Well reader, this is my final column with The Reveille. I figured it appropriate then say something about the Senate race.
This election season was a time of defeat and capitulation for the values I believe in, a time when voters decided between sell-outs, mannequins and lesser evils. 61 percent of the national electorate boycotted the whole process. The Democratic leadership was so weak and afraid of confrontation that they appeared to be a party without principle or platform, and many voters just stayed away. Why vote if both parties are in agreement or caved in on most issues?
The $1 billion worth of stupid, irritating, truth-distorting TV ads (a new record for money in politics) didn’t help either. People like honesty. Even if people don’t support a candidate’s positions, many will support them because they’re a real person, not a groomed-for-TV caricature. Democratic senators who voted consistently with Bush and boasted about it like Max Cleland and Jean Carnahan lost on Nov. 5, but many Democrats who stood up to the President, even on the Iraq Resolution, won easily, even in conservative states. But Sen. Landrieu is continuing her tilt to the right to keep as little difference between herself and Bush as possible.
I’m going to vote for Landrieu, however unenthusiastically, but this electoral process, dominated by money, insulting people’s intelligence and avoiding substantial issues, doesn’t make for a healthy democracy. It makes for an alienated, cynical public that limits its political involvement and increasingly drops out of public life entirely.
It’s not difficult to figure out why: a political system dominated by wealthy interests that influence government for their benefit, political parties that are difficult to tell apart, and the increasing understanding that these aren’t isolated incidents, but deep-seated, systemic problems.
Here are some ideas on how to address our electoral system’s problems. One is called clean elections, a reform already in effect in several states. In this system, candidates can opt to “go clean,” sacrificing their ability to collect big contributions in exchange for public money. They qualify by collecting several thousand dollars in small contributions to prove they have significant public support. Clean elections allow people to run for office and get their message out without begging for the money to do so. Find out more at www.publiccampaign.org
Another idea would stop this ridiculous December runoff from ever happening again. It’s called Instant Runoff Voting. In it, voters rank candidates 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on instead of choosing just one. When results are calculated, if no candidate gets a majority of 1st votes, the 2nd votes of the candidate with fewest votes get redistributed to the others. This continues until someone gets a majority. That way you can vote for you want without throwing the election to someone you don’t, and there’s no need for a expensive runoff because it happens instantly, thus the name. That would save the state millions in election costs, would get more people to the polls (runoffs generally have lower voter turnout) and would stop another month of those aggravating attack ads and the money race by the candidates to pay for them. For more information, www.fairvote.org/irv/lairv.htm
Democracy is seriously ill and its major symptom is the absent majority who don’t participate even at the basic level of voting. My advice is simple: treat the disease. The disease is the system that keeps important issues off the table and values money more than citizens. Sometimes not voting is the most powerful vote of all. When the majority refuses to participate, it’s a signal that one party or another isn’t the problem, but the system itself needs to be overhauled.