Democratic candidates received noticeably more in direct contributions than Republicans, and won control of both the House and Senate. 21 This does not establish a simple one-to-one causal relationship between money and victory. But given the central role money plays in launching a cam- paign and promoting a candidate, how can we say it is of no crucial importance?

Money influences not only who wins, but who runs, and who is taken seriously when running. Candidates sometimes are backed by party leaders explicitly because they have personal wealth and can use it to wage an effec- tive campaign. It is true that Steve Forbes failed to gain the GOP nomination.

But even though he was of lackluster personality and had a fuzzy program, his money enabled him to win primaries in two states and be treated as a serious contender throughout the campaign.

Candidates who win while spending less than their opponents still usually have to spend quite a lot. While not a surefire guarantor of victory, a large war chest—even if not the largest—is usually anecessary condition. Money may not guarantee victory, but the lack of it usually guarantees defeat. With- out large sums, there is rarely much of a campaign, as poorly funded“minor” candidates have repeatedly discovered.

The influence of money is also evident in the many state ballot initiatives from Florida to California relating to a range of vital issues. In many instances, there initially is strong voter support for the public-interest position. Then big business launches a heavily financed blitz of slick television ads, outspending its opponents by as much as fifty to one in some cases, and opinion turns in business’sfavor. 22 There seems to be a growing awareness of the undue and undemocratic influ- ence of money. In Georgia, civil rights leaders launched a court challenge mandat- ing the creation of publicly financed state elections because winners were enjoying more than a 300 percent spending advantage over losers. In Maine, voters ap- proved a law in 1996 that allows candidates to opt for full public financing of their campaigns. A few years later a similar law was approved by voters in Massachusetts and in Vermont. In 2002, a majority of the legislature in Maine won races on public money, lawmakers who thereby were not indebted to mon- eyed interests. In Arizona, Janet Napolitano became the first governor of any state to be elected with public financing. Her opponent opposed public funding and raised almost $2 million in private donations. Public funding of elections is resisted by those who can readily outspend their opponents, but it wins bipartisan support among voters across the nation. 23 186 Chapter 14 THE STRUGGLE TO VOTE The United States ranks among the lowest in the world in voter turnout.

Nearly a third of adult Americans are not even registered to vote. Some people fail to cast a ballot because they care little about public affairs. But others, including some who do vote, feel deeply cynical and angry about politics.

They are disenchanted by the hypocrisy and pretense, the constant drone of campaign ads, and the vast sums spent. Many have trouble believing that vot- ing makes a difference. In a New York Times/CBS poll, 79 percent of respon- dents agreed that government is“pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.” 24 It has been argued that since nonvoters tend to be among the more apa- thetic and less informed, they are likely to be swayed by prejudice and dem- agogy. Hence it is just as well they do not exercise their franchise. 25 Behind this reasoning lurks the dubious presumption that better-educated, upper- income people who vote are more rational and less compelled by self-interest Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 187 and ethno-class prejudices, an impression that itself is one of those comforting prejudices upper- and middle-class people have of themselves.

Some writers argue that many people don’t bother to vote because they are fairly content with things. Certainly some individuals are blithely indiffer- ent to political issues—even issues that may affect their lives in important ways. But generally speaking, voter apathy is often a psychological defense against feelings of powerlessness and disillusionment. What is seen as apathy may really be antipathy.

Some political analysts argue that low voter participation is of no great im- port because the preferences of nonvoters are much the same as the preferences of voters. If the stay-at-homes were to vote, it supposedly would not change the outcome of most elections. In fact, upper-income persons vote at almost twice the rate as those of lower-income, and for conservative candidates at almost three times the rate. Hence, itwouldmake a difference if low-income citizens voted in greater numbers, and on those occasions when they do, itdoes.

The argument is sometimes made that deprived groups, such as ethnic minorities, who feel thwarted by politics should accept the fact that they are numerically weak and unable to command wide support for their demands. In a system that responds to the democratic power of majority numbers, a minor- ity poor cannot hope to have its way.

What is curious about this argument is that it is never applied to more select minority interests—for instance, oilmen. Now oilmen are far less numer- ous than the poor, yet the deficiency of their numbers, or of the numbers of other tiny minorities like bankers, industrialists, and billionaire investors, does not result in any lack of government responsiveness to their wants.

Furthermore, many people fail to vote because they face various kinds of offi- cial discouragement and intimidation. Two centuries of struggle have brought real gains in extending the franchise. In the early days of the Republic, propertyless White males, indentured servants, women, Blacks (including freed slaves), and Native Americans (“Indians”) had no access to the ballot. In the wake of working-class turbulence during the 1820s and 1830s, formal property qualifica- tions were abolished for White males. And after a century of agitation, women finally won the right to vote with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. In 1961, the Twenty-third Amendment gave District of Columbia residents representation in presidential elections, but they are still denied full voting repre- sentation in Congress. In 1971, partly in response to the youth antiwar rebellions of the late 1960s, the Twenty-sixth Amendment was quickly adopted, lowering the minimum voting age from twenty-one to eighteen.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, written in the blood of civil war, prohibited voter discrimination because of race. But it took another cen- tury of struggle to make this right something more than a formality in many regions. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that Whites-only party primaries were unconstitutional. 26 Decades of agitation and political pressure, aug- mented by the growing voting power of African Americans who had migrated to Northern cities, led to a number of civil rights acts and several crucial Su- preme Court decisions. Taken together these actions gave the federal govern- ment and courts power to act against segregationist state officials and against 188 Chapter 14 discriminatory state restrictions—such as long-term residency requirements and poll taxes. 27 The result was that in certain parts of the South, African Americans began voting in visible numbers for the first time since Reconstruction.

During the 1980s, President Reagan threatened to cut off federal aid to state and local agencies that assisted in voter registration drives. Voting rights acti- vists who tried to register people in family-assistance offices were arrested.

Question: Why would an American president cut off federal aid and arrest peo- ple who were helping other Americans to register to vote? Answer: The other Americans were seen as voting the wrong way. Reagan was a Republican and the people in family-assistance offices were largely low-income Democrats.

In 1986, the Reagan White House sent FBI agents streaming into South- ern counties to interrogate over two thousand African Americans aboutvoter fraud. While finding no evidence of fraud, the FBI did cause some voters to think twice about going to the polls. The motive behind this kind of intimida- tion is as political as it is racial. If African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates rather than for Democrats, then Republican admin- istrators would not likely be hounding them.

In 1992, a Democratic Congress passed a“motor voter”bill that sought to increase voter turnout among the elderly, the poor, and the infirm by allowing citizens to register as they renew their driver’s licenses, or apply for Social Secu- rity, unemployment, welfare, or disability benefits. President Bush Sr. vetoed it.

Question: Why would an American president veto a bill that helped other Ameri- cans to vote? Answer: Once again, they were likely to vote the wrong way.

The following year a bill was passed allowing registration at motor vehi- cle and military recruiting offices, but to avoid a Republican Senate filibuster it contained no provision for voter registration at welfare and unemployment offices. There have been widespread reports as late as 2009 that even this lim- ited law was not being adequately enforced. 28 THE WAR AGAINST IMAGINARY“VOTER FRAUD” Today, while many legal restrictions have been removed, new barriers to vot- ing loom. In various Western democracies, governments actively pursue pro- grams to register voters, leading to high registration rates and high voter participation. In contrast, U.S. federal and state officials have a history of making it difficult for working people to register and vote. In a dozen or more states within the United States we find the following:

•Would-be voters may be required to prove their citizenship with a passport, birth certificate, or other government ID, documents that poor and elderly citizens often lack. People who had been voting for many years suddenly found themselves disqualified. In Missouri alone, newly installed photo ID requirements threaten to disfranchise up to 240,000 state residents.

•In some states citizens are being required to pay voter ID fees—which amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax, felt most heavily by low- income voters. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 189 •Legislation pending in some states prohibits the elderly from using photo IDs issued by retirement centers or neighborhood associations when going to the polls. Many low-income elderly do not have driver’s licenses to use as IDs.

•Registration centers are usually open only during working hours when blue-collar and lower-level service people cannot get off from work. The locations of registration centers can be remote and frequently changed.

•Registration forms are sometimes unnecessarily complex, in short supply, poorly distributed, and sluggishly processed.

