No, this is not about Senator Obama or his campaign. For 96 months now voters have been trying to bring an end to an administration headed by George W. Bush and enabled by both Republican and Democratic elected members in the House and Senate. For most of those 96 months, people have been trying not so much to change things as to bring back the government that existed before January 21, 2001. Millions have worked toward this day, contributing their money, their time, and for many, their freedom.
They have had their names added to lists preventing access to public transportation, shuffled into wire pins by police, their right to privacy in their own homes violated, and all the while in violation of the Constitution they had to pass a test on by the time they graduated from high school. So, unlike many non-democratic "democratic" countries; we should be well versed in the difference between a government of the People, by the People and for the People and a government which tells the People how to vote, whose vote counts and whether or not to vote. Nowhere is this more painfully obvious than in state of Florida. Florida elections have become a petri dish of pathogens.
But we have also painfully learned that during our lifetime ignorance of what the Constitution actually says has not only brought confusion but given our elected leaders the means necessary to circumvent it, or outright ignore it, by labeling it "not relevant" to the times we live in, "hard to understand" and nigh "incomprehensible" for us lay people.
But they never tell us what’s so ambiguous about, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." or "Congress shall make no law..." or "Congress shall have Power...to declare war, grant Letters of Marquee and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water" or, "The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and Misdemeanors". Sounds clear and concise to me but just these few examples show how very far from our Constitutional government we have wandered.
Pick any section, any politician, or any branch of government and the manipulation of our Constitution to aid and abet political acts is alive and growing and doesn’t intend to stop before or after this next election. Just how did we get this way? If we passed history we all know that presidents with political agendas have circumvented or downright ignored the limits of their power before.
Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) was constantly at war with Congress and constantly expanding the limits of presidential power in the same way George W. Bush has done. And like "Decider" Bush, one of his most controversial acts was to defy Congress and the Supreme Court by enforcing what is known as the 1830 Indian Removal Act, in defiance of a 1832 Supreme Court decision that ruled that the state of Georgia could not enforce Georgia law on tribal lands. The result of Jackson’s decision that"[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, Now let him enforce it!" brought about one of the most shameful episodes in our history.
Jackson’s defiance of previous treaties and agreements with the 5 Indian tribes of Choctow, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole lead to a massive exodus, known as the Trail of Tears, from their homeland to the new Indian Territory in the unsettled west. Families where forever separated when the military roundup rousted people from their homes, fields, schools and towns and on this forced winter march halfway across the continent, thousands died from disease and starvation. Their arrival in Indian Territory, many without the tools with which they had made their living or money for food, took more lives after they arrived. In 1832 a cholera epidemic caused the death of thousands and in 1839, two years after Jackson left office, the Indian Territory was seized again; and the same tribes resettled by forcible removal just a few years before; found themselves once more being overrun by settlers and the Indian Territory renamed Oklahoma. The whole period of "resettlement" was marked by corruption and dishonesty and greed aided and abetted by a slave owning president who believed he was doing "the right thing".
Did the "ends justify the means"? Only if you believe that greedy wealthy men wanting gold more important than the thousands men, women and children who died for them to get it. A fitting parallel to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraqi territory so that greedy men wanting oil could get it.
But although previous presidents have arisen from factions promoting a certain issue, like the dispute over whether or not to seize the 5 Tribes land, or control of that portion of the population considered property of the voting male population (most notably slaves and women) and thus not entitled to vote. Most elected leaders usually came from the states’ prominent or wealthy male citizens. A war hero, like Jackson, could be elected with little or no previous political experience simply because of name recognition. As a slave owner and prosperous land owner and a war hero, Jackson was a good choice to represent his state’s ideology.
Today, although communication is instantaneous and information readily available, it is not always disseminated to all citizens. We may be global, but many of the prejudices that existed in Jackson’s day are still prevalent. And although the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s called attention to the voting gap of the "separate but equal" version of government from the state level all the way to the top, the same class inequities still exist. What we are discussing in the 2008 election is not the very important issues that must be changed for our Democratic Republic form of government to continue but the reality of two candidates both considered to be coming from previously disenfranchised groups and whether or not a mere woman is strong enough to be a commander in chief.
