common cause
No, don't demand the vote. Do it yourself.
My new DIY ballot also makes California’s method of “getting things on the ballot” obsolete. We do not need to collect signatures to place things on a DIY ballot. We just place them there directly, person by person. If enough people vote for the same thing at the same time, that is a law. You don’t have to get permission from the State to propose or to vote. The State is a needless middleman in that equation.
For instance, say Californians want to outlaw steroids in beef. Currently they have to collect signatures to get that issue on the ballot, then they have to advertise to get people to vote for it. But that is overcomplicating the procedure. Why not just advertise it and vote on it? Collecting signatures is just busy work dreamed up by people who want to limit direct democracy. These people argue that a glut of propositions would make for a messy ballot. But a messy ballot is not a real problem for a democracy. In fact, a messy ballot should be one of the most desired things. It is a thing of great political beauty, because it means the people are active. That is what a healthy democracy is. A neat and tidy ballot should be looked upon as a disease.
So, if Congress starts confronting a majority of voters on the ability to vote, it deserves to be voted out, as a whole. Same with the President. But what about the Supreme Court? Couldn’t the Supreme Court block WE THE PEOPLE? Not a chance. The Supreme Court is shielded by the Constitution from the other branches of government, but it is not shielded from us. The Constitution created the Supreme Court, and we created the Constitution. What we can create, we can control, or un-create. We can recall the Supreme Court immediately, just like the Congress, and replace it with one that we trust. How could they stop us? They don’t control the police or the army, and the police and the army can’t control WE THE PEOPLE, acting in concert, even if they wanted to. The Supreme Court, in such an emergency to itself, could start issuing bulls like the Pope or the Grand Inquisitor or the Star Chamber, but all we have to do is ignore them. Then what do they do? If a large majority of voters issue a no-confidence vote, the sitting Supreme Court is no longer sitting. It is that simple.
Lastly, you will say, what about the police or the military? Well, to start with, the police and the military also derive their power and their paychecks from WE THE PEOPLE. This is pretty obvious. In any emergency pitting the President or the Supreme Court against WE THE PEOPLE, the police are going to have to come down on our side, by necessity. Especially if it is over something like voting rights. Police are mainly local, as are we. They don’t take orders from the President or the Supreme Court.
The army is also answerable, at last, to us. The President may be commander-in-chief, but he is also first representative of WE THE PEOPLE. If he should order the military to attack WE THE PEOPLE as a majority, he would be giving a treasonous and un-Constitutional order. Likewise, the military would be treasonous to obey that order.
You will say that the military has attacked civilian populations in many countries in many times, and that is true. But the military has not and does not attack majorities. It attacks defenseless minorities. The military not only would not, but could not attack a majority of voters, even if it wanted to.
But none of this even needs to be addressed, except to calm the hysterical. Why do you think the government takes polls? The government takes polls because the government has to be concerned, ultimately, with what WE THE PEOPLE want. No part of the government has the power or the will to resist us, not the three branches, not the military, not the CIA or the FBI. Some parts of some of these branches have the will to keep us from recognizing our power, and they are doing a bang-up job in that regard. But if we awaken and assert our natural and Constitutional and republican rights, nothing can stop us. These same anti-democratic forces couldn’t even stop the thousands in Caracas, Venezuela, from waking up and asserting their dormant power. How could they stop 100 million US citizens from exercising their rights?
Many are now complaining that our democracy is dying, or is under grave threat. Yes, it is. But it is far from over. As long as we have the right to vote, we have the power to do almost anything. All we have to do is exercise it. Voting has become a limited action only because WE THE PEOPLE are not using it to full effect. The greatest problem with our democracy is not the fascists threatening it, it is the WE THE PEOPLE who are doing nothing. Fascists have always threatened, and always will. The greater problem, the current problem, is that we accept the diminished rights we are given, as if we have to. We let precinct workers tell us what to do, for goodness sake! We are cowed by every sort of small bureaucrat there is. But that is not the fault of the bureaucrat, it is OUR FAULT. That bureaucrat has only the power you give her. If you and I get together and take that power away from her, she has no recourse. It is not for her to tell us what we must do; it is for us to tell her what she must do. What goes for her goes for the mayor, the governor, the FBI, and the President. We are the boss, and we best begin to act like it.
Enough pieces of paper that say WE THE PEOPLE overrule cannot be ignored or contested by any court or jury or assembly or platoon. It doesn’t matter if the polls are closed or if the building is locked or if no one is there to count the ballots or even if the police are there, blocking access. If enough people do it, it is done, and the police cannot undo it, or the courts, or anyone else. You simply tape your ballots to the outside of the building, en masse, with the video cameras rolling. You then have a work of art, a great ballot canopy to beat any orange umbrellas by Christo or anyone else. You then have a spectacle more powerful than any Reichstag fire or midnight bombing or napalm attack. You then have a democratic act to trump any Boston tea party or any march on Washington, with or without tractors.
Just imagine it with me. It is not outlandish at all. It is not a pipedream or a pie in the sky. It would be quite easy to accomplish, with almost no effort. You do not need to arm yourself or do any chin-ups. You do not need to camouflage up or wear a ski-mask. You do not have to duct-tape the windows before you leave the house or buy canned food. All you need is a pen and a piece of paper. You write a name on that piece of paper. It can be any name you want. Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, Barack Obama, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, Adolph Hitler, Mickey Mouse. You don’t even have to spell it correctly, as long as you get close. Next, you go to your polling place, as usual. And then, with everyone else, you put your piece of paper in a box. Sometime later, in an open room, with lots of witnesses, these votes are counted. None of them are thrown out, even the silliest. The totals are reported to the State, and the highest total wins. Nothing difficult about it.
You will say, what if they won’t accept my ballot? Well, if you are by yourself, you look like an idiot, right? Standing there with your pathetic little handmade ballot. They ignore you and you go home. But if you are with a thousand other people, and you demand that your ballots be accepted and counted, and if a thousand people are at each precinct in town demanding the same thing, and if the same thing is happening in every precinct in every town in the nation, then you don’t look so stupid, do you? You look like a patriot. You look like a very smart and brave person. Your little ballot starts to look like the incredibly beautiful thing that it is. The TV stations show up, and before you know it, the world is a different place. By the very next morning, this voting revolution is achieved. The precincts either start counting your votes or they look very un-American. They don’t have anywhere to hide.
Do you really think the New York Times could dismiss this as not newsworthy? “One million write-ins refused across the country.” Is there any way that could fail to be significant? Is there any way that could be ignored? Is there any way that could fail to snowball? I don’t see how. And if it is 5 million or 50 million, well, game over.
Let us continue imagining. What if the powers-that-be still don’t get the message? What if the worst happens? What if the local TV stations report on it, the whole country is raised, but the institutions decide to stonewall? Let us imagine that the talking heads on Fox and CNN, cued by the political parties and the Congress and all the other places of power, decide to lead with the argument that only 5 million showed up with their own ballots. In a nation of 125 million registered voters, that is 1/25th of the population. Not a majority, they will say. Just a bunch of cranks, right?
