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Voting in America
Part II: My Conversation with a Fundraiser
"Hello, Mr. Brown. This is Jane (pseudonym) and I'm calling from the Campaign to Elect Barrack Obama …"
I cursed myself for not letting the phone go to voicemail. I knew that I was about to get the squeeze put on me for the umpteenth time in the past month by a political telemarketer with a war chest to fill in the run-up to the primaries. She caught me at a bad time. I had just watched the Phillies blow a three run lead on the Cubs and I was in no mood to hear about the virtues of yet another candidate who needed my money to run an ad blitz in Iowa. Poor Jane. By luck of the auto-dialer, she found herself asking for the buck that broke the donkey's back.
"Did you know…" Jane was on a roll, so I had to talk over her to get her to stop mid-pitch.
Whoa there, Jane. I know that your heart is in the right place - putting your time in for democracy is all part of being a good citizen - but do you have any idea how much money the Senator has collected so far in campaign contributions in his run for the Presidency?"
"Um, not really…"
About fifty-nine million. Dollars, Jane. That's a heck of a lot of money, don't you think?
"Yes, sir, it is," Jane replied. After a moment's pause she followed with, "…but, it costs a lot of money to run a campaign and that's why Senator Obama needs more money to…"
Doesn't that sound a bit sick to you, Jane?
"Huh…?"
I mean, think about it. They pay you what, five dollars an hour…
"I'm a volunteer, sir," Jane proudly replied.
Even better. Jane, are you independently wealthy? I mean, can you spend hours on the phone raising donations because you're living off a trust fund or something?
"No, sir, I work at (a big box store). As a greeter," she retorted. Oh, that's precious, I thought. How Neo-American Gothic. I had nothing against Jane. She was working for hope in this increasingly hopeless time, but she knew that my name was on the list because I had previously contributed money to progressive causes. I was an easy touch. Not this time. By the tone of her voice I could tell that Jane was becoming indignant and was about to hang up, so I threw her a bone to keep her playing along. I put on my best game show host voice:
Jane, what if I told you that I'd be willing to donate $100 of my hard earned cash to help the Senator pursue his vision - if you can give me a satisfactory answer to one question? Think you can do that, Jane?
"I'll try," Jane replied brightly. I could almost hear her break into a smile on the other end of the line. She was probably thinking this was like a contest on reality television.
Okay, Jane. Here's the question: Don't you think it's a sad testament to our political system that someone who makes not much better than minimum wage is volunteering their free time to extract money from someone else who is barely scraping by to fund the dreams of a millionaire who has already raised almost sixty million dollars?
"Well… when you put it that way… it doesn't sound too good," Jane apologized.
Here's a bonus question for you: Don't you think that democracy would be better served if all candidates got the same amount of funding and the same amount of access to the media as every other candidate - because that's where most of the money goes, right - for advertising? Buying spots on television and radio?
"Well, yeah, that would be great, but…"
But that's not the way it works, is it Jane?
"That's right… and it's not fair."
That's exactly the point I'm making. And if I contribute to the good Senator's campaign then I'm helping to enable the very system that shuts out quality candidates simply because they don't have the money to compete.
"But, you could donate to their campaigns," she replied.
Good point, Jane. Except we come full circle to the crux of the problem: the success of the Senator's campaign - or anyone's campaign, for that matter - shouldn't be predicated on how much money he can raise to make his voice heard among the people. Here's my real question: Don't you think it's time for full public financing of federal campaigns?
Poor Jane exhaled, deflated. "I guess you won't be making a donation to the Senator's campaign today…"
When I hung up the phone I sat for a while thinking about Jane and her devotion to what she sees as a righteous cause. I thought about money and how it has insidiously become the life's blood of our political process. I thought about the crisis our country faces when good men and women can only be heard if they are able to ante up for political campaigns by going hat-in-hand to lobbyists and wealthy benefactors. Comfortable pundits pontificate about the money race in lieu of the issues, but this show of fundraising has become an ugly substitute for democracy and it has turned our political process into a hollow shell. Flags may be waved and patriotic slogans shouted, but none of that matters if the core of the elective process is rotten.
The Case for Public Financing
Jane, if you're reading this, I apologize. I didn't mean to dump on you; you didn't create this corrupt system. We burden a would-be candidate with having to raise huge sums of money just so he or she can have a chance to win. Is money the true test of legitimacy? If that's the case then we might as well just hand over the country to the highest bidder.
There has got to be a better way to run a democracy than to leave it to a system that is based upon obscene amounts of private currency. The 2004 Presidential Election saw a stunning $1.7 billion in campaign funds raised by the parties. Where did all that money come from - the average working citizen? You already know the answer. It came from wealthy individuals and corporate lobbyists who bundled together huge pools of money to hand over to candidates just so those candidates could stay in the race for elected office. It came from the private funding of our public politics. And the sheer amount of money that needs to be raised just to be competitive in today's campaign puts a severe limit on who can run for office.
