When the right and the left agree more than the center, it tells us it's time to fix our very broken election system.
The sun didn't shine at midnight. Cats and dogs weren't lying together. But it was a topsy turvy world this week when progressives and freshman right wing congressmen were in close agreement that the Bush/Pelosi/Reid bailout was bad news.
The reasons may have differed-- Republicans opposed it because it was an affront to their conservative values, verging on socialism, and Progressives opposed it because it sold out mains street for Wall Street-- but it has created an interesting dynamic, one that is worthy of exploration.
If the opposite ends of the political spectrum agree to disagree with the middle, what does that tell us about the middle?
We know that not a single freshman Republican voted in support of the bailout bill. Yet even some of the most liberal Democrats went with their party leadership to pass it.
One thing that's clear is the Republicans have lost control of their people, while the Democrats had far more discipline. Since the Republican party has been so misguided lately, that may be a good thing for them. Of course with congressional ratings below 10 percent, perhaps the Dems could have used some rebellion too. The vote certainly did not help their popularity.
No, my enthusiasm for most of the congressional Democrats has waned even further than I thought possible. To me, they sold out the average American with this bailout and showed ever more of the same spinelessness, jumping when Bush told them to jump, being afraid and panicked when instructed to do so.
Some progressive congressional stalwarts stood up to the wave of panic- Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold-- but most caved and allowed the outrageous 450 page, pork-loaded bill pass, handing an obscene gift to Bush.
More than ever, America needs to institute term limits and new laws requiring equal treatment for third parties AND instant runoff voting, which lets you pick your first, second and third choices, and requires a majority victory. If you no-one wins on the first pass, then the candidate with the least votes is dropped from the count and the second choice of all voters who voted for the dropped candidate is counted. This way, voters can cast true protest votes or vote for third party candidates without throwing away their vote.
The advantage incumbent members of congress now have is bad for democracy, bad for America. We saw it here with this vote, where all of congress ignored the clear message they received from 90% of their constituents not to pass the bill.
By the way, I'd bet that Obama and McCain cut a deal that they'd both support the bill so neither could attack the other on it.
Now we sit and wait. It won't be long. Within a few days or weeks, we'll see more banks failing. I doubt the $700 billion will put a dent in or slow down the economic crisis we're experiencing. Too bad we can't, like we'd be able to do if there was instant run-off voting, send a message to our incumbent legislators, that they truly let us down. If we did have instant runoff voting, I bet that message would have become a landslide and a lot of incumbents either wouldn't be coming back or would be coming back quite chastened.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a columnist with Northstarwriters.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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A few declarations.
-While I'm registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans.
-My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
For all of the calls, emails, letters and op-ed columns, it is clear that neither the Senate nor the House, and certainly not the President has any interest in what the voters have to say. Possibly this is because they know that the votes won't be counted correctly anyway.
What is left? Protests in the streets don't work.
What is left? Maybe a general strike?
What will it take for the voices of the people to be noticed?
by
PrMaine (11 articles, 9 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 395 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 10:21:04 AM
"Within a few days or weeks, we'll see more banks failing. I doubt the $700 billion will put a dent in or slow down the economic crisis we're experiencing."
Best bet, based on the economists I trust, is that there will be an 18 month, fairly deep recession, and upwards of 200 bank failures. And that even a well designed resue packange would not have prevented that.
Stock market values will drop, small investors will be hurt badly in this scanario.
The supporters of the bailout believed, or said they believed that failure to take pressure off of the financial system would result in something much worse that that scenario - a lockdown of the credit (money) system world wide, and that that in turn would turn a bad recession into a worse one, lasting a longer time.
You are correct, this package will not make a dent in the recession. It may prevent a worse one. It will not prevent bank many failures, it may prevent even more.
I do not like this package, for all that I support action to prevent lockup of the credit/money system - it is too weak to help the mortgage dept crisis which is the proximate cause, which exposes the rot at the root, of the financial system near breakdown. That should have been dealt with through a HOLC, Home Owners Loan Corporation: HOLC
It may put the money into the system in the wrong way, diluting the effect of the contribution. And it definitely is too generous in taking a load off of these financial firms, without adequate cmmpensation to the taxpayer and the treasury. That should have been done by direct injection of funds into the financial markets by purchase of preferred stock in sound institutions facing liquidity/solvency problems.
