I have read the hundreds of passionate emails since the election and have held back from responding, largely because I was overwhelmed with deadlines. I am a media activist and see the theft of our elections and the loss of our free press as inextricably interrelated. I was in Philly with Steve Freeman, Jonathan Simon, Bruce O'Dell and Sally Castleman during the election. I appreciate the virtues of pursuing all means to regain control over our elections that have been stolen from us (the debate over whether to support or not support the Holt bill, that being the question). However, I think all of us have a tendency to become myopic when we're passionately in the center of the debate. The issue of permitting our elections to be taken over by private companies and private machines involves a much larger issue and to my mind, the one that must be preserved and fought for.
The absolute necessity to resist domination of government by corporate power has been a struggle which has marked our history since its inception. That admonition is nowhere to be found in the national debate. I blame corporate media. There's plenty of blame to go around, but for the purposes of my response here, corporate control of the media -- which was supposed to be regulated by the government in the public interest and was done somewhat for much of our history-- now contributes to the people's ignorance as the government has granted the media corporations monopoly status.
The greatest threat to our democracy is corporate power. As is often attributed to Mussolini, "fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." See also the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary definition of Fascism: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
As Vice President Henry Wallace predicted in an article he wrote for the NY Times in 1944 -- echoing the wisdom of James Madison," A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must are themselves with the power knowledge gives." -- Americans wouldn't have to seriously concern themselves with American fascism until the media became part of the corporate monopoly structure, "American fascism will not be really dangerous...until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information...".
Some of this discussion regarding the relationship of media reform and election reform is for another day, but it is important to recognize that excessive corporate power of the media is corroding our democracy. The media reform movement is fighting back, but we are of course behind many eight balls. It is necessary to quash further advances of corporatism in its infancy. Corporate control of our elections is a few years old if you start with HAVA. Like our free press, which has been privatized (albeit once regulated) for our history, it is the private aspect which will always seek to predominate at the expense of we the people.
There will be no way to put the Diebold et al genie back in the bottle if we don't stop it now. Any compromise, while seemingly a realistic attempt to gain some control at a dark moment, will only come back to bite us. Any concession to electronic voting now will be paid for later as black box voting becomes legitimized with each passing year.
I had a wonderfully eye opening conversation the other night with my 16 year old and some of his friends-all of whom have a far more sophisticated appreciation of what a computer is then most adults. I think it is because of their natural understanding of computers that when I presented the election issue to them, the very first response was-- but aren't elections supposed to be public? They inherently understood that computers would always be privately controlled- only as good as the last guy who got in there. They hadn't read your emails or anything else on the subject. They just understood two basic fundamental concepts: that elections belong to the public and that computers are antithetical to public control.
In considering the question of how to approach this issue then, for the sake of future generations (not to mention all who have given their lives to this cause) we don't have the right to concede that which our children understand; that which is embodied in their Constitution too: that a self-governing people cannot be such without the information they need to elect or evict those chosen to represent their interests (hence the First Amendment's Free Press) and that the possibility of democracy under a condition of private control of elections is non existent.
I believe it is the fear, the feeling of what we're up against, that causes some of us to fight for what they believe is realistic. They have won once we grant them that. In the words of Edward R. Murrow, "No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all its accomplices." Even an unwitting and well meaning accomplice is an accomplice.
I just clicked on all those buttons at the bottom of your article and filled out the little forms that came up, because I'd like it to be seen by as many people as possible.
"Any concession to electronic voting now will be paid for later...." And paid for again and again and again as we attempt to substitute "better" machines and software for "worse" machines and software, and pay for upgrades, audits, maintenance, technicians, and other sky-rocketing costs for something that can be done more efficiently, more transparently, more democratically, and for a tiny fraction of the cost by voting with paper and pencil.
When are people going to figure out that it wasn't just democracy that was stolen, we've had our pockets picked too?
Everything's an industry. We used to have a medical profession, now we have a health care industry. And not even its proponents are claiming that we've benefitted from improved services or lowered costs as they'd originally claimed we would. We used to have a free press that was the envy of less privileged nations, now we have an infotainment industry. But even they can't claim that we're better informed. We used to have a democratic process and now we have an elections industry. So with all this "industry," why is our national deficit bigger than ever before?
Thanks again for a great article, Andi. I'm looking forward to reading more from you. You rock!
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 4:27:39 AM
1 comments
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