Elections can be strange things. They do not guarantee democratic government, because they can be fixed. Consider 2000, when Republican thugs physically assaulted campaign workers in Florida to delay the recount, so Republican ideologues on the Supreme Court could deliver the White House to the loser. Consider 2004 when voting machines with no paper trails counted more votes than districts had voters in hundreds of places. In virtually all cases the divergence between the vote count and exit polls were favored Republicans. The odds against so many instances favoring one party so exclusively occurring through random error asymptotically approach infinity. Human intervention was needed to produce those results. Republicans fired US Attorneys who refused to assist them in fixing elections. Even in 2006, there was a 4% divergence between actual vote count and exit polls, favoring Republicans. As horrific as this is, it does not approach the injustice it could become.
The proxy party of Myanmar’s military rulers has been increasing pressure on voters ahead of Sunday’s elections, opposition party officials said, raising fresh worries about the junta’s promised “roadmap to democracy.”
Officials with the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party have told voters they could lose their jobs if they don’t vote for military-supported candidates, and punished voters who cast early ballots for other parties, the opposition leaders said Saturday.
In Yangon, the country’s largest city, there was little fanfare on the eve of the balloting, with many voters expressing apathy about elections they said had already been orchestrated by the ruling generals.
“This will just be the same old wine with a new label,” said Soe Myint, a 65-year-old retired Yangon schoolteacher, adding that she would not cast a ballot.
Thu Wai, chairman of the Democratic Party (Myanmar), said his party had filed a string of complaints against the USDP for campaign violations. “We will press the election commissions to take actions against these improper practices,” he said as he made a last-minute campaign tour through Yangon.
The military, which has ruled Myanmar with an iron hand since 1962, has billed the elections as a key step in its “roadmap to democracy.”
Critics have widely panned the balloting, the country’s first in two decades, as a sham designed to cement military rule. But some in Myanmar — also known as Burma — are holding out hope that they could mark the beginning of a slow democratic transition.
The main opposition party, detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, has refused to take part in the polls, saying the process is unfair and undemocratic. It has been disbanded by the government as a result.
The festive mood ahead of the last elections in 1990 — which were overwhelmingly won by Suu Kyi’s party, which was barred from taking power — was nowhere to be seen Saturday… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Business Week>
I’m sure the people of Myanmar would be overjoyed to have the opportunity Americans so blithely ignored last Tuesday. Unless Americans start taking the consequences of elections seriously, starting now, the Republican party will see to it that, like in Myanmar, elections have no consequences here.
8 Responses to “Is This America’s Future?”
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Until Citizens United is outlawed and all elections are publicly funded dollar for dollar raised by the candidate then we already have come to the same place as Myanmar. People in my opinion don’t get it not because they believed the gross overload of campaign advertisements pushing the nation 90% red but because they as a whole have no interest in history.
There are two eras that need to be understood. 1900-1904 when Teddy Roosevelt fought like a demon to break the monopolies and trusts which resulted in the government taking control of the economy from those monopolies and the era of 1925 through 1935 when bankers and syndicates started the beginning of the end game to regain control of the economy from the government. By Buying legislators in this past 5 election cycles they finaly accomplished what had been a 106 year long game of war.
It is not that most people are blind, most voted not from common sense but from lack of knowledge and fear, and them that didn’t vote were just plain ignorant of the possible reality that faced them. Even the young who turned out better than was thought sat on their asses.
Like you said in May that there would be more damage to the gulf than the government was allowing for, at the same time I said that the hedge funds and the speculators would go into the less regulated commodity markets. Watch now how prices for food and oil is going to creep up from three to twenty percent. Come January expect the house to start not only trying to undo the big things but slip in seemingly small commodity related laws allowing the big 5 to manipulate it even more than they do now through their shell companies.
The 99er’s are upon us now, food banks nationwide can’t keep up now so what do you suppose our nation will look like a year from now when donations from corporations drop even further? (individual donations have remained stable to date but corporate giving is down 25%)
Mark, speculators fled the commodities market when the economy collapsed, which is why gas prices fell. I think you are right that speculators will return to the commodities market, and it has already begun, currently limited only by the weakness of the $US.
In Justice Stevens’ dissent to Citizens United, he said that corporations “are not members of our society. They cannot vote or run for office.” (If that doesn’t get an “AMEN!” nothing will.) So how to either get rid of, or at least limit, Citizens United terrible impact on our democracy
It will be extremely difficult to pass an Amendment (my first choice) to address the issue, but I think there are at least two possibilities that could curb it:
1.) Transparency – Quit shielding anonymous donors, and require that it be revealed where the money is coming from. Even the Citizens United decision itself stated, “The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether.”
2.) Since corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, let the shareholders have a say. Britain requires shareholders to vote on corporate political expenditures – there’s no reason why we should not do the same.
Nameless, I fully agree, but unless it happens now, it won’t happen before 2013.
I’m with both you guys – Citizens United will doom this country if it is not legislated out. Now with the Repubs in charge of the house, there’s no hope of that.
And Burma – democracy my ass. We’ll wind up looking like that if we don’t start paying attention.
My point, exactly. 🙂
Corporations already dwarf many governments in terms of their wealth and power. Of course they’re going to influence elections in their favor, as the Citizens United case demonstrated. It will take a lot of education and people-power to prevent further decay of the political process here in the U.S.
I agree. That’s our function.