•Onerous and unnecessary rules are imposed on grassroots voter registra- tion drives, such as requiring registration forms to be turned in within forty-eight hours after being filled out; or making it illegal for anyone to get within one hundred feet of a line of voters to offer legal advice regard- ing their voting rights.

•If your name in the registration database (John Smith) does not perfectly match your name as spelled on your driver’s license or some other ID (John L. Smith), you can be turned away at the polls, and many have been.

•Polling places are sometimes not situated in accessible locations. In one Texas county, officials closed down all but one of thirteen polling sta- tions, and Black and Latino voter turnout plummeted from twenty-three hundred to three hundred. In parts of Mississippi, a person might have to register both at the town and county courthouses, which could mean driving ninety miles round trip.

•In recent elections, more than one in five registered voters did not vote because of long work hours, physical disabilities, parental responsibilities, lack of transportation, or other difficulties. In some democracies, mea- sures are taken by officials to assist voters facing such obstacles, but not in the United States. 29 According to the standard view, working people and the poor have a low voter turnout because they are wanting in information and civic awareness.

But if they are so naturally inclined to apathy, one wonders why entrenched interests find it necessary to take such strenuous measures to discourage their participation.

Daunting ID and registration requirements are supposedly intended to keep ne’er-do-wells from attempting to cast ballots in someone else’s name, a problem that—despite repeated investigations—has not been shown to exist in any numbers. Most recently the Century Foundation found no evidence of voter impersonation or of felons or other persons trying to illegally cast bal- lots.

30 Still Republican officials continue to invent stories about droves of fraudulent voters“stealing driver’s licenses or passports so they can sneak into the booth and cast an illegal ballot. GOP leaders have intimidated voters of color, unfairly purged voter rolls, and set up unconstitutional barriers to the ballot box—all in the name of cleaning up‘voter fraud.’” 31 This untiring crusade is obviously aimed at limiting the number of voters from demographic groups that favor the Democrats.

Republican efforts to suppress the vote have enjoyed some success. In the 2008 presidential election, 4 million to 5 million voters did not cast a ballot 190 Chapter 14 because they encountered registration difficulties or failed to receive absentee ballots. An additional 2 million to 4 million registered voters were discour- aged from voting due to administrative hassles like long lines and new voter identification requirements. 32 Had the election been a closer contest, a sup- pressed vote of this magnitude would have produced a different outcome.

When United Auto Workers union members took election day off, they were able to work at bringing out the vote, serve as poll watchers, and find time themselves to vote. Yet most workers cannot participate at that level be- cause elections are held on a workday (Tuesday), making voting difficult for those who have late commutes.

One positive development: Every state in the union now allows people to vote several days earlier than election day. In some statesearly votingis pro- vided only for those who have an excuse. In other states early voting is avail- able to anyone who might want to avail themselves of it. In the 2008 election, mindful of the punishing long voter lines of previous elections, early voters turned out in record numbers totaling about 30 percent of the total vote.

About 5 million Americans are prohibited from casting a ballot because of past criminal records or because they are currently behind bars. Three states (Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia) still impose lifetime disfranchisement on anyone ever convicted of a felony, impacting disproportionately on low-income communities of color. Other states have scaled back similar bans in recent years.

People who were still behind bars are denied the vote in all but two states (Maine and Vermont), yet they are counted as part of the population of the communities in which the prisons are located, creating political districts that would not otherwise exist. When funds and legislative seats are allocated according to population, conservative rural communities with large prison populations disproportionately glean more seats and funds for themselves.

Cities lose out on funds that could be used for both crime prevention and pri- soner rehabilitation. Inmates should be counted as residents of the community to which they are likely to return after incarceration, the places where reentry programs need to be funded.

33 SHADY ELECTIONS Often presumed to have died out with old-time machine politics, shady electoral methods are with us more than ever. In one of the closest contests in U.S. history, the 2000 presidential election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gover- nor George W. Bush, the final outcome hinged on how the vote went in Florida.

