Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

Elections Dirty Secrets again..

Here on my ongoing commentary on the real deal on voting I want to highlight two things. Yesterday on Like It Is, with Gill Noble, Greg Palast blew the lid off the blatant vote robbing in Florida in election 2000 ( again). He also porvided information on how the Republican Party is already up to the same thing again with, get this, the same list they had last time. What caught Mr. Noble out there is when Greg Palast told him that nothing in the constitution guarantees the right to vote. In fact there are provisions in the Constitution on how to removes ones supposed "right" to vote. Palast explained, as I have done to many people, that people vote for "electors.' these state electors then go to the "Electoral College" and cast thier vote for president. Furthermore, the Elector is under no obligation to vote with the majority of the people of his or her state. In fact, the Florida Legislature had already determined that they would send their elector for Bush regeardless as to the outcome of the recount. Ruminate on that for a second and then read on.

Today I ran across an excellent piece that demonstrates the obsolute futility of voting as it concerns Federal elections. Ilana Mercer in a exclusive Worldnet Daily commentary sites Loren E. Lomasky and Randy Barnett:

quote:
Loren E. Lomasky observed, "As electorates increase in size, the probability that one's vote will swing the election approaches zero" ... "[I]n large-number electorates, there is a vanishingly small probability that an individual's vote (or voice) will swing an election ... [F]or citizens of large-scale democracies, voting is inconsequential."

The winner in an election is certainly not the fictitious entity referred to as "The People," but rather the representatives of the majority. While it seems obvious that the minority in a democracy is thwarted openly, the question is, do the elected representatives at least carry out the will of the majority?

In reality, the majority, too, has little say in the business of governance – they've merely elected politicians who have been awarded carte blanche to do as they please. As Benjamin Barber wrote:



It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.



In "Restoring the Lost Constitution," Randy E. Barnett further homes in on why, contra Mr. Diddy, genuinely informed individuals have little incentive to exercise their "democratic right":



If we vote for a candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for, but we have also consented to the laws she has voted against.

If we vote against the candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for or against.

And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process whatever it may be.



This "rigged contest" Barnett describes as, "'Heads' you consent, 'tails' you consent, 'didn't flip the coin,' guess what? You consent as well.'"

I don't agree that in the process of "not flipping the coin" one consents to anything. Strategic non-particpation is a blanket disaproval.

regardless to how this election turns out, there needs to be a serious "citizen education" campaign waged so that people understand exactly how the system works. If they knew how it worked then Senators Chuck Schumer and Hilary Clinton would be out on thier asses come thier time for re-election for failing to sing on to investigate what happened in Florida Can't win a senate seat in NYS without NYC and you can't take NYC without the black vote.