DEMOCRACY:
Government & Politics | January 3, 2006
IF
BUSH
& ALITO
HAVE
THEIR
WAY,
OUR
VOTES
MAY
NOT
COUNT.
By Douglas
Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive
Thinking"
As
Posted in "OpEdNews",
"Comments
From Left Field", & "GordonTalk"
Call me old fashioned; but I
sorta think that if we're going to call ourselves a
"democratic republic," then a couple things better be
guaranteed under law:
First, that every citizen's
vote is counted; and
Second, that every citizen's
vote counts just as much as -- no more, no less than -- every
other citizen's vote.
Surely every American stands
for ensuring an accurate, honest tally of the votes and for the
principle of "one person, one vote." I mean, who could
either actively or passively oppose these most fundamental
values of America -- voting rights, which guarantee every other
right we deserve and enjoy? What would you call such a
quintessentially un-American individual?
How about "Mister
President" or "Associate Justice of the Supreme
Court"?
After the debacle in Florida in
2000, the Congress in 2002 passed HAVA (the Help America Vote
Act), which devoted nearly $4 billion to assist states in
upgrading their often antiquated voting systems. But the federal
Election Assistance Commission, established by HAVA, did not
materialize until 2004, over a year late; and it did not release
voting-machine guidelines until last month -- voluntary
guidelines at that.
As confusion, chaos, and
evidence of even the newest generation of electronic voting
machines being vulnerable to hacking and other irregularities
(innocent or otherwise) mounts -- county by county, state by
state -- the
lack of guidance from federal authorities only adds to the
frustration.
But did we really expect the
Bush administration to push for meaningful reform of the systems
that record our votes? Without
fraud -- proven mathematically and demonstrated, even if not yet
fully explained, electronically -- they could not have
"won" the election in 2004.
Really, though, if Bush's most
recent nominee for Supreme Court, Samuel Alito Jr., cements a
Right Wing majority on the highest court in the land, it may not
really matter much how the votes are counted: Democratic votes
could just be legislated away to irrelevancy.
You see, as he stated proudly
when applying for a plum position in the Reagan Justice
Department, Mr. Alito as a student chose a career in
constitutional law "in
large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions,
particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the
Establishment Clause, and reapportionment."
In layperson's terms, that
means Mr. Alito began his "illustrious" career in the
law -- which ultimately led him to be now nominated for the
Supreme Court -- because he was adamantly against the rights of
defendants, the separation of church and state, and the
principle of "one person, one vote" -- the last point
being most ominous to me and reportedly to Sen. Joseph Biden Jr.
(D-Del.), who will be prominent among those questioning Mr.
Alito during the confirmation hearings (Biden feels this will be
an even greater hurdle for the nominee to overcome than his
well-known opposition to Roe v. Wade).
You see, most of us are too
young to remember that the principle of "one person, one
vote" was not always respected in America. Indeed, it was
not until 1962 that the Supreme Court decided to get involved in
the "political thicket" of reapportionment; that year,
the Warren court decided the case of Baker v. Carr: The court
decided in favor of voters in Tennessee who protested that their
votes were diluted because state legislative districts had not
be redrawn in decades, apparently despite unequal population
growth between districts. And it would not be until 1964, in the
case of Reynolds v. Sims, involving legislative districts in
Alabama, that the court defined with mathematical precision the
gold standard of voting we as Americans enjoy today: Because of
the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, "as
nearly as is practicable one man's vote" must "be
worth as much as another's" -- the principle of "one
person, one vote" was finally enshrined in law.
Within months, the
"reapportionment revolution" swept the nation. And
although "gerrymandering" -- providing districts with
equal numbers of voters but lopsided representation of political
parties within the districts -- has proved a stubborn problem,
no longer at least can a powerful minority of voters
disenfranchise a majority of voters in a state by simply lumping
them together in a precious few districts, outvoted in the state
legislature by a greater number of less populous districts -- a
patently undemocratic, yet all-too-common practice in the nation
before 1962.
A practice that nominee Alito
in effect defended by vehemently opposing the Warren court
decision of Baker v. Carr -- which drew him into constitutional
law in the first place, about which he boasted in applying to
the Reagan Justice Department, and for which an American
Enterprise Institute scholar -- echoing sentiment expressed
throughout the Far Right -- recently praised nominee Alito.
Yep, call me old fashioned; but
I thought that the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution,
and a potential justice of the Supreme Court would hold
democracy in reverence, not contempt.
Evidently, the president -- who
preaches democracy when sending thousands of Americans to their
deaths overseas -- doesn't feel obligated to practice or promote
democracy here at home.
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