So, what's the alternative? Can our nation adjust to a new way of electing representatives? Can our politicians shake off their addiction to money? More importantly, what's in it for us?
What Do You Get for Your (Public) Money?
You get your government back. No longer will our elected officials be caught between their duty to do the right thing by the rest of us and their obligation to corporate lobbyists for financing their campaigns. When the need for money goes away, politicians are only beholden to their true constituents, we the People.
What does that mean in real terms? It means that your tax dollars can actually be used to make your life - and those of your fellow countrymen - better. Universal healthcare, affordable quality education, investment in alternative fuels, fair mortgages, progressive taxes, corporations that are obligated to create and maintain high quality jobs here in America, a chance to hand over a better world to your kids…everything that you can imagine for the public good moves from impossible to attainable once the impediment to good government - private money - is eliminated. In business that's known as Return on Investment. To most citizens it's called The American Dream.
That soldier in a far away land has invested himself in the principle of democracy. He is risking it all in the belief that his sacrifice will help to foster the American Dream that we all hold dear in our hearts. So, what are you willing to do? Will you sacrifice some your time to really delve into the issues? Can you spare a few of your tax dollars to defend our nation's most treasured asset? What's democracy really worth to you? Are you willing to fight for it?
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Top Three Ways to Steal Your Vote:
Did you know that your right to vote is not guaranteed in the Constitution? I was surprised, too. It turns out that voting is a state granted right. In a way that's kind of a scary thought, considering that there are a lot of states with serious impediments to voting. And the person who has the biggest say in whether or not you vote is the Secretary of (your) State. He or she decides on what machines can be used, who is registered and what ballots can be counted. You would think that with such power would come a sense of patriotic responsibility to make sure that all citizens of their state are afforded every opportunity to let their voice be heard on Election Day. But you would be wrong.
I. Caging
When Sarah Taylor, the one-time aid to Karl Rove who testified before Congress on the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal, mentioned caging no one on the panel knew what she was talking about and let the moment pass. But caging is one of the biggest scandals of this Administration and it is responsible for removing hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from the registration lists.
Caging was a technique first used by direct-mailing firms as a way to clean up their lists. They would send people on their list a certified letter; if the letter was returned those names got purged from the mailing list. The GOP decided this would be a great way to clean up the voter roles - in areas with a majority of registered Democrats. Go figure. They sent out certified letters to citizens who appeared on their purge lists. If the mail was returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery, or the voter is overseas serving in the military - they used that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the listed address, the registration was fraudulent.
II. Felon Records
Florida hired a private firm to purge that state's voter roles of "felons". To accomplish this they turned over registration lists in primarily black and poor neighborhoods - who typically vote for Democrats - and had the company run them against a felons list that the state also provided. Anybody whose name was an 80% match was purged despite an explicit warning from the company that this would significantly increase the chance for erroneous purges. Some increase. More than 80,000 legitimate voters were removed from the Florida registration list. These voters didn't find out until they went to vote - too late to use a voting machine. So they got provisional ballots that they were told would be verified and then added to the total. But the Secretary of the State decided to simply not count those votes - which she was allowed to do under state law. And the State of Florida was decided by 536 votes.
But that's not the only way felon records play a part in disenfranchising citizens. In most other democracies of the world once people are released from prison they have their voting rights restored. It is considered part of the rehabilitation of prisoners and one of the means to guide them back into society. In fact, some countries allow their prisoners to vote. Even Saddam Hussein voted in the Iraqi election from his prison cell. But in America each state decides who gets their voting rights restored. There are nearly as many laws as there are states. The result is that nearly 4.5 million citizens no longer have the right to vote. They are permanently disenfranchised from our political system.
III. Voter ID
Right now when you go to the polling place you sign in before you cast your ballot. Since you're actually signing in there is no way that you can vote twice. Rarely, if ever, are you asked for identification to prove you're who you are. Recently this honor system has been called into question by partisans who claim that it leaves the system open to fraud. On its surface it rings true, but those who make this claim cannot point to a single instance of voter fraud.
No matter. Their claim is used as an excuse to push for national Voter ID cards. Why could they possibly want this if it is not to stop fraud? It turns out that those people most likely to not have identification - a driver's license or a passport - are the young and minorities. Both groups may have legitimate reasons for not having photo identification - they don't drive or travel internationally - but should that stop them from being registered to vote?
And requiring them to purchase photo identification is the equivalent of having them pay a poll tax in order to vote. That kind of behavior was made illegal by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and should remain that way.
During the last two elections GOP operatives invaded polling places in Democratic precincts armed with laptops containing those caging and felon lists ready to challenge every voter to prove they could vote. Confused citizens agreed to fill out provisional ballots that would be verified later; in 2004 more than 600,000 of them were thrown in the trash. That ugly combination of techniques to disenfranchise voters was not done to guarantee democracy; it was a bag of dirty tricks played on American citizens to gain a partisan advantage. This is a crime against democracy and no party should be allowed to get away with it.
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