Weapons of Electoral Destruction
March 19, 2004
Australia has a unique way of guaranteeing that everyone votes. If you do not vote, you pay a fine.
For example, 2.2 million people voted in the Feb. 7 state elections in Queensland, and 200,000 were no-shows. They were sent letters asking why they had failed to perform one of the most important responsibilities in a democracy, and were given a chance to say why they had not voted. About 25,000 people will end up paying $37.50 each for not voting, adding about $1 million to the state treasury. As you can imagine, there are very few serial non-voters in Australia.
By contrast, about half of the American electorate stays home every time we have an election. Even fewer vote in primary elections. Presidents are elected in this country by winning a little more than half of the half who vote, so only about a quarter of us have elected President Bush, President Clinton and many of their predecessors.
While people differ in their analyses of why only half of us bother to vote, we should ask ourselves why this situation is allowed to persist. ˝f only half of us bothered to have our babies vaccinated for diptheria, tetanus and polio, we would be declaring a public health emergency. Public health officials would ask, ìHow dare those parents endanger the rest of us by refusing to get their kids vaccinated?î Government officials would be calling for hearings on penalties for parents who refuse to take their parental responsibilities seriously.
Unfortunately, no one has declared a Democracy Emergency in this country, despite the fiasco in Florida in 2000. President Bush gave lip service to supporting the reforms that were suggested by a commission studying the issue, but has let another presidential race arrive with no major reforms in place.
There is little incentive to force people to vote in this country, because non-voters are disproportionately poor, young, less-educated and non-white. qThe current makeup of those in power, and those who vote for them, is richer, older, whiter and more educated.
If those currently in power leave things the way they are, then everyone who currently votes has the equivalent of two votes. As Asian Pacific Americans, we should be howling with rage at this state of affairs. We should be in the forefront asking for reforms, because many of us and our family members are in the ranks of the poor, young, less-educated and non-white.
It is a commonly touted myth in this country that we have the finest democracy in the world. While this may have been true in the 18th century, when the architects of this wonderful alternative to monarchy were alive, it is not true today.
We have fallen so far behind Australia and most of the other industrialized democracies, in fact, that we are in danger of losing democracy altogether. Consider these troubling facts:
• We don’t have public financing of elections, so those who seek office must go to those with money.
• Unlike most other democracies, this country has a campaign practice that forces candidates to buy air time on television.
• Our campaign cycles favor those rich enough to stop working in order to mount a campaign. The Democratic candidates either didn’t hold a steady job (Dean, Clark, Sharpton, Braun) or had such poor attendance records at their legislative jobs that they would be fired from any minimum wage job in America (Kerry, Gephardt, Kucinich, Lieberman, Edwards).
• Our campaign cycles are too long. No wonder it is hard to sustain interest. Most other modern democracies have election cycles that are measured in weeks, not months.
• Winner-take-all election laws create elections where up to 49 percent of the people in a district can be represented by someone with whom they disagree. ”Most of the other modern democracies have some form of a proportional representation system not unlike what we saw during the Democratic primaries.
• The proportionality in the Democratic primaries created a lively debate with a variety of views. ÙBy contrast, the winner-take-all general election will be a dull slugfest of ugly negative advertisements designed to make the electorate stay home so that only the hardcore partisans of the left and right will vote.
• We are so far away from one-person-one-vote democracy in this country that almost no incumbents ever lose an election, and many candidates for re-election run completely unopposed. This, in turn, further depresses voter turnout.
• The two-party mythology that disenfranchises the third of the electorate who are independent is maintained by a Federal Election Commission that has three Republicans, three Democrats and no independents. The Presidential Debates are controlled by Democratic and Republican representatives, and third party candidates have almost insurmountable barriers to getting on the ballot.
No matter which party you plan to vote for in November, each of us has a responsibility to respond to the current Democracy Emergency. While they do not seem as immediately threatening as a dirty bomb or anthrax attack, Weapons of Electoral Destruction like those described above have the potential to destroy the fundamental underpinnings of our society more completely than any Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at asianweek(AT)nashinteractive.com.
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