"If elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure.
... Our government ... ought to be so constituted as to
protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
- James Madison, quoted during the drafting of the US Constitution, 26 June 1787
Strategic decisions were made at the US Constitutional Convention in 1787, by a group of wealthy white men, most of whom owned slaves, without full public consideration of the alternatives. Nearly every electoral system in the US designed since has distorted representation, distorted election outcomes, concentrated power and excluded people.
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A Cartel colludes to control election system variables and obstruct change.
A very small number of people in two organizations control a massive industry called Government. The people who control these two organizations, the two major parties, have formed a corporate and uber wealthy sponsored Cartel. Government is the only industry in the United States that writes its own rules. Designed and institutionalized by their predecessors The Founders, the Cartel maintains a complex multi layered web of impediments to change, obstructions to citizen oriented Grassroots Democracy.
There's a tremendous amount of money involved. The folks who run Government take money from the people who are affected by the rules they write and tax policy. It's a legitimized grifting scheme for corporations and a small, elite class of Plutocrats. The Cartel are not always on the same page, but let's look at the results. All the power is concentrated in the Cartel and their sponsoring corporations and plutocrats. The Cartel has state sanctioned, legitimized control of the trillion dollar plus Government industry in all 50 states and D.C. for the past 160 years. It isn't an accident, it's a designed result. How is it done?
1) Voter Suppression. Predetermine outcomes by preselecting the voter pool.
• Voter suppression in all its multiple forms. Currently in favor: Voter ID, purges, off year elections, restrictive poll access, ...
• Gerrymandered districts. Make districts so uncompetitive, voters have only one choice.
• The history of Voter Suppression is rooted in slavery.
2) Candidate Suppression: Takes choice off the election menu before the meal.
• Restrictive ballot access rules at all levels of government. High petitioning requirements for minor party candidates.
• Caucuses and primaries eliminate most candidates and restrict voter choice.
Candidates can win an election at caucus with less than 1% of the electorate voting in one party dominant districts.
Matt Jones Boulder County Commission candidate 11/18 emerged as the frontrunner with 0.17% of 1% of the active vote.
• Third party candidates are marginalized through the Spoiler Effect.
• Poor Compensation for many local and state elected offices limits who can afford to serve.
3) Exclude All Minority Votes: Winner take all results distort outcomes and exclude large voter blocks. Millions of people
live under laws created by governments they never elected, because their votes were excluded.
• One vote per district in Single Member Plurality districts. Designed to exclude large percentages, sometimes majorities from
representation.
• At Large block voting produces similar winner take all results as Single Member Plurality districts.
At Large diminishes minority (any minority) representation.
4) Manipulate Vote Counting to Skew Results:
• First Past the Post (FPTP): Single Member Plurality systems fail to match the input of voter intent with the output. They exclude
the majority of people with accurate representation. One individual cannot successfully represent a full spectrum of diverse
views. FPTP systems result in large percentages of wasted votes.
• The Spoiler Effect: exacerbates the failure to preserve voter intent, by enabling minority governments and causing vote splitting
among ideologically similar candidates.
• Electoral College skews results in favor of rural conservative states. Devised by Madison to keep slavers in power, 4 of the first
5 Presidents were Virginia slavers, 10 of the first 12 Presidents were slavers, the Electoral College skewed election outcomes
to produce 2 of our last 3 Presidents.
5) Design government institutions to concentrate power. Current systems don't hold office holders accountable.
• Legislative bodies in the US are relatively small compared to equivalent bodies in countries with Proportional Representation.
• Individual offices such as President, Senate Majority Leader even County Commissioners have tremendous leverage through
concentrated power.
6) Distort distribution of power to protect property rights, not human rights.
• Slavers believed their property rights of owning slaves superseded the human rights of slaves. Property rights still trump human
rights. This has devolved into predatory corporate property rights to pollute air, land and water, frack near people's homes
and our kids schools with secret carcinogenic chemicals, supersede our human rights of health and safety, for ourselves, our
planet and future generations.
• The US Senate. "Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance
and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."
James Madison.
7) Obstruct Change; preserve unfair systems.
• Article V of the Constitution.
The truth shall emerge from a free debate. - John Stuart Mill (paraphrase)
8) Control the flow of information:
• Concentrate media ownership.
• Create and control the direction of the Debate Du Jour with a fake news channel: Faux News.
• Disable and destroy net neutrality.
• Limited debate access makes candidates unaccountable. Presidential debates are controlled by the Duopoly. More here.
• Deceptive manipulation of social media is tolerated (no fines, no one goes to jail) as long as FB makes money.
9) Pack the Supreme Court and circuit courts to favor reactionaries, producing horrible, biased decisions.
• Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Bush v. Gore, Buckley v.Valeo, Citizen's United.
• Steal a Supreme Court seat: Neal Gorsuch
• Enable a history of rigged elections that reverse and lag the public will.
Entrenched powers use their power to entrench themselves further. - Joseph Stiglitz (paraphrase)
10) Manage campaign finance rules to favor wealthy elites, controlling outcomes and government.
• Equate money with free speech.
• Make big Dark Money donors opaque.
• Politicians become dependent on large donors.
• After the election, beholden politicians write tax laws and regulations favoring wealthy elites. Big Surprise!
• The Big Dark Money problem is getting worse, not better.
11) Negate Direct Democracy:
Colorado, Proposition 71, financed by the oil and gas industry, made citizen initiatives much more difficult and expensive. Only
organizations and corporations with large funding, oftentimes from dark money, can afford to conduct a petition drive and wage
a successful unitive election campaign.
12) Voting Integrity is vulnerable and under attack:
• Voting machines with no paper trail.
• Hacking into election registration databases.
Elected officials to a greater or lessor degree, control the allocation of resources and priorities in the districts and legislatures they help or directly administer. A problem will not be acknowledged and addressed by government institutions until it's recognized as a problem. Unacknowledged problems that do not exist in the minds of elected officials and staff, do not need remedies. Jim Crow is a perfect example. Most elected officials I've known have trouble recognizing issues that are not on their agenda, or are inconvenient, like competitive elections.
Politicians shouldn't control the rules that govern their industry. Government needs external regulation just like any other industry. The design of election systems and rules belongs to constituents, not politicians, not large predatory corporations and not groups like ALEC and the NRA.
The cure for many of these ills is Proportional Representation. Fine Grain Pro Rep disperses concentrated power and includes nearly everyone. When elected officials ignore problems, Direct Democracy offers citizens the opportunity to successfully address issues. The Supreme Court should be introduced to something it's never had, democracy.
Examine the structure and issues of Government locally through 22,000+ Home Rule cities and counties. Ask your city councilors and county commissioners to form Good Governance Boards, to go along with Planning and Transportation Boards. Let's bring Democracy to the United States.
How to design predetermined election outcomes.
- Jesse Kumin
Copenhagen bas relief © 2017 Jesse Kumin, All Rights Reserved
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The following table is based on the EIU Democracy Index. The EIU did not measure wasted votes or distinguish between electoral systems.