Independent investigations in that state revealed serious irregularities directed mostly against ethnic minorities and low-income residents who usually voted Democratic. Some thirty-six thousand newly registered voters were turned away because their names had never been added to the voter rolls by Florida’s secretary of state Kathleen Harris, a Republican who was in charge of the state’s election process while herself being an active member of the Bush election cam- paign. Others were turned away because they were declared—almost always in- correctly—“convicted felons.”In several Democratic precincts, state officials closed the polls early, leaving lines of would-be voters stranded. Under orders Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 191 from Governor Jeb Bush (Bush Jr.’s brother), state troopers near polling sites de- layed people for hours while searching their cars. Some precincts required two photo IDs, which many citizens do not have. Uncounted ballot boxes went miss- ing or were found in unexplained places or were never collected from certain African American precincts. During the recount, the Republican national leader- ship shipped in some young bullies, mostly GOP congressional aides from Washington, D.C., to storm the Dale County Canvassing Board, punch and kick one of the officials, shout and bang on their office doors, and generally created a climate of intimidation that caused the board to abandon its recount and accept the dubious pro-Bush tally. 34 Even though Bush lost the nation’s popular vote to Gore by over half a million in the official count (and probably more than that in an honest count), these various coercive actions suppressed enough pro-Gore ballots to give Florida to Bush by about five hundred votes, along with the Electoral College and the presidency itself. Similar abuses occurred in other parts of the country.

A study by computer scientists and social scientists estimated that 4 million to 6 million votes were left uncounted in the 2000 election. 35 The 2004 presidential election between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush, amounted to another stolen election. Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Preelection surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unre- ported by the press. In addition, there were about 2 million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 but who switched to Kerry in 2004. Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more votes than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only 8 million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would have had to keep all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors. Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggested such a mass crossover. The numbers did not add up.

In key states like Ohio, the Democrats achieved immense success at regis- tering new voters, outdoing the Republicans by as much as five to one. More- over the Democratic Party was unusually united around its candidate—or certainly against the incumbent president. In contrast, elements within the GOP displayed open disaffection. Prominent Republicans, including some for- mer officeholders, diplomats, and military brass, publicly voiced serious mis- givings about what they saw as the Bush administration’s huge budget deficits, reckless foreign policy, pronounced theocratic tendencies, and threats to indi- vidual liberties. Sixty newspapers that had endorsed Bush in 2000 refused to do so in 2004; forty of them endorsed Kerry. 36 All through election day 2004, exit polls showed Kerry well ahead, yet the official tally gave Bush a victory. Before the election, several Republican lights had announced their intention to suppress the Democratic vote. In an inter- view withU.S. News & World Report, Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel observed that Kerry would need a huge number of votes in Philadelphia to carry the state:“It’s important for me to keep that number down.” 192 Chapter 14 Rep. John Pappageorge (R-MI) was quoted in theDetroit Free Pressas saying, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.”In Nevada, former executive director of the state GOP Dan Burdish told the press,“I am looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls.” 37 Here is an incomplete list of how the GOP“victory”was secured:

•In some places large numbers of Democratic registration forms disappeared.

Absentee ballots sometimes were mailed out to voters just before election day, too late to be returned on time, or they were not mailed at all.

•Overseas ballots normally and reliably distributed by the State Department were for some reason distributed by the Pentagon in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad—a noticeable number of whom formed anti-Bush organizations—never received their ballots or got them too late to vote. Military personnel, usually more inclined toward support- ing the president, encountered no such problems with their overseas ballots.

•Voter Outreach of America, a company funded by the Republican National Committee, collected thousands of voter registration forms in Nevada, prom- ising to turn them in to public officials, but then systematically destroyed the ones belonging to Democrats.

•Tens of thousands of Democratic voters were stricken from the rolls in several states because of“felonies”never committed, or committed by someone else, or for no given reason. Registration books in Democratic precincts were frequently and inexplicably out-of-date or incomplete.

•In states like Ohio, Democrats enjoyed record turnouts but were deprived of sufficient numbers of polling stations and voting machines. Many of the machines in their precincts kept mysteriously breaking down. After waiting long hours many people departed without voting. Pro-Bush pre- cincts had no such troubles.

•A similar pattern was observed with student populations in several states.

Students at conservative religious colleges had little or no wait at the polls, whereas students from liberal arts colleges were forced to line up for as long as ten hours, causing many to give up.

•A polling station in a conservative evangelical church in Miami County, Ohio, recorded an impossibly high turnout of 98 percent, while a polling place in Democratic inner-city Cleveland recorded an impossibly low turn- out of 7 percent.

