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12 novembre 2011 6 12 /11 /novembre /2011 03:13

Democracy Is More Than Just Elections

*Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what should be for supper”

Dr. Gary K. Busch

 

For a revised version please click here:

http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Editorial_10/Democracy-Is-More-Than-Just-Elections.shtml

 

There is a lot of talk about expanding democracy worldwide by supervising and monitoring ‘free and fair elections”. There is an international industry of election monitors and guides who are sent by United Nations organisations, NGOs like the Carter Centre and the European Union to the poor, benighted Third World governments who need this layer of legitimacy on their electoral efforts to make their elections appear free and fair. Even more importantly, there are voting machine companies (some now ‘touch-screen’) which provide their voting machines (by sale or rental) to the national electoral commissions in order to facilitate the voting and counting of their ballots.

This type of voting was pioneered in the US, where the voting technology business is dominated by Republican-leaning U.S. and foreign corporations. Today, two Republican-controlled corporations, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Diebold Voting Systems, and a British-based company, Sequoia, control about 80% of the vote count in the U.S... Meanwhile, the long history of election upsets due to voting machine "glitches", that overwhelmingly favour Republican candidates, continues to grow.[i]

 Military defence contractors that also provide election services include: Accenture (a business partner of Halliburton, also a defence contractor), Diebold Voting Systems, Northrop Grumman/Diversified Dynamics/TRW (partners with Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC, also in defence industry), General Dynamics/Computing Devices Canada, Unisys (partners with ES&S), National Semiconductor Corporation, Hart Intercivic, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, and Perot Systems Government Services, Inc.. [ii]

In the US there is no federal agency that has regulatory authority over the elections industry. There are no government standards or restrictions on who can sell and service voting machines and systems. Foreigners, convicted criminals, office holders, political candidates, and news media organizations can and do own these companies. It appears that these companies are dominated by members of the Republican Party and foreign investors. Jack Kemp, a former GOP candidate for vice president in 1996 is on the board of directors for Election.com, while Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was the past president of the company (AIS) that counted the votes in his first election and an investor in the company (ES&S) that counted the votes in his second election. At least four companies are foreign-owned: Sequoia (UK), Accenture/Election.com (UK Bermuda), EVS (Japan), and N.V. Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek (Netherlands). Election.com was formerly owned by Osan, Ltd., a Saudi Arabian firm. Many voting machine companies appear to share managers, investors, and equipment which raises questions of conflict-of-interest and monopolistic practices.[iii]

These voting machines have been made famous by the inexplicable results achieved in the elections in the Dominican Republic, Guyana and the State of Ohio; to name but a few Certainly no one will ever forget the ‘hanging chads’ which put George Bush into office through a Supreme Court coup. It is very difficult to prove that the results have been tampered with as, quite often, the voting rolls have been perfected by excluding whole sections of the population from qualifying.

One of the most important acts by the civil rights activists in the US was going to the rural South and signing up people on the electoral roll. Often in grave danger, booths were set up and voters registered. A key element of this was the pioneering work undertaken by SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). This was made difficult by many states that operated a “poll quiz” to prove literacy or imposed a “poll tax” which minorities could not afford.  During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the Fifteenth Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right. It was on one such registration drive that my friend and classmate Mickey Schwerner was killed in Mississippi. Registration was a major breakthrough.

However, this right of accurate registration is often flawed. In the Ivory Coast election it was impossible to get an accurate electoral roll because the warlords of the rebel North refused to allow national monitors to prepare a list. Their troops intimidated those seeking to register, just as they did when the actual voting took place. In the Ivory Coast election, which saw the rebel usurper Ouattara placed into power by French troops, the electoral roll was rigged and; the counting of the ballots was rigged (in some constituencies run by the warlords 120% of the voters in the district apparently voted for Ouattara). When President Gbagbo complained and took his proven evidence of at least 600,000 illegal votes to the Constitutional Court, they declared him the winner. However, the French and the US observers said that Ouattara was the winner and demanded that Gbagbo stand down. Thousands of people were killed as a result by the UN and French tanks and helicopters bombing and strafing an unarmed civilian population as part of their electoral advice.

Nigerian elections have almost always been a joke. The worst was the election supervised by Maurice Iwu, the Electoral Commissioner. He had ballots printed without control numbers and deliberately left most of them stacked at the airport in South Africa to prevent their circulation at the polling booth. The courts were full of disappointed political aspirants after the election suing to enforce their rights and scores of Iwu’s errors of commission and omission led to governors, senators and representatives being forced from office because of electoral fraud.

This week the blatant rigging of the electoral process in Liberia by Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson was exposed to the Electoral Commission by Presidential candidate Winston Tubman. Under pressure from the US the Electoral Commission refused to act within time; Tubman was forced to boycott the election. This election was a sham and her calls for unity are even more ludicrous, especially as she has promised 30% of government jobs already to that demented  murderer, Prince Johnson, whose support she won by the offer (plus cash).

Soon there will be a parliamentary election in Ivory Coast. No improvement has been made to the electoral roll; the former President and most of his party leadership remain in penal custody; and millions of his supporters have sought sanctuary in Liberia and Ghana. Not surprisingly, the FPI (Gbagbo’s party) has announced it is boycotting the elections.

The US is famous for its elections. For centuries election night is known as “the night that dead men walk”. In many parts of the US, especially the major cities, electors have achieved a degree of immortality. Their names remain on the voters list long after their presence on the surface of the planet. It is widely believed that Jack Kennedy won his election by a vote in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) where the last 512 voters voted in alphabetical order because it took too long to shuffle the names on the list. Now, with the electronic machines this can be manipulated without need for ward captains with lists.

