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Totally De-voted: 9 Things Destroying Democracy Lowell Ponte Democracy, as explained to us in government school civics classes, was supposed to give voters an honest choice between honest candidates. Look, instead, at some of what is being done to thwart democracy in our democratic republic:
1. Non-citizens are voting. In once-conservative Orange County, California, now-Representative Loretta Sanchez narrowly edged veteran Congressman Bob Dornan out of office by a few hundred votes in an election where more than 700 ballots were cast by illegal aliens.
Democrats have secured court orders prohibiting Republicans from posting uniformed rent-a-cop security guards near polling places.
This year a letter by Sanchez's opponent to 14,000 residents warned immigrants not to vote illegally. Hispanic activists denounced it as racist. California's Secretary of State mass-mailed a counter letter describing the GOP candidate's letter as "unauthorized and inaccurate" and telling Hispanics that "You are encouraged to participate and vote in the upcoming November 7, 2006 General Election!"
Farther south in north San Diego County, Democratic congressional candidate Francine Busby held a meeting with mostly Latinos, closed to the press, and told them "you don't need papers" to participate in elections.
2. Districts are gerrymandered. For two centuries the ruling political party has drawn congressional district boundaries to its advantage. In a region where the two major parties have equal support, this has been used, e.g., to carve out three congressional districts – one with an 80 percent Republican majority and two with a 60 percent Democratic majority.
The Republican Member of Congress usually cooperated with such gerrymandering because it produces a very safe seat for the incumbent. This deck-stacking subverts democracy and is why 98 percent of Congressmen get re-elected.
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Congressional politicians sometimes now select their voters, not vice versa, drawing district lines that include individual homes of their own party's registered voters while excluding others.
3. Elections are dishonest. Chicago, the saying goes, is a town where four out of every two citizens vote Democratic, including many who mysteriously rise from their graveyards at election time. Such specters now haunt polling places across America.
No wonder that Democrat-appointed judges have been frantically striking down new laws requiring photo identification cards for voters in places like Georgia, Missouri and Arizona (where the U.S. Supreme Court days ago overturned a lower court's order against voter IDs). Left wing lawyers argue that it is "too onerous" to ask poor people to obtain the same kind of free identification needed for a welfare check to prevent potential voter fraud. What should we learn from the widespread fear among Democrats that elimination of voter fraud would undermine or eliminate their political power?
4. Ballots can be manipulated. Twenty-five percent of our election ballots are now absentee. Political operatives have been caught stealing or extorting signatures on ballots. In Oregon, 100 percent of elections are conducted via mail. A single unionized Democratic letter carrier could trash hundreds of ballots from Republican neighborhoods.
5. Our politics is a duopoly. Like a monopoly, a duopoly is governance by two ruling parties that collude with one another. The Presidential Debate Commission, e.g., is a private organization made up solely of past Democratic and Republican leaders. No third party candidates were invited into its televised debates in 2004.
(In some cases, however, one party can use a third party candidate to split an opponent's vote, as Ross Perot did in 1992. Democratic candidate Bill Clinton became President with only 43 percent of popular votes. A strong circumstantial case can be made that Perot and the Clintons worked together to undermine our "two party system.")
6. This duopoly is the Republican and Democratic Parties. But you can read the U.S. Constitution from first word to last and never find political parties mentioned. America's founders hated political parties, which they called "faction."
Our system was designed to elect politicians geographically, and to have these public servants represent not parties but the people of their own district or state.
Why? When the last Democratic Speaker of the House Tom Foley ran for re-election in his eastern Washington State district around Spokane, more than 99 percent of his campaign funds came from outside his district. Such politicians have sold their souls to those who bankroll them. Both major political parties are themselves selfish special interests whose goal is their own power and perks.
7. Political parties have been taken over. Many of the funding sources for both major parties are the same – turning our elections into a puppet show to distract voters from the fact that government keeps getting bigger, whichever party wins.
David Horowitz and Richard Poe in their new book describe America's "Shadow Party" controlled by radical billionaires such as George Soros and the front groups they fund such as MoveOn.org. Many of these organizations were created to circumvent the campaign law restrictions that now largely silence the political free speech rights of the rest of us.
8. Candidates lie. In nearly every closely contested race with the potential to shift power in Washington from one party to the other, e.g., the Democratic candidates are portraying themselves as what voters actually want: conservatives. But if elected, their first vote will be to empower extreme liberal leaders to control a new Democratic majority. This is winning by deception and governing contrary to the will of the voters, who have no way to make an elected politician keep campaign promises.
9. Judges, not voters, are starting to decide our elections. In 2000, Democrats nearly got the Florida Supreme Court, all of whose Justices were Democrat-appointed, to overturn the narrow victory of Republican candidate George W. Bush. In 2004 Democrats primed voters to challenge every close local and statewide vote, and judges got directly involved in gerrymandering.
In 2006 Democrats have already signed up at least 11,000 lawyers to challenge every close vote they lose. (Trial lawyers who prey on businesses are among the biggest Democratic contributors.) These challenges will give Democratic judges a chance to decide these elections and to delegitimize many Republicans who win. This rule-or-ruin formula poisons democracy itself.
Editor's note:
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