From the criticism of these two candidates, it seems the VIPs in the political parties and a fair portion of voters are far more willing to accept a biracial candidate (white female; father foreign national) whose citizenship does not derive from the 1865 Amendment XIII; thus allowing a "black man" to run for president but neatly bypassing the old "slavery issue" best articulated by the longest serving member of the Senate Strom Thurman(1902-2003) as both a Democrat and a Republican, while challenging the notion that a woman candidate whose national equality wasn’t ratified until Amendment XII in 1920 still isn’t "ready".
Real Change
We chose our presidential candidates with less thought than we give an employee’s resume and the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any democratic country. Voters have come to accept the notion that political parties control the election process and we’re the pawns they push around the chessboard. We tended to take our elections for granted until the 2000 election when it was expected that the two parties would do their delegate dance, we’d declare a "dancing-with-the-stars" winner and continue on. However, with the Supreme Court getting into the act, we weren’t quite sure what happened, how it happened and just how illegal it was because no one seemed to actually know the procedure for handling a crooked election. But it did wake us up.
And it did call attention to our total lack of knowledge about how this thing called a Constitution worked. The long learning curve is just now reaching the point of asking the question that, if the Constitution made no provisions for political parties, then why do they have so much power over choosing who and who can not be elected at their Conventions? And how did they get the power to disenfranchise so many voters in states where a state legislature made rules both political parties didn’t like? Article II, Section 1 outlines the duties and responsibilities of the States for overseeing elections. The bottom line is that political parties hold no power over the states, but the states have the power to set their election process. Why would anyone stay members of a party which refused to acknowledge their vote at the party primary level thus giving them no vote at the National Party Convention? It’s like being a dues paying member of a Country Club but not allowed to attend.
Perhaps we have just been too trusting for too long; or is it more than that. While more than one incident of voter disenfranchisement has been traced to senior citizen enclaves (both poor and well to do) and the poorer districts in Florida, research shows a correlation between education and willingness to challenge "authority" over perceived wrongs where voting is concerned. As that notorious high school class called by various titles ranging from Political Science to Government exposes you to the basics of Constitutional government, what you take away from it determines whether or not you become an active participant in running your government or whether you opt out.
A recent study done by the University of Maryland’s Center for Information and Research On Civic Learning and Engagement (acronym CIRCLE) shows that white, college bound students, more often from wealthier high schools have the greatest access to civics lessons that can influence interest in voting. Director Peter Levine says, "It’s a stark illustration of how unequal political participation is in American... We need to have a discussion in this country about our priorities and make sure democracy is one of them."
We say educating our children about the dangers of drugs is so important that we enact public service programs to target not just children of middle class and wealthy but those being raised in poverty and yet, we don’t consider giving them the necessary information to make decisions about the importance of their responsibilities of citizenship and yet every political decision made by the two parties impacts their lives; from whether or not they end up in Iraq to the job they end up with.
Although voter turnout among youth has grown since 2000, one of the co- authors of the study, Joseph Kahne, believes that education has played a large role in whether students become engaged in politics or not. The study seems to indicate that student exposure to the political arena, from having a say at school board elections to holding mock elections makes a big difference in participation. Kathy Harriger, head of the political science department at Wake Forest University and co-author of "Speaking of Politics: Preparing Students for Democratic Citizenship through Deliberate Dialogue" believes "There’s this hunger for opportunities to have authentic dialogues about issues without it being a battle."
But the examples being set for our children are terrible and seems to prove that the idea of one person one vote is nothing but a myth; that changing anything with your vote is a myth. Without the knowledge of how the government works within the framework of the Constitution, and actually seeing the difference your citizenship efforts make, there is little reason for young people, or their families to get involved.
How can they make sense of what has happened to our election process within the Constitutional boundaries they study? From 2000 to the present, the Constitution has been circumvented in various ways leading to the election of certain candidates through nefarious means. In 2000, the 1965 Civil Rights Commission report on the 2000 election collected sworn testimony which outline the inequities and abuses inflicted upon the voters, but when the report was turned over for prosecution (the Commission has no prosecutorial powers), and was ignored by the separate but equal Judicial Branch whose main job is to rule on "...all cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and treaties made..."
In the 2004 election, a member of the House of Representatives and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers, headed an investigation on a variety of voter machine problems and inadequate voting facilities that turned away thousands of voters that could have changed the outcome of that presidential election but the elected representatives whose duty it was to enforce that section of our Constitution known as "Checks and Balance" refused to investigate the voting irregularities and rubberstamped the election.
