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Not
again! Time to demand a modern democracy
By
Robert Richie and Steven Hill
OpEdNews.com
The
2000 presidential election was a slap in the face for a complacent nation.
The utter failure of the fundamentals of our elections should have been a
clarion call for change. Yet here we are in 2004, teetering on the
precipice of an election that threatens to repeat nearly every flaw of
four years ago.
All signs suggest a tightly fought election. And given our failure
to modernize elections, from voting equipment to voting systems, the
presidency is far too likely to be decided by a judge than by voters and
go to the candidate with fewer popular votes.
Let's
review major defects exposed by the 2000 presidential election, how we
failed to correct them and what we must do to be as proud of our elections
as our military hardware.
*
The
candidate with the most votes didn't win: The Electoral College
is an 18th century anachronism, opposed even at the time by the likes of
Madison and Hamilton. It doesn't guarantee even a plurality winner, and
this year led to most Americans being completely ignored in the
presidential race because they did not live in a battleground state. It
also invites electoral fraud; those inclined to steal an election
can target their efforts on a few battleground states.
As
recently as 1969 the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted for an amendment to
abolish the Electoral College, but this term there was not one piece of
legislation even mentioning the phrase until a few weeks ago. Whether or
not we again get a wrong-way winner, it's time to embrace Congressman
Jesse Jackson Jr.'s HJ Resolution 109 for direct election of the president
by majority vote.
* We
couldn't count the ballots right: Who can forget the hanging
chads, butterfly ballots, long lines and voter registration snafus of the
2000 election? The Republican-dominated Congress for one. It passed the
Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, but stopped at that halting first
step.
HAVA accepts the chaos and disenfranchisement that flows from our
decentralized election administration, where more than 13,000
jurisdictions across the nation run elections with little uniformity and
not enough money.
The news is full of state and local decisions that will
disenfranchise voters this fall.
Florida
and
Ohio
plan to toss out all provisional ballots
cast by registered voters who were not informed they were in the wrong
polling place. A
Nevada
judge rejected a lawsuit asking the state to
re-open voter registration for citizens whose registrations were torn up
by a Republican-backed voter registration firm.
Most
voters in
Ohio
will use the thoroughly discredited punchcard
system,
while
Florida
voters will largely vote on new "touchscreen" systems
developed by private companies with proprietary software that is poorly
tested and regulated and lacks a voter verifiable paper trail.
Against
all international norms, states collectively have stripped nearly five
million American citizens, disproportionately minority. And states have
failed to register nearly one out of every three American adults.
The expected chaos and confusion has made work for swarms of lawyers
ready to pounce on flaws. Once again state and federal judges could
effectively pick the winner. To keep the decision in the hands of voters,
we need to pass Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s HJ Resolution 28 for a
clear constitutional right to vote and build a coherent, transparent
electoral infrastructure with uniform standards and secure voting
equipment and software developed for the public interest
*
Our system breaks down with more than two choices:
In 2000, the combined
vote for Al Gore and Ralph Nader was more than 51% of the
national total and more than 50% of the vote in
Florida
. But because it was
divided between two candidates, George Bush won
Florida
and the presidency.
Third party candidates like David Cobb and Ralph Nader add
immeasurably to the debate of important issues ignored by poll-driven
campaigns, but also threaten to spoil the race for John Kerry. States
could have accommodated more choice and ensured a majority winner by
passing statutes to adopt instant runoff voting (IRV). A few far-sighted
political leaders like Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson Jr., John McCain, and
Dennis Kucinich back IRV, and now
San Francisco
's breakthrough IRV elections
this fall could spur a wave of reform.
Action
on these three areas would bring presidential elections up to 21st century
standards. But that's just the beginning. From universal voter
registration to fair candidate access to our public airwaves to full
representation electoral methods for electing our legislatures, providing
full access, competitive choice and fair representation to all
voters must be the nation's business.
In the wake of the likely ugly sequel to Election 2000, let' s push
for real change.
Robert Richie is the executive director of FairVote-The Center for
Voting and Democracy www.fairvote.org
. Steven Hill is FairVote's senior analyst and author of "Fixing
Elections: The Failure of
America
's Winner Take All Politics" www.FixingElections.com
. Contact them
at info@fairvote.org. If you know of or experience electoral fraud, call
the national fraud hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE
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