Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

By Theresa Amato, The New Press. Posted July 7, 2009.

Third-party candidates are effectively shut out of the presidential race by the two major parties designed to squash the competition.



The following is an introduction and excerpt by Theresa Amato, author of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny. Copyright 2009 Theresa Amato. Reprinted with permission by The New Press.


In the run up to the 2004 elections article after article appeared documenting the reigning chaos in our electoral procedures, and surmising that another “Florida 2000” could happen. After the election, questions were raised in Ohio and in the gubernatorial race in Washington State, but in 2008, the infatuation with the electoral system was otherwise directed to the early primaries and the “historic” potential to elect Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. With neither election as razor-close as the 537 vote discrepancy in Florida 2000, some of the prior attention paid to our electoral systems has waned.

To the extent concern is shown, it tends to focus on the mechanics of registering to vote, keeping accurate lists, and having votes counted by machines of better-than-dubious programming or security. Less concern is directed to the far more disenfranchising systemic problems of having a “winner-take-all” system that results in uncompetitive elections in most congressional and local races. Nor is there a widespread movement toward choice maximizing voting systems, or just better competition by structuring campaign finance systems to encourage participation for more than our millionaires or those who have access to them.

In this country, we are really just at the beginning of understanding the deep flaws with our arcane electoral processes. Virtually none of the attention is on the rights of third-party or independent candidates to compete on a level playing field with the major parties so that all voters, not just two-party voters, have a chance to vote for whom they want. This book is written for third party and Independents candidates, their voters, the election law reformers and chroniclers, and all those who have tried or will try to grapple with the stunning incompetence and injustice of the broken, two-party dominated American electoral system.

-Theresa Amato, June 3, 2009

****

Once people find out that I ran the Nader 2000 campaign, they often ask me if I am “sorry” that my first venture into electoral politics was to “help elect” George W. Bush. To the contrary, given how the two-party-imposed structural barriers have operated against third parties and independents in the last half century, I could not be more proud of our efforts to reveal and break down this exclusionary system and to help provide more voices and more choices to the American people. Third parties and independents are arguably the only remaining defenders of real political choice in the United States today. The fact that they continue to exist in a system so rigged against their participation, as this book will demonstrate, is nothing short of miraculous. Am I sorry? Oh yes—I am sorry that we have a broken and uncompetitive electoral system that traps Americans into poor choices and delivers worse government in almost every political cycle, failing for decades to fix, and sometimes even to discuss, intransigent problems like access to health care, poverty, immigration, global warming, fair trade, drug policies, a fossil fuel–dependent economy, racism, corporate crime, civil liberty violations, and many more. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/politics/140493/grand_illusion%3A_the_myth_of_voter_choice_in_a_two-party_tyranny/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Verily.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Blah blah blah.

Talk about trying to justify idiocy. Of course the system is currently designed to push out third parties, but running a third party destined for utter failure is not exactly a solution, is it? I can run head first into a brick wall, but that probably isn't going to do much to the wall.

Without proposing actual policy solutions to the problem that might actually work, articles like these are nothing more than idiotic whining.

[izquierdista]

3. "could not be more proud...."

"...if my face was a hammer and all the liberal policies that Bush gutted were glass figurines in a display case."

[denem]

4. Keep the Electoral College. State delegates selected by Proportional Representation.

Then you could green / Ron Paul without wasting a vote.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. The Radical Chic has become the better-dressed twin of the Republican Party

Two weeks ago, the GOP leadership (sic) was Tweeting that they were oppressed -- just like the Iranian protesters.

Along came Mark Sanford, weeping on national TV about his Big Heartbreak over his soul mate.

Late last week, Sarah Palin quit her job because a late-night chat show host told a flopped joke about one of her daughters.

This week, it's another self-justifying Nader factotum hawking a recherche book about how we live in a tyranny because people won't vote for Leftists who are also self-absorbed doofuses.

A major wave of Emo has hit the political world, and only the Democrats seem to be immune. For now, anyway.

:eyes:

--d!
Heaven knows I'm miserable now ...

[DonCoquixote]

6. Amen

The GOP and the Radicals have several things in common:

1)They both want people to be afraid

2)They both accuse anyone questioning them of being evil.

3)They have both a strong hate of the middle class, thinking they are to blame for all the world's evil.

4)They both are fond of putting forth people who are unqualified, and then scream at you when you wonder why this person's resume screams "president!"