•Latino, Native American, and African American voters in New Mexico who favored Kerry by two to one were five times more likely to have their ballots spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. In these same Democratic areas, Bush“won”an aston- ishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory.

•Cadres of right-wing activists, many of them religious fundamentalists fi- nanced by the Republican Party, handed out flyers in key Democratic pre- cincts warning that voters who had unpaid parking tickets, an arrest record, or owed child support would be arrested at the polls—all untrue.

•Democratic poll watchers in Ohio, Arizona, and other states, who tried to monitor election night vote counting, were menaced and shut out by squads Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 193 of Republican toughs. In Warren County, Ohio, GOP officials announced a “terrorist attack”alert, and ordered the press to leave. They then moved all ballots to a warehouse where their secret counting produced some fourteen thousand more votes for Bush than he had received in 2000.

•Bush did remarkably well with phantom populations. The number of his votes in two counties in Ohio exceeded the number of registered voters, creating turnout rates as high as 124 percent. In a small conservative sub- urban precinct of Columbus, where only 638 people were registered, the touch-screen machines tallied 4,258 votes for Bush. In almost half of New Mexico’s counties, more votes were reported than were recorded as being cast, and the tallies were consistently in Bush’s favor. 38 Exit polls showed Kerry solidly ahead of Bush in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Exit polls are an exceptionally accurate measure of elec- tions. In three recent elections in Germany, exit polls were never off by more than three-tenths of 1 percent. Unlike ordinary opinion polls, the exit sample is drawn from people who have actually just voted. It rules out those who say they will vote but never make it to the polls, those who cannot be sampled because they have no telephone or otherwise cannot be reached at home, those who are undecided or who change their minds about whom to support, and those who are turned away at the polls for one reason or another. Exit polls have come to be considered so reliable that international organizations use them to validate election results in countries around the world.

Republicans argued that in 2004 the exit polls were inaccurate because they were taken only in the morning when Kerry voters came out in greater numbers. In fact, the polling was done at random intervals all through the day, and the evening results were much the same as the early returns.

Most revealing, the discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies were never random but worked to Bush’s advantage in ten of eleven swing states that were too close to call, sometimes by as much as 9.5 percent as in New Hampshire, an unheard of margin of error for an exit poll. In Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa, exit polls registered solid victories for Kerry, yet the official tally went to Bush, virtually a statistical impossibility. 39 In states that were not hotly contested, the exit polls proved quite accurate.

Thus exit polls in Utah predicted a Bush victory of 70.8 to 26.4 percent; the actual result was 71.1 to 26.4 percent. In Missouri, where the exit polls predicted a Bush victory of 54 to 46 percent, the final result was 53 to 46 percent.

One explanation for the strange anomalies in vote tallies was found in the widespread use of touch-screen electronic voting machines. These machines produced results that consistently favored Bush over Kerry, often in chilling contradiction to exit polls. In 2003 more than nine hundred computer profes- sionals signed a petition urging that all touch-screen systems include a verifi- able audit trail. Touch-screen voting machines can be easily programmed to throw votes to the wrong candidate or make votes disappear while leaving the impression that everything is working fine. A tiny number of operatives can access the entire network through one machine and change results at will. The touch-screen machines are coded, tested, and certified in complete 194 Chapter 14 secrecy. Verified counts are impossible because the machines leave no reliable paper trail. Any programmer can write code that displays one result on the screen, records something else, and prints yet something else. There is no known way to ensure this does not happen. 40 Since the introduction of touch-screen voting, mysterious congressional elec- tion results have been increasing. In 2000 and 2002, Senate and House contests and state legislative races in North Carolina, Nebraska, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, and elsewhere produced dramatic and puzzling upsets, always at the expense of Democrats who were ahead in the polls. In some counties in Texas, Virginia, and Ohio, voters who pressed the Democrat’s name found that the Republican candidate was chosen. In Cormal County, Texas, three GOP candi- dates all won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece, a near statistical impossibility.