(Sound institutions would be those whose problems are largely caused by the, in most situations desirable, practice of "mark to market" accounting for the value of credit instruments, but which kills the institution's balance seet when the market value is forced down by a crisis in confidence. So a suspension of or modification of the mark to market rules should have been a part of the package, and is being considered administratively even without legislative mandate.)
I fear that this package, while justified if it helps to avoid financial system meltdown, was torqued and distorted by the desire to protect capital in the hands of financiers, and not capital or labor who produce goods and services in the real economy. That is a different kind of disaster than a depression or multi year recession - but a disaster nontheless.
The Democratic leadership in the Congress should come forward, and tell us straightforwardely why these corrections to the Paulson bailout were not considered or discusses, and why economists who are specialists in the field of finance were not invited to critique the Paulson package and offer their own suggestions. The extent to which this has been closely held by administration and legislative branches, without information gathering and information sharing outside of those branches, is a national discrace.
by
Jim Pivonka (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 25 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 10:52:44 AM
Topsy Turvy Rob? Really. How about mind blowing. The circus came to town this week. The week Democracy went on Life Support. Thanks for operating a great site.
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kato krause (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 177 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 11:32:08 AM
IRV in San Francisco now & Fusion Voting in history
Everytime I see someone recommend Instant runoff voting, I wonder if they have examined the political scene in San Francisco, the largest IRV jurisdiction in the US, which also has had IRV the longest.
I also wonder if people realize that IRV does not strengthen third parties, and it does not help them to win?
Don't we want to strengthen third parties? What good is a voting method if it does not do that?
Did you know that in San Francisco, the candidates are not endorsing one another ( a key component of IRV), that candidates are not recommending that voters rank their choices, and that in San Francisco, IRV is serving as "incumbent protection". Did you know that this year a grand jury in San Francisco found that some voters and poll workers still did not understand IRV?
Why does IRV help the incumbent? Mathematically, IRV best serves whoever has the best name recognition, probably due to the mathematical likelihood that this person will get ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd more often.
There is an election method that is very simple, does not require special software and algorithms, that does help third parties. It is called Fusion voting, and it was so powerful in North Carolina, that in the late 1800s, the democratic party (then white supremacists) had to organize an actual coup to get back into office.
In the 1800's, Fusion Voting was very successful in places like North Carolina and Oregon. In NC, there were basically three parties, the Republicans (which included many black voters and candidates) the Populist Party, and the Democrats (white supremacists).
The republicans and the Populists often fused their tickets, and at that time, there were 1,000 black elected officials. The Democrats couldn't get elected. Not legally. So the Democrats made a deal with the corporations - that if the corps funded the Dems, then the Dems would keep corporate taxes down. Then the Dems took a gattling gun around the state, (drawn by horse wagon) and physically removed Republicans and Populists from office. They were the "red shirt brigade". Next step, the Dems re-did the election system, and they eliminated Fusion voting. By removing Fusion voting, they ensured that no third party could gain power.
New York and South Carolina both have fusion voting, but South Carolina does not fully utilize it. New York does use it and does have some third party presence.
I would support the use of Fusion Voting in my state, if a movement could be developed to promote it. It does not require special voting machines, or even require voting machines, and it DOES strengthen third parties and allows them to get elected and also to influence the tickets of the other parties.
by
ncvoter (17 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 108 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 11:41:59 AM
Electoral fusion is an arrangement where two or more political parties support a common candidate, pooling the votes for all those parties. By offering to endorse a major party's candidate, minor parties can influence the candidate's platform.
Unfortunately there are laws in many states that prevent this kind of democratic reform. A similar approach might be possible in which several parties agree to share electoral college delegates and pledge these delegates to cast their vote for the candidate who gets the most votes (from those sharing the delegate).
There are no doubt other approaches, however it is difficult to get past the fact that the major parties have the power and the motivation to outlaw any such approach.
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PrMaine (11 articles, 9 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 395 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 8:24:47 PM
previous articles and comment exchanges have countered all her points and disinformation and I'm not going to waste typing to do it here, again. You're starting to look like a troll though, NC.
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Rob Kall (869 articles, 4014 quicklinks, 345 diaries, 1846 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 9:59:48 PM
I'll add that libertarians opposed the bailout for both reasons. The bailout is an affront to the free market and it was a massive tranfer of wealth from the common man to the fat cats.
Rob you are correct in your analysis of why most of those Dems and Reps who opposed the bill did so. If the rest of the Dems and Reps lived up to their rhetoric their wouldn't have been one vote for this travesty.