5)They both have a vested interest in disorder; a happy, healthy, prosperous middle class that is in control of it's own destiny would put them both out of business.

And last, but for from least:

If you try to talk to either of them, they will just put their fingers in their ears, and loudly repeat the same talking points you have just refuted with hard cold facts. For example, the GOP will keep braying that Tax Breaks are good for the economy, and the Radicals will keep braying that they did a service helping W. Take the White House. You can point to the utter disaster the W. years were, both for our nation and the world, and both will just bawl like babies, fling poo, and then have the utter nerve to wonder why you stopped discussing poltics with them!

[bertman]

8. If I am reading this correctly, DonCoquixote, you are using the term "radicals" when you

are really referring to "reactionaries". Radicals are left-wing. Reactionaries are right-wing.

Did I misread or misinterpret? Because I certainly do not agree that " the Radicals will keep braying that they did a service helping W. Take the White House." I know lots of radicals and none of them think they did anything to help Bush take the White House. Quite the opposite.

[DonCoquixote]

9. by radical

I include those on the far left, as opposed to reactionary, those on the far right.

And this article was a radical braying that they did the country a service by supporting Nader, which made the GOP VERY HAPPY, as shown by their sending money to his campaign.

[bertman]

11. Thanks for the clarification. I'll go back and read more carefully.

[slipslidingaway]

7. "LEAGUE REFUSES TO "HELP PERPETRATE A FRAUD"

http://www.lwv.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=7777


"NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 3, 1988

LEAGUE REFUSES TO "HELP PERPETRATE A FRAUD"

WITHDRAWS SUPPORT FROM FINAL PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

WASHINGTON, DC —"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

Neuman said that the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and vas presented to the League as "a done deal," she said, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation.

Most objectionable to the League, Neuman said, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. Neuman called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues.

"The campaigns' agreement is a closed-door masterpiece," Neuman said. "Never in the history of the League of Women Voters have two candidates' organizations come to us with such stringent, unyielding and self-serving demands."

Neuman said she and the League regretted that the American people have had no real opportunities to judge the presidential nominees outside of campaign-controlled environments..."


http://www.votenader.org/issues/presidential-debates/

"...Nader/Gonzalez supports the opening up of the Presidential debates.

Right now, they are limited to the candidates from the two corporate parties.

The debates are controlled by the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation which was created by the Democratic and Republican Parties in 1987.

The Commission is headed by Frank Fahrenkopf — the former head of the Republican National Committee, and Paul Kirk — the former head of Democratic National Committee.

Fahrenkopf is a lobbyist for gambling interests, Kirk for pharmaceutical companies...


In 2000, some in the press dubbed the debates as the “Anheuser-Bush-Gore” debates.

In a memo by the CPD, the avowed goal for forming the commission was to "strengthen the two parties."

In 1988, the Commission seized control of the debates from the League of Women Voters.
The League had a history of allowing third party candidates to participate in the debates..."

[pmorlan1]

10. Electoral Reform

After watching Obama copy Bush era secrecy and refuse to hold war criminals accountable I'm ready for a third Party. I'm also ready for a third Party after watching Democrats, who control both Houses of Congress, tell voters that we can't have single payer and may not even get a public option unless there is a gimmicky trigger attached to it. Anyone who is honest with themselves knows that the two parties are corrupt. They don't work for us, they work for their corporate sponsors and occasionally throw a bone our way.

Just look at the last election. I wasn't a Kucinich supporter but look how the Party and the media pushed him out of the debates. Look how the media marginalized Edwards. They picked two candidates for us and that's who they covered - Obama and Hillary. What if it would have been Obama they didn't want and they marginalized him? The system is rigged and we're the ones getting hurt by it. I wish more people would wake up to this sad truth so that we could change the system. By the way I've voted for a Democrat for president in every election where I voted. I've never voted for an Independent so I'm part of the problem too. I know one thing I won't be part of the problem in the future. If there is a good Independent candidate running I fully intend to support them in the next election.

[DonCoquixote]

12. The brutal fact is

Until such time as a Third party has a number of Governors and Congresspeople, they will not take a Presidency, because those are the groups that support Presidential candidates. How do people think you can build a roof when you do not have a foundation? But no, people will not hear that, and they expect change to come fresh and hot from the drive thru window. Of course, America's addiction to cheap solutions is what REALLY go tus into this mess, but since Radical and Reactionary peddled cheap, simple solutions, neither of them will speak truth to that power.