America’s commitment to voting has been absolute and resolute. As with anything, there will always be some margin of unintended error, errors that, in the end, likely do not change the overwhelming outcome. That said, getting to the voting booth has been under attack for some years now. It is an attack fueled by a push to try to make voting rules inherently favor a particular candidate or political party. We have pushed for voter IDs to solve a voter ID problem that is acknowledged to be virtually non-existent, with “approved ID cards” slanted to particular groups. We have adopted more restrictive rules for registering to vote. We have cut back on the hours, days, number of locations for early voting, and their proximity to their neighborhood voters. This is happening at the very time when we should be doing everything possible to encourage people to vote. Many of these maneuvers are winding up in court, mostly being overturned, but at a significant cost of time, energy, money, and endless confusion.
The Candidate claims – with no proof offered – that the election is “rigged.” Against him, of course. But if there is any rigging going on, it is We the People who are doing the rigging to ourselves. We do it by not voting, and by accepting questionable new voting rules. A few examples may illustrate this.
In the 2008 presidential election, roughly 230M people were eligible to vote. Only around 130M did – a 57% turnout. In 2012, 235M were eligible, but again only around 130M did – a 55% turnout. We claim to be the shining example and promotor of democracy around the world – government by Law rather than by person – and almost half of our citizens do not show up when needed. Many of these no-shows will nevertheless be happy to subsequently complain about government services and decisions, write insulting postings in social media, all while staying minimally informed about issues of the day. That sideline seat is far too comfortable to hide on.
In 2015, Kentucky held an election for governor. Up-and-comer Democrat Jack Conway was far and away the polling favorite over Tea Party Republican Mast Bevin. To everyone’s great surprise, Mr. Bevin won with 52.5% of the votes cast. Why? Because only 30% of Kentucky’s eligible voters showed up for this off-year election. Put another way … in a country founded on “the majority wins,” all Mr. Bevin needed in order to win was to take just 15.1% of the eligible voters in his state – i.e. 50.1% of the small (30%) turnout. It was the same strategy Donald Trump used to vanquish his 16 other Republican primary competitors: split the field and get a simple plurality of the only 20+% of America’s voters who are registered as Republicans. (In the early going of the primary, Trump rarely got more than 30% of the votes, versus 70% to other candidates.) Today, to lead the pack, to win the vote, you do not need a majority of the citizens. You only need one more vote than anyone else from the reduced numbers of people who enter the polling booth. It is a very different way of strategizing a political campaign.
Take another example. In June, North Carolina had to hold a special primary election solely for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. This was necessary due to a federal court ruling overturning the Legislature’s redistricting plan. In that election, less than 10% of voters in my county turned out to vote, with a similar pattern in other counties. The resulting vote was so small, so close, that it generated more indecision. Yet another round of candidate protests had to be resolved in order to finally bring that election to conclusion.
Speaking of legislative redistricting raises the discussion of gerrymandering – drawing congressional and legislative districts is such a way as to deliberately tilt future elections to a particular party or group. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a “1 man / 1 vote” (now “1 person / 1 vote”!) basis for drawing electoral districts, requiring that all districts should have roughly equal populations. In 2016, the Court rejected a suit by conservative Republicans in Texas who argued that the “equal count” should rather be based upon the number of “eligible voters,” which (just coincidentally, of course) would thereby favor smaller, rural (i.e. more conservative – read Republican) communities over large, urban areas. The Court instead reaffirmed that the comparative count for redistricting will continue to be based upon the TOTAL population of would-be districts. End of this attempted subterfuge. For now.
Other than this rule mandated by the Court, the criteria for creating districts are vague, if not non-existent. When gerrymandering comes into play, things can go haywire to substantively defeat the people’s will. For example, North Carolina’s Congressional districts look like an abstract Picasso painting superimposed over a state map. District lines weave in and out and around population centers, and inexplicably snake their way into narrow tributaries of individual streets and neighborhoods. The result is not comic relief, but profound impact. In the 2014 Congressional election, Republican candidates received 1,555,364 combined votes (56%); Democratic candidates received 1,234,027 combined votes (44%). Yet due to gerrymandered districts, Republicans won 10 Congressional seats (77%); Democrats won 3 (23%). So much for the “will of the people.”
Voting is the one process that reaffirms what democracy is: governance by the People. When we forgo our responsibility to speak up – not in social media or conversations among friends, but at the ballot box – we hurt both our neighbors and ourselves. When we play with the voting rules and processes, we turn the democratic process into just another political game of sport. We rig the voting process against ourselves by accepting phony excuses that disguise anti-voting maneuvers – just as my southern ancestors did for a hundred years after the Civil War. We rig it against ourselves by fighting about personalities instead of exploring and debating ideas. Going to the polling place may not be as fun and quick as sending out an ill-thought Tweet, but it has a lot more tangible impact than those 140 characters ever will. We need to reject institutional voter rigging as odious to our democracy. Vote. Our country needs our civic service.
© 2016
Randy Bell www.ThoughtsFromTheMountain.blogspot.com
1 comment:
Right on again.
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