All of Georgia’s voters used Diebold touch-screen machines in 2002, and Georgia’s incumbent Democratic governor and incumbent Democratic sena- tor, who were both well ahead in the polls just before the election, lost in amazing double-digit voting shifts. 41 This may be the most telling datum of all: In New Mexico in 2004 Kerry lost all precincts equipped with touch-screen machines, irrespective of income levels, ethnicity, and past voting patterns. The only thing that consistently cor- related with his defeat was the touch-screen machine itself. And in Florida Bush registered inexplicably sharp jumps in his vote (compared to 2000) in counties that used touch-screen machines. 42 Companies like Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S that market the touch-screen machines are owned by militant supporters of the Republican Party. The CEO of Diebold, Walden O’Dell, raised huge sums for the Bush campaign. (In 2009 Diebold sold its voting-machine division to ES&S, its largest competitor, put- ting an even more monopolistic grip on the voting-machine system.) These companies refused to explain how their machines worked, claiming proprie- tary rights, a claim that has been backed in court. Election officials are not allowed to evaluate the secret software. Apparently corporate trade secrets are more important than voting rights.

The companies also argued that secrecy was needed in order to maintain security. One security technologist disagrees:“Any voting-machine company that claims its code must remain secret for security reasons is lying. Security in computer systems comes from transparency—open systems that pass public scrutiny—and not secrecy.” 43 The solution is to use only electronic voting machines that produce readily countable paper ballot results. Election officials would be required to conduct random hand recounts of paper ballots in 3 or 4 percent of precincts, and more in very close races. Such routine audits are an important check on the accuracy of the computer count. The best system of all is the one in which voters directly record their votes on paper and the paper ballots are then jointly counted by officials of all political parties. 44 Incidents of electoral fraud also were reported in the 2006 and 2008 elec- tions but by then a great deal of light had been thrown on the strange anoma- lies of electronic voting machines, along with court challenges and public protests—all of which may have discouraged the partisan hackers. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections 195 PALE DEMOCRACY What policymakers do can have serious effects on our well-being. So it does matter who gets elected. And who gets elected is much determined by how the electoral system is run. In Western European countries, with their strong party systems and several weeks of relatively brief campaigning, money does not reign supreme as in the United States. Benefiting from the more democratic system of proportional representation, left-oriented parties in Europe have es- tablished a viable presence in parliaments, even ruling from time to time. Con- sequently they have been able to create work conditions, human services, and living standards considerably superior to those found in the United States.

Over the long haul just about every life-affirming policy that has come out of government originated not with policymakers and political leaders but with the common people, be it the eight-hour work day, the abolition of child la- bor, public education, the right to collective bargaining, workers’benefits, oc- cupational safety, civil rights, civil liberties, women’s rights, gay rights, health care, consumer protection, and environmental protection. When an issue wins broad, well-organized popular support and receives some (usually reluctant) attention in the media, then officeholders are less able to remain forever indif- ferent to it.

The way people respond to political reality depends on the way that real- ity is presented to them. If large numbers have become apathetic and cynical, including many who vote, it is at least partly because a questionable electoral system discourages the kind of creative mass involvement that democracy is supposed to nurture. But even within a constricted two-party context, elec- tions—if kept somewhat honest—are one of the potentially soft spots in the capitalist power structure.

196 Chapter 14 CHA P TER 15 Congress: The Pocketing of Power The Congress created by the framers of the Constitution is a bicameral body, divided into the House of Representatives, whose 435 seats are distributed among the states according to population, and the Senate, with two seats per state regardless of population. Thus nine states—California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, and New Jersey— contain more than half the nation’s population but only 18 of the Senate’s 100 seats. Whom and what does the Congress represent?

A CONGRESS FOR THE MONEY The people elected to Congress are not demographically representative of the nation. Women are 52 percent of our population but composed only 92 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives in the 111th Congress in 2010, and 17 of 100 U.S. senators. African Americans and Latinos together are a quarter of the nation’s population, yet African Americans held only 42 seats in the House, while Latinos occupied 25; the Senate had only one African American senator and three Latinos. In addition, occupational backgrounds are heavily skewed toward the upper brackets. Though they are only a small fraction of the population, lawyers (many of them corporate attorneys) com- pose about half of both houses. Bankers, investors, entrepreneurs, and busi- ness executives compose the next largest group, along with former mayors, state legislators, and other local officeholders. There are almost no blue- collar persons or other ordinary working people in Congress, although some members are of low-income family origin. 1 197