We do need to open up the ballot to third parties and independents, the rules should be the same for everyone.
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Jim Rongstad (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 11:55:07 AM
of our current system of government is counterproductive to humanity.
The monetary system, based on debt, is slavery. You live in a prison with invisible bars and voting in elections is an absurd expression of confidence in a system designed to enslave you.
I like this site but its advocacy that voting produces results or ever will produce results lacks true intellectual investigation. Both Democrats and Republicans perpetuate a failed system.
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jeff prager (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 185 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 4:28:27 PM
Whining about it won't do any good. I suggest that you slobs just face the facts. Corporations are now in charge, and there isn't a thing you can do about it. Consider yourself iucky that you may still be able to collect food stamps. That is still wrongly free. We no longer need to employ people that ask for too big of a chunk of our profits, when we can get real workers that will work harder for the bare esentials overseas, who rightly feel lucky we come there? We own the Military, and Homeland security, as well as the white house, Congress, and much of the Judiciary. There is not a thing you can effectively do to resist. Sweet dreams.
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Philip Dennany (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 79 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 4:32:26 PM
The sooner people figure this out the better. Lets end the charade that we are a Democracy. Submit to corporate rule. The people have demonstrated they are too stupid to vote. Elections waste too much resources and the candidates talk baby talk to make sure the dumbest 10% can figure it out. During the Palin debates even my dog was offended by some of the crap and gave a whoof whoof in protest.
It's over, and has been for a long time. Bushs mission was to let us know it, to help minimize the shock. Much of what America was was largely a myth anyways, especially since we began our Imperialism with the Spanish American War, but even our conquest of the continent was a bloody affair and the same corporate rulers made out like bandits.
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pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 499 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 6:24:47 PM
Here are two scenarios, one for the Presidential race and one for the Congressional races.
Scenario One: The Presidential Race
To envision this scenario we have to imagine not only that the votes are counted accurately, but that a populist candidate comes along, a thousand times more popular than Ross Perot, who appeals to people on every sector of the political spectrum, who will not even under the direst threat concede to the loser "for the good of the country," and whose candidacy draws a greater turnout and more popular votes than any other candidate in U.S. history. Instead of a 48% turnout, due to this candidate's popularity, there is a 90% turnout and the candidate garners an unprecedented 85% of the popular vote.
Now, since our Constitution does not allow us to vote directly for President or Vice-President, the Slate of Electors of this candidate's political party go to Congress to cast the actual Electoral College votes for President. As the votes are counted, State after State rises to give their Electoral College votes to this ubiquitously respected candidate for President. There are only seven Electoral votes for other candidate. Still with me? Looks like a done deal, right?
Not so fast. The wealthy elite and the corporations don't happen to like this candidate because one of the things the candidate wants to do is to ensure that all corporations are strictly regulated and have to act responsibly even if it means sacrificing profits. So they tell their loyal Members of Congress to get rid of this troublemaker. Several Members of the House of Representatives get up a petition to reject ALL the Electoral Votes on the grounds that they are fraudulent because all Electors except for those seven dissenters were coerced into voting for the popular candidate. This is obviously false, but since several Senators have signed the petition, Congress is forced to allow it to be discussed and voted on. That's when the corporations and the political parties really turn the screws. They threaten martial law, they threaten to kill grandchildren and pets, they threaten to remove all seniority and committee assignments, they make every threat possible to ensure that the Members of Congress have no choice but to throw out all the Electoral votes except for those seven for the unpopular corporate candidate, and that candidate then is confirmed and sworn in as President.
There is an appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court says it has no jurisdiction and refuses to intervene. There are mass protests all over the country and Homeland Security has to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to suppress civil dissent and restore law and order, but Homeland Security has been prepared for this for years and does what they're told.
Now you may think that this couldn't happen. I'll bet you also thought that the Supreme Court couldn't stop the vote count and install a President themselves, right? And you also thought that Kerry would never renege on his promises to ensure that the votes were counted instead of conceding early right? And you were shocked, shocked I tell you, both times when the totally unimaginable and unthinkable occurred, right?
