A Civics Class

If you did not suffer through a Civics class while you attended high school, you would be forgiven if you did not know:

• That the birthday of the United States of America is July 4^th, 1776
• That our national flag has 50 stars, that they are white on a blue background, and that there are 50 stars because there are currently 50 states in the union
• That our national flag has 13 stripes, that they alternate white and red, and that 13 is the number of the original colonies

The Perils of Democracy

Republicans are 100% correct: our revered Founding Fathers did not intend that America should be a democracy (where “the people” rule).  Most of the so-called evidence that our Founding Fathers did not favor a democracy can be found on conservative websites with an anti-democratic agenda (it is only recently that Republicans or conservatives seem to be drifting away from the ideal of democracy).  But consider – from the gitgo, from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution – who had the right to vote was up to individual states.  Most states had a land-owning requirement, only one state allowed women or African Americans to vote, and only a few gave the vote to Catholics or Jews (atheists were not even a “thing” back then).  Everyone who sat in on the Constitutional Convention were white men of means, the aristocrats of their day.  And they did not intend that the “people” (as we see the word today) should rule themselves.  So, partisan Republicans are quite right.

However, …

Time Travel

Hold on, folks, we are going for a short ride through recent American history, to the presidential elections of 2000 and 1992, years when third party candidates nearly sunk our electoral system.

Let’s travel back to the year 2000 AD, when George W Bush won the presidency from Al Gore, by an Electoral College margin of 5 votes, 271 to 266, where the election was decided in Florida not by a measly 534 votes out of nearly 6 million, but by the Supreme Court’s five Republican justices. Many remember that Ralph Nader, running as a Green Party candidate, won 97,000 votes in Florida, a wee bit more than the margin of Bush’s victory there; and Democrats everywhere have faulted him ever since for spoiling the election for Al Gore, whom they supposed would have received Nader’s votes had he not run. What is less known is that Nader won more votes in eight states (with 72 Electoral College votes) than what separated Bush and Gore. Another way to say this is that 72 Electoral College votes went to a candidate who had not won 50% of those states’ votes.

Ranked Choice Voting

While the biggest problem in our democracy is the undue influence of big money in elections and in legislation, the second biggest problem is the two-party system.  This electoral reality is nowhere forced upon us, it is not mentioned in the Constitution; it is just there.

“I don’t like my choices; I like neither the Republican nor the Democrat, but I do like the Libertarian / Green party candidate.  But if I vote for him, I will be wasting my vote as he has no chance to win.”

When we go to choose a candidate for a particular elected office, we are often faced with three or four or even five choices.  But we know that we are “wasting our vote” if we vote for a candidate of a minor party, not a Republican or a Democrat.  Even worse than that is our sense that our third-party vote may contribute to the loss of the major party candidate whom we dislike less than the other major party candidate.  So, we reluctantly vote for the major party candidate (“the lesser of two evils”) who is not our first choice, as we dare not help elect the other major party candidate.

The Value of Civic Literacy

In May and June of 1959, the Supreme Court heard and decided Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections. Louise Lassiter, a Black citizen of North Carolina, argued that the law that denied her the right to vote was unconstitutional.  That law required that the prospective voter "be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of North Carolina in the English language.”  The Court that heard her case was the Warren Court, arguably the most liberal Supreme Court in American history.  This Court had ruled 9-0, just a few years before, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in favor of Brown.  One might have expected Lassiter to prevail.  But the Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional and not discriminatory, because it tested everyone regardless of race (laws that did discriminate, and were thereby unconstitutional, had grandfather clauses that exempted those <whites> who already had a voting history).  Justice William O. Douglas, arguably the most liberal justice ever to serve on the Court, wrote the majority opinion.  That majority was 9-0.  Congress subsequently prohibited literacy tests as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Such civic literacy laws were constitutional – but they were rendered illegal by Congress.

Showing Up

Democracy

Winston Churchill famously spoke: “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

What is a “democracy”?  Nothing more or less than “the people rule.”

For my part, any other form of government – monarchy or aristocracy – is a form of tyranny, no matter how well-meaning.  Which is not to say there is no good argument for them – they may have their place – but they are still tyranny.

"One person, one vote" democracy, a failure

However, democracy – our brand of democracy, our Constitutionally limited representative democratic republic – has utterly failed us.  If you don’t see this, don’t waste your time reading Ben Paine.  The self-evident reason behind its failure is democracy’s easy corruption by the influence of money.  I have written about this at great length.  The other problem is: the people in "We the People” are clearly not up to the task.

Qualifications

It was back in early 2015 and early 2016 that I wrote about the responsibilities of suffrage – that voting is not just a right, it is a privilege, it must be a responsibility too, you should earn it.  You need to be literate – able to read – and politically literate too – able to pass the same Citizenship Test that an immigrant must pass to become a (voting) citizen.  I expanded on that idea by suggesting that persons who know lots and lots about our history, our laws and institutions, and our founding documents ought to have their vote count as two or three average (ignorant) American citizen’s single votes.  Honestly, do you really believe that you should have an equal say in choosing our leaders as an American History professor, or someone who knows as much as he does about our history, etc.?  Yes, I surely believe in “one person, one vote.”  But, perhaps we should give some extra credit to those who devote their lives to being exemplary American citizens.  I stand by both notions today.