After a lot of civic actions which involved 6 years of enduring "free speech zones", media blackout on protest marches, arrests and secret lists of "political dissidents", the massive voter turnout in 2006 swept the opposition party to majority status and voters thought they had won more than a pyric victory but a return to our old Constitutional way of life.
But, unfortunately for the People, they were told that a Congressional majority which had previously held monarchal control over House and Senate for 6 years was also impossible to control as a minority; and the 2006 majority legislature we had given victory to decided to ignore those issues the voters had elected them to repeal. Thus, voters and voters to be witnessed the true power their votes had to bring change.
Kathy Harriger states that "One of the things that keeps them [students] from participating is not understanding how the system works" and by "demystifying the process" it would help to increase political participation and the idea of civic duty. Government teacher Jim Bass, cited in the article, says he tried to "get students from all walks of life involved in a Student Political Action Committee that deals with school and community issues" whether or not they are considered scholars.
One student, Darlisa Scott, one of many students who come from families that don’t vote, believes, "...they don’t really care...They say it won’t make a difference if you vote." After having been involved in working on a presidential campaign in Iowa she says she hopes that she will be able to influence them to change.
But the problem Darlisa and her peers face is whether or not their work will end in change. This 2008 election has blazed few new trails in that convoluted process of getting a couple of candidates for the public to choose from, but originally, with no political party system, a president was chosen by a process outlined in Article II, Section 1
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
This was amended in 1804 to
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not lie an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.
Passing that class on our Constitution means that we should know that the various state legislatures determine the names of proposed candidates and that those names are sent to the Senate and are then chosen by casting votes in both the Senate and the House. And it also means that the two political parties are not much more than window dressing showcasing the party favorite. The only connection to the election process is that most State legislatures are made up of mostly Democratic and Republican party members and that the vote of unaffiliated members of the Legislature does not carry the same weight as the votes of party members because the party members who hold conventions predetermine who the State Legislature can vote for.
Thus, Florida and Michigan students of government learned a different lesson in Citizenship when the Republican and Democratic party disenfranchised their parents who assisted in the election process by informing their legislature of their candidate choice. They will not have any participation in the 2008 election because of rules imposed upon their party members by a political party due to action taken by their State Legislatures contrary to the wishes of the two political parties. I think we’re beginning to see why parents tell their children that their vote "won’t make a difference" because an uncounted vote may make a difference in a political party’s choice of candidate, but that uncounted vote will not make an impact on any change the voter might desire upon the party’s platform.
This 2008 election was supposed to be the defining moment, a repudiation of George W. Bush; an announcement to the world that we intended to regain our reputation and our honor. Instead, we are right back where we started from in 2000. Media remains focused not on issues, not on whether or not one candidate has ties to a man just indicted for fraud, or whether he says one thing to the voters on NAFTA but tells our neighbor Canada another, but how much money candidates are raising to fund their campaigns and who’s outspending who and grabbing more votes by doing so.
The candidates have debates that aren’t debates, moderators concentrate on favorites and ignore others to the point where one, John Edwards, actually chastised them by reminding them that he was still there. Certain voters don’t have their votes counted, skewing the votes for the Favorite and then announce gleefully that he is ahead. They check the daily money totals to see who is winning the donation race although we all know it’s not the money but who’s giving the money. And after a day, or a week, or a month of this "reality TV" type campaign it is understandable that not just our children are confused about their citizenship obligations.
During the White House investigation into the corruption of the Nixon administration, the reporters responsible for breaking the Watergate story, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were told by their source to "Follow the money". It is as good advice today as it was then. And since the candidate to be chosen to represent the Democratic party will shortly be made, and since as long as political parties determine the nominee and we can’t seem to get the money out of politics, we need to follow the money to determine who has donors that best agree with our needs because we are not participating in a Constitutional system of electing a president but a system that buys a president.
And that, my fellow citizens, is why our idealistic students of today will turn into our disillusioned parents of tomorrow. Unless we stop it now. We don’t need an overhaul of the Constitution, we need to overhaul the political parties and limit their influence that allows them to tamper with our votes. The Constitutional voting system outlined in the Constitution is not one party, one candidate but one person, one vote. And let the best candidate, not the best party candidate win.