The battle for voting rights is far from over in the US. The right-wing Republicans are engaged in a massive drive for voter suppression.    This year alone, state lawmakers introduced 34 so-called Voter ID and voter registration bills with requirements so stringent that the 11 per cent of Americans who lack a government-issued photo ID could be barred from voting. Most of those are African Americans, Latinos, students, seniors and people with disabilities.

According to a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study, here’s who would be affected in Wisconsin where Gov. Scott Walker (R) won a photo ID bill patterned after the model bill ALEC has distributed to right-wing lawmakers:

·         23 per cent of Wisconsinites over age 65.

·         17 per cent of white men and women.

·          55 per cent of African American males and 49 per cent of African American women.

·          46 per cent of Latinos and 59 per cent of Latinas.

·         78 per cent of African American males age 18-24 and

·         66 per cent of African American women age 18-24.[iv]

Voting rights are not yet secure and the issue of the validity of electoral machines are far from settled. Yet, despite the failures of electoral rolls and flawed elections there is a much bigger question of democracy. Elections and voting don’t actually mean much if the voice of the people is not heard or reflected. Democracy is meant to be rule by the will of the people. This has not been permitted to survive in current systems. If the elections are to elect people to represent the ‘demos’ or populace then why is it not possible, in most parliamentary systems, to choose who will be the candidates? In the ludicrous primary election in the US several wholly unsatisfactory candidates are seeking office as president and there are many who are deeply unhappy with the current president. What is needed is a “none of the above” button to register disapproval. <pre importantly, having chosen a president or a legislator often means that any participation by the ‘demos’ is no longer required until the next election.

Instead, the political process reverts from democracy to whoever has the most money and influence with the elected official. The business of governance is not expressing the will of the people. It is expressing the will of those who are willing to spend the most money in pursuing their interest. In the last election more than 12, 400 ‘lobbyists’ in Washington spent more than US$ 11 billion in political campaigns. As a result of the Supreme Court allowing in the  Citizens United Case in 2010, which stated that corporations had the same right as individuals to contribute directly to political campaigns and to participate in direct advocacy on their behalf. Now corporate generosity knows no bounds. The Institute  for Policy Studies found  that twenty-five of the 100 highest paid US CEOs earned more last year than their companies paid in federal income tax, and found that many of the companies spent more on lobbying than they did on taxes. For example:

  • Boeing, which paid CEO Jim McNerney $13.8 billion, sent in $13 million in federal income taxes, and spent $20.8 million on lobbying and campaign spending
  • General Electric where CEO Jeff Immelt earned $15.2 million in 2010, while the company got a $3.3 billion federal refund and invested $41.8 million in its own lobbying and political campaigns.[v]

The pace has even increased recently.  This kind of corporate overreach doesn’t just affect presidential politics. In just a six-week period, the 12-member super committee, appointed by Congress to cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion, has been lobbied by nearly 200 companies, which have raised untold sums to fill committee members’ coffers. In the 20 days in August after members were appointed, 19 major PACs contributed $83,000 to all but two members of the committee, according to the Sunlight Foundation. And that’s just the tip of an iceberg, much of which will remain hidden from view.[vi]

 So, where in all of this is the voice of the ‘demos’? How can this be democracy if only the rich have their say? In ancient Athens, a free-born Athenian with the right to vote was who didn’t play a part in the process of governance was called an “idiot”. Are we all idiots lining up to put the mark of the idiot in the box for a candidate we don’t want or whom we never chose, but who is marginally less offensive than his opponent? This is absurd – a travesty of the word ’democracy’.

In the last week the world saw two elected presidents (in Greece and Italy) forced to leave office by foreigners in France and Germany who have arranged to put two non-elected presidents in their place. What kind of Loony Tunes democracy is this? Is this clique of Eurocrats so fearful of the voice of the people that they refuse to hold referenda or act upon the negative votes of those who oppose them? This is ridiculous and belies any credibility of these Eurocrats to lecture anyone on democracy or elections.

Perhaps the only intelligent and democratic people in Europe are the Icelanders. Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country's banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks' foreign debt. In
2003 Iceland's debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 per cent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Unlike in the rest of Europe, the Icelanders refused to bow to the will of the ‘international community and give up their sovereignty. Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. The foreign bankers said this wasn’t enough. The IMF and the European Union wanted to take over its debt and, intervene in the running of the country, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens. The Icelanders were outraged and made their protests known. Eventually the government resigned. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer's back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland's leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland's citizens responsible for its bankers' debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country. But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. That constitution is being drafted.[vii]

Surely it is time for the people of Greece and Italy to stand up to these Eurobullies. Let them learn from the example of Iceland. Democracy is more than just elections, it is when the people stand up for their rights and say they will not play the game anymore under rules they didn’t male. Let those who broke the system repair the system. Perhaps this is what the Occupy Wall Street people are trying to say, however inchoately.



[ii] Landes Report 8/3.09 “Voting System Orgs and Comamoes”

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Mike Hall, Tell Attorney General Holder to Fight Koch Brothers’ Voter Suppression, AlterNet 8/11/11

[v] IPS. ‘US firms spend more on lobbying than on taxes’ Aug 31, 2011

[vi]  Katrina vanden Heuvel. Nation 8/11/11 “Stanching the flow of corporate dollars into campaigns”

[vii] Deena Stryker, Bellacadonia 11/11/11, “ Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Is Not”

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