new column:

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. E.D.
(Specious Pseudo Elections Cause Instant And Lasting Electoral Damage)

So maybe we’ll have a Special Election; or, um, maybe we won’t. So maybe we’ll have 8 state ballot issues before us; or maybe it will be 7, or even 6, or maybe it’s back up to 7 again. In these days of nein and poses, our path emerges for a while, then closes, all within some freakish dream.

Perchance to hopeful dream we remember when we used to have faith in the electoral process. When an election meant the electorate was truly having their say, all the votes were properly counted, politicians would listen, and it was good. Or bad. But at least it was understood as the faithful process at hand.

Everything has changed it seems. There is a lack of trust in government’s ability to properly hear the voters. Obviously, this electoral crisis did not start with Arnold’s spurious call for a Special Election, although it was exacerbated by it. It did not even start with the specious call for and conduct of a Recall of our former governor, although all sense of proper democratic process was thrown out the window with that one.

Clearly the 2000 presidential dis-count was the highpoint of electoral disaster, but I would argue that it is also not the start of this surreal nightmare. While we have always had contested elections and partisan motivations, we are now witnessing a strategic devaluation of the vote. And that devaluation is causing hemorrhages throughout our system.

It’s possible that the Republicans first learned how to destroy the vote through psychological manipulations on voters’ fears over race in the 1960’s and beyond. Their ‘Southern Strategy’ was quite effective for their political fortunes by getting voters to vote against their own personal and financial interests in order to supposedly protect themselves against African-Americans. They have continually used this Strategy effectively throughout the years in the abortion wars, ‘family values’ campaigns, and recently against same-sex marriage.

Although I think it’s also important to note that even outside of elections, the Republicans have played a political game of target-and-destroy with any successful Democratic politicians and the ideals of the American politic. For instance, even when they could not defeat President Bill Clinton in 1996 for his re-election, they spent the rest of his term continually and systematically tearing him down—all the way to impeachment—in order to discredit him personally, Democrats in general, and our Democratic ideals throughout. When in 1998 the American voter fought back by successfully sending a message against the impeachment, the Republicans decided to attack even further the very institution for the voice of the public.

Looking to 2000, they made a devious, under-handed play to win the presidential election at all costs. They prepared by working within states to make sure that certain types of Democratically-leaning voters would be disenfranchised come Election Day. They made sure that these voters would not be able to have their voice heard. And after that maddening season of electoral fraud we Democrats had hoped and prayed that they would soon get their comeuppance. Instead, they wanted even more power and played even more parlor tricks to get it.

Even in California where they were ironically losing more and more of their influence, they had some backup strategies to distract the voter and hurt the system. First they worked to allow for the destruction of the state—literally in allowing Enron to profit on their illegal manipulation of the energy market and ending up shutting down power throughout the state. Second, they successfully laid the blame on a Democratic governor in hopes of doing another ‘impeachment’-style target-and-destroy operation within our state. Third, they used these operations to make the ultimate mockery of electoral democracy through a destructive and manipulative Recall to force their own agenda and say it’s the power of the people.

Destroying the power of the vote is the ultimate goal. When Arnold drove his photo-op Hummer to make the call for the Special Election, one could easily see it as simply another chapter in the ongoing playbook of the Republicans to supposedly give ‘power to the people’ while in reality making another manipulative fabrication of democracy. Happily, in California at least, this playbook is getting old with the voting public and the Special Election is falling apart. It’s our job to make sure that whether there is one this November or not, and for the 2006 elections and beyond, our messages of proper and faithful elections, the voice of every voter, large D and small d-democratic values, every vote counting, and truth in electioneering win out continuously. This is not easy, but we have seen what happens throughout our country when these fundamental pieces of liberty are allowed to be lost in a sea of special nightmarish circumstances.