Well check your copy of the Constitution. The framers didn't trust ordinary people with important decisions like who should be President, so they didn't allow us to vote directly for President or Vice-President and ensured that the final say would belong to Congress or the Supreme Court. Pehaps they thought that just because Justices of the Supreme Court weren't elected and therefore supposedly independent, they wouldn't be partisan, corrupt, and loyal to those with the power to appoint them. Maybe the framers thought that because Members of Congress were likely to be of the wealthy elite, they were better qualified to decide who would rule the people than the people were. Whatever their thoughts and intentions, they did NOT give us the final say in who becomes President and short of scrapping this Constitution and getting a new one, which, if it had to be approved by our current corporate State governments would be likely to be even worse than the old one, there is nothing that we can do about it.
Scenario Two: The Congressional Races
For this we have to imagine that populist candidates such as the one I described above, arise all over the country and run for Congress. Again, in our imaginary scenario, the votes are counted accurately and all these candidates win their Congressional races with 80% or more of the vote in an unprecedented turnout. Then they report to Congress to be sworn into office.
But when they arrive, they are told that Congress has already sworn in their opponents, the losers who only got less than 20% of the vote. How could that possibly be? Well, Congress has been known to swear in Members of Congress before all the votes are counted and before the elections have been certified. In this case, the wealthy elites and the big corporations realized that they were in trouble if all these populist candidates were sworn in, so they contacted the Congressional and political party leaderships and made the same threats mentioned above. Swear in the people we tell you to, immediately, or everyone you love dies, there will be martial law, you'll lose your seniority and committee assignments, you'll never get any more campaign donations, etc. In the face of threats like that, what can Congress do but comply?
Of course everyone is shocked, shocked I tell you, that something this unimaginable and unthinkable could happen. But again the Supreme Court points out that it has no Constitutional jurisdiction to intervene, that the Constitution makes Congress itself the sole judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of Members of Congress, and again the widespread protests are put down (but not without the tragic loss of many American lives). You can't even blame Homeland Security because the incumbent President and Congress have already enacted legislation that makes anyone who protests a Constitutional decision of Congress a domestic terrorist.
Once again, the Constitution does not give us the final say in elections, it gives it to Congress. And while Congress may think nothing of shredding the parts of the Constitution that were supposed to ensure our rights, when it comes to the parts that ensure the power of Congress, they'll defend it with everything they've got, including the U.S. military and Blackwater mercenaries if our troops mutiny and refuse to shoot us. Private military corporations are already better armed and equipped, and because they pay more, they have more experienced troops, many from some of the most notorious death squads in the world who have no loyalty whatsoever to America or to Americans.
So there are just two of many totally unimaginable and unthinkable scenarios which could not be averted merely by having honest vote counts or different electoral methods.
The framers felt that those who owned the country should rule it and they wrote the Constitution in such a way as to ensure that would be the case. It worked. That was the case when they wrote it and it is still the case now.
The system is indeed broken, Rob. But it isn't just a few appurtenances that need to be tinkered with and improved. The system was always undemocratic at its core and never gave us control over our government. We just thought that it did. And shock after shock after shock, we are being awoken to the fact that it did not.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 9:24:33 PM
You are repeating misinformation, and misleading claims about Instant Runoff Voting.
instant runoff voting, which lets you pick your first, second and third choices, and requires a majority victory.
This is simply false. Here is a simple example of an IRV election in which X is preferred to Y by a majority of voters and gets more first-place votes than Y, but loses to Y.
I'm quite sure this example has been pointed out to you before.
And IRV is one of the poorest ranked choice methods, largely because of the manner by which it calculates a winner - ignoring a huge amount of the information that voters specify.
If you no-one wins on the first pass, then the candidate with the least votes is dropped from the count and the second choice of all voters who voted for the dropped candidate is counted. This way, voters can cast true protest votes or vote for third party candidates without throwing away their vote.
I can cast a "protest vote" right now in any election that isn't close. For instance, since I know California will go for Obama, I can vote for Nader or McKinney or Barr. So what? What does a "protest" vote do? A better voting method should actually elect better candidates, and not penalize voters for supporting their favorite candidate. IRV does not solve this problem, because once a third candidate becomes competitive, he becomes a potential spoiler.
This is Election Theory 101, and yet you seem blissfully unaware of it.
Incidentally, your criticism of Joyce McCloy demonstrates baseless hand-waving dismissal of an election integrity activist who has selflessly worked to improve our democracy. She has cited extensive evidence to back up her claims, and while she may have erred on occasion, the thrust of her argument is spot on with regard to the severe problems associated with Instant Runoff Voting.
There is a vastly simpler and better alternative to IRV.
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