Campaign Finance Reform

Campaign Finance Reform is bullshit!  If you disagree, give me a few minutes.

1. Everyone (well, political junkies!) knows that incumbency is the single most important factor in determining who will win most elections.  The people prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t.  Mostly because most people don’t spend a lot of time following political news, but at least they know the name of their incumbent.  In addition, Americans routinely trust Congress overall somewhere beneath bank robbers, while at the same time praising their own Congress person.  How can this be?  Americans are not typically rational creatures with a command of relevant facts, that’s how.

Our Two-Party System

Our Two-Party system – which is nowhere enshrined in the U.S. Constitution – is an artifact of individual states choosing to decide elections by what is called “Winner-Take-All” voting rules.  Here is an illustrative example of what Winner-Take-All looks like.  Say, five candidates compete for an elective office.  The one who wins the most votes wins the job.  This sounds alright, doesn’t it?  Even if the best vote getter only won 24% of the vote?  Let’s suppose that one of the candidates was a liberal and all the others were of conservative stripe.  The liberal won 24% of the vote and the four conservatives divided up the remaining 76% of the vote, 19% each.  Doesn’t sound alright anymore, does it?  76% of the voters (conservative voters) will be represented by a legally elected liberal.

The Day After

It's official: President-Elect Trump!

Note to the reader: I began this post the day after the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency became clear.  Watching the results as they unfolded on Tuesday night was unsettling.  I did not vote for Hillary Clinton (of COURSE I voted!  And if you have read me at all, you should know that I consider our de facto two-party system an abomination) but the idea that Donald Trump might become President was very … troubling.  Never in our history, at least in MY lifetime, has a candidate been so unfit for the job: personally, politically, internationally and ethically.

The Electoral College

I have never written about the Electoral College before because I was not sure that I disapproved of it.  Its initial reason for being was to give the small states some extra power, which when one considers states instead of voters is not necessarily a bad idea.  It also undercut a direct democracy, which all of our Founding Fathers wanted to do.  Of course, the reason that folks want to do away with it today is that it is not “one person, one vote,” which bothers me some but not that much as I think that some folks ought not to vote at all (yes, there is someone out here who does NOT want everyone voting, at least not until they are prepared to vote, are responsible enough to vote).

Messing with the Right to Vote

OK, I can hear some of you already: “That Ben Paine, he is totally off his rocker; his idea is bad enough, but publishing it is a sure sign of really losing it!”

OK, what’s it all about?

Democracy!  And who has the right to vote.

You have heard me say that a democracy is the ONLY way to go; any other form of government – oligarchy (rule by a few) or monarchy (rule by one) – is a form of tyranny, because no matter how benevolent they may be, they are NOT self-rule, they are NOT We the People ruling ourselves.  And you have heard me say that everyone should exercise his right to vote, it is his civic duty, it is the least he can do!  But I’d like to impose some conditions on a citizen’s right to vote.  Just to make things interesting.

Universal Suffrage

“Universal suffrage” means everyone has the right to vote.  Everyone a) who is a citizen, b) who is at least 18 years of age (and c) who is not a felon (serving time) (a state by state requirement)).  Universal suffrage does not imply that a “democracy” prevails, because democracy means “the people rule.”  And while the people do choose their leaders, their representatives, their public servants, those who they choose seem more beholden to their “funders” – their significant campaign contributors – than to those who elected them to office in the first place.  This is a huge problem, of course.  It is the core of everything that I write about, that our democracy is a sham.

Democracy

John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence

The two most ringing phrases in all of American history are indisputably “We the People of the United States …” from the Preamble to the U S Constitution and “… all men are created equal …” from the Declaration of Independence.  And they both seem to argue for democracy – rule of, by, and for the people.  But every once in a while, a stray Republican, one not running for President, reminds us that democracy is not called for or even mentioned by the U S Constitution, or any other founding document for that matter.  He is right.  By all rights, we are a republic, a nation ruled by laws; but not by Constitutional mandate a democracy.  In addition, none of our Founding Fathers (excepting Thomas Paine himself) desired universal suffrage (suffrage is the form of a democracy, it is the right or privilege of a citizen to vote or otherwise participate in the processes of governing).  Indeed, to a man, they all feared democracy.  They feared the voice of the demos, the herd, the common people.  Consider that all of our Founding Fathers were highly educated and highly successful men.  Their version of “We the People” meant “we and our social peers,” a natural aristocracy even if not an inherited one (as in the old country).  A “real democracy” (in today’s usage) implies universal suffrage, suffrage of the common man.  But no democracy for these demigods.

A Citizenship Test

In my book, To My Countrymen, in the last few pages, I write these words: “If you, a native-born American, cannot pass the citizenship test that wanna-be citizens must pass, do you think that you should have the right to vote?”

Gerrymandering

It has occurred to me once or twice since publishing my book – since declaring for all time that “it is done” – that I made a mistake not to include an essay on gerrymandering.  Gerrymandering, as we all know, is the practice of state legislatures to draw Congressional districts in such a way as to maximize their majority party’s hold on Congressional seats, and on state-level representation too.  Gerrymandered states look really really strange, carving out districts one voter at a time.  Jig-saw puzzle pieces look much more regular than gerrymandered districts do.