As we prepare to celebrate, mourn, support or oppose the people whom we have just elected and the referendum proposals we have enacted in the last elections, it may be useful to pause to contemplate the problems associated with these and all other elections. I like to say: “the election is over, let the campaign begin” as we go about the day-to-day process of governance in which we as citizens of a democracy need to be engaged. However, in this campaign season to follow the elections, one of the prime issues of that campaign should be a concerted effort to try to improve that process when it comes to selecting the people who will rule in our “behalf” or the referenda that will be the direct law-making result of our election-day balloting. As we ponder, sometimes with disdain, how we came to elect a given man or woman as President, how we came to amend a state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, our thoughts naturally and properly turn to the issue of the legitimacy and rationality of the election processes we have: could be get “better” results from these elections if we had “better” election procedures? If these are less than the best they can be, we certainly are entitled and obligated as citizens to launch campaigns for improvements before the next round of elections rolls around (in most jurisdictions, there is but a short time interval between elections,)

In approaching this questioning about our election processes, the most obvious and publicly expressed concern is about the integrity of the process in allowing all people the opportunity to vote and the opportunity to have their votes counted. Charges of voter intimidation (discouraging people from voting) and voter fraud (allowing people to vote who are not qualified to do so) have been prominent claims in this as in most recent elections. Again, concerns about “stealing” election results by machine failure or hacking or by lower-tech ways of failure to count some votes or counting them incorrectly is an issue that does not and should not go away. But these important problems are not the focus of my comments here.

The way I see it, we could have the most “honest” imaginable electoral system without the slightest trace of any of the dysfunctions I have just mentioned; and still have profoundly unfavorable results of our elections: men and women are elected who should not be; others are excluded who should be elected; people make wrong and very harmful decisions about matters the like of gay rights or regressive tax policies. An electoral system is a “garbage in, garbage out” machine and, even if it is working perfectly, its products are no better than the input of public rationality and compassion that goes into it. It is the “garbage” in the way voters choose their votes that is the focus of the rest of this article.

And what is “garbage” about the way that people are influenced in their electoral decisions? Let me count a few of the ways. Voters almost reflexively vote no on any proposition that proposes a tax increase, no matter how serious the need for same and they will vote no for any candidate who proposes or is successfully accused by his/her opponent of proposing tax increases. They vote for the person they like or trust rather than the one whose policies will be most helpful to themselves or the community. They vote, in candidate races, for those candidates whom they think can win regardless of their own preferences, especially in primary races in which candidates are being selected to run against candidates of the other party in the general election. They vote for incumbents if they are members of legislative bodies because of the familiarity of names and faces of incumbents and a well-cultivated belief that an incumbent’s seniority in a legislative body is beneficial to their local constituency (Congressmen X has brought home a lot of federal money to this district). And I could go on; these patterns of irrationality or constricted civic consciousness are well known to political sociologists who ponder the practicality of democracy as a form of governance.

How can such dynsfunctionalities be addressed in campaigns for electoral reform? There are many, but I intend to mention only a couple here. The expression that “money is the root of all evil,” if not always true, approaches that level of truth when it comes to elections in nominally democratic societies. To say that local commissions, legislatures, governorships and presidents are literally “bought and paid for” is a proposition with which few fair-minded people will disagree. “Fund-raising” is the most engrossing activity of most political campaigns and one doesn’t have to be a cynic to believe that those individuals and corporations who lavishly support electoral campaigns are not doing so out of the goodness of their hearts or their sense of social responsibility, but because they hope to purchase a modicum of personal influence on people who attain public office. The inability or unwillingness of a candidate to hustle funding is almost tantamount to that candidate’s defeat. Does it have to be this way? Not, I believe, if we were serious about campaign finance reform and legislated limits on what candidates are allowed to spend in campaigns, as well as limits on how much individuals (and corporations and “bundlers”) are able to contribute. The federal matching funds program of public funding of campaigns was a “two birds with one stone” program that provided public funding (reducing reliance on “special interests”) for those willing to put caps on their expenditures. I say it WAS such a program though it’s still on the books but practically a dead letter after Howard Dean in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 discovered that they were far better off raising all the funds they could and spending what they wished, and opted out of the campaign matching program to, in Obama’s case, spend over $600 million in his successful 08 campaign. Though it might suggest a certain level of hypocrisy for President Obama to sign an amendment in the federal campaign financing law that would establish caps for ALL presidential candidates, perhaps it is not beyond the pale of hope that he would use his discretionary power in that action in the public good.

A second point I want to make about campaign reform is the vital necessity of introducing more rationality and public information into a selection process in which candidates and the proponents and opponents of ballot questions appeal to the lowest denominator of public intelligence in their campaigns. Campaigns of both kinds become largely campaigns using catchy slogans and insidious innuendos about their opponents, and introducing rational irrelevancies like the “historical” thrill of electing a first woman or African-American as President. The American people are so poorly informed when they enter the polling booth both because they are more preoccupied with sports and fashion and entertainment and other leisure pursuits than with serious public issues; and because the agencies of influence on public information do very little to counter their idiocy (lack of civic consciousness). The overall deficiency in civic education is a matter to be dealt with by school curricula, the content of mass media, and the willingness of parents to talk with their children and their friends about serious social issues. These are “cultural” problems which, as anthropologists tell us, are notably slow to change despite our best efforts (which certainly should be expended) in that direction. At the level of electoral behavior, we do have a few reforms that are both vital and possible of accomplishment

We might start, at the level of presidential elections, with the way in which the media and the two major political parties conspire (consciously or not) to denude campaigns of any semblance of issue-consciousness. Where does it say that the airwaves and the print media have to pander to the prurient public interests in the likes of John Edwards’ haircuts, Cynthia McKinney having “slugged” a Capitol policeman, and the amount of money spent on Sarah Palin’s ward robe? Does the Federal Communications Commission, supposedly the guardian of the public interest in the public airwaves, have the ability to legislate a more issues-oriented presentation of presidential campaigns? Where is it written in the U.S. Constitution that presidential debates have to be limited to nominated candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties, depriving the debates of any possibility of hearing points of views on political issues beyond the narrow band of mostly cosmetic differences in the policy positions of those two parties? People like I who have tried to support the views of third party candidates are told that we should not be raising these issues against one of the major party candidates, lest we be the “spoilers” who deprive one party of the chance to prevail against the other. The implication is that the campaign has narrowed the field to two “viable” candidates. I could (reluctantly) accede to the logic of “lesser evilism” in general elections were I not aware that the process of narrowing the field to the anointed choices of both parties had forbidden opposition even in the primaries: ask Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Ron Paul; men who had “other views” that ought to have been heard in debates, but they were excluded for the same reason of not wanting to spoil the prospects of the “viable” candidates (those who didn’t really differ significantly among themselves).

I have written much else in this campaign season of procedural issues about the way we conduct elections in this country. I will return to these issues as occasions arise in the course of what will hopefully be the development of a progressive campaign dealing with the issue of campaign reform.

Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist