Our Democracy Sucks

I am not into conspiracies at all, and though I followed the stories about electoral corruption for a couple weeks after 2004, eventually I came to believe that the corruption involved incompetence and that Bush's victory was a reasonable representation of how the country felt. Now, I'm not so sure. I think it's possible that the country really was anti-Bush, and that Bush lost by a large margin. I am so angry.

At any rate, I have to catch up on this subject and was wondering if you can point me to some links that provide a good primer to the various issues (electronic voting, Ohio, exit poles, etc.), as well as tell me in general what kind of activism is going on.

I think we left Kansas a long time ago. Democracy died the day the SCOTUS installed * as president.

Take a look at the redistricting process (supported by both the republicans and democrats) that has been going on and you'll soon realise that there is no domacracy here. The vast majority of the country has been gerrymandered to lock in all but a couple of dozen seats. This destroys democracy in two ways:

1. The two parties are locked in - it would be very hard for a third party to gain any foothold anymore with the current system.
2. If you live in one of the gerrymandered seats (and the vast majority of us do) then your house vote is pretty much irrelevant because the seat is "safe" democrat or rebublican.

So the US democracy doesn't suck, it doesn't actually exist.

That would encourage coalition-building and compromise, which are both becoming increasingly impossible with the system we currently have. It's the tyranny of the majority, with the minority locked out completely.

and rarely care how the winner won.

rich people are idolized even if they got rich by destroying communities, polluting, ripping off customers, whatever. short of breaking a blue-collar law, no one cares, except for the very rare lay or skilling.

sports teams are taught that it's only a penalty if the ref sees it.

salesmen are are rewarded for lies that produce more sales.

bill gates, whose real achievement was figuring out how to steer so much of the software industry's money into his own pockets, is regarded as a genius and hero, despite the fact that he grew his business through a host of anti-competitive practices that left consumers with empty pockets, a host of complaints, and sloppy implementations of 1970's technology.


it pisses me off that so many people think winning trumps everything, including morality. when it comes to elections, people who cheat, aid and abet cheaters, or knowingly profit from others' cheating do not believe in democracy, do not believe in america, and in the end, do not believe in themselves.

may they all rot.

Warning: mine is a minority position here on the board, but apparently not so far from yours. I thought it was possible that the country really was anti-Bush, but I now definitely think that Bush won the popular vote. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of real corruption in the election. I think a lot of voters got cheated. (And I think a lot more could get cheated in the future.)

On e-voting, I like Vote Trust USA, http://votetrustusa.org, but there are lots of excellent groups and sites out there. Other folks will nominate favorites.

There is no single reliable source on Ohio. I think the Conyers report is a good place to start, even though a few of the arguments are really flawed -- or, for that matter, RFK's new article incorporates a lot of highlights from the Conyers report.

Exit polls -- here is where I am in the minority here on the board, and lots of folks can't understand why I bother. The people who think that the exit polls prove fraud tends to be (1) numerically savvy people who know very little about polling, or (2) people who believe group 1 because they sound so confident. If you look at publications like Public Opinion Quarterly or the American Political Science Review, they don't even bother to refute the exit poll arguments -- the arguments are dead on arrival. Some folks think this is some weird academic conspiracy. Not so much. (But I am an academic, so you can give me more or less credence as you like.)

Get informed locally. Is your county considering buying new machines? What do you know about registration procedures at your county board of elections (or whatever you actually have)? etc.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=429411&mesg_id=429411

Mod Mom does a good job of that state.