Tag Archives: gerrymandering

2nd AMENDMENT v. GERRYMANDERING

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Photo by Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons

SOME folks worry about the gov’t knowing where our guns reside.  Perhaps more importantly,  when the gov’t knows where your ballot — your party affiliation — resides, it’s no longer a SECRET BALLOT; and  it’s easy for parties to gerrymander, resulting in districts designed to be almost solidly R or D, by COLLUSION of both main parties, making it nearly impossible for voters to defeat an incumbent. That’s how the parties control us. The result :  career politicians are rarely removed from office, unless caught with pants down (or maybe not!) — and we suffer dictatorial anointing (by party bosses) of who gets to run for office.

Example:  those voters registered “independent” are in even worse shape in NY: the Independence Party has virtually no voice in nominating or choosing those who run in the main parties in NY. So, “independent” voters have abandoned their ability to nominate a candidate in what is arguably a more important balloting — the primaries — where potential office seekers are blessed-by and beholden-to party bosses.  Upstarts are scorned and obstructed by the parties, unless they are “players”. Would-be candidates must kiss the ring of the bosses.  Our Founders, especially Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson, were very wary of “party spirit” (factionalism) which might divide the public, as discussed in President Washington’s farewell address.

In New York, voters tolerate this, although there is an effort to lobby for repeal of closed primaries which you could sign. We voters deserved what we got. (“He who snoozes loses.)   The pol’s knew we were asleep, and stole our voting franchise, so they could control the game!  What’s even worse: voters who want to switch parties to cast a ballot in a more interesting primary have to do so long before a contest becomes exciting. Recently, a cutoff date to switch was October 25, for an April primary! That’s designed by them to prevent people from exercising their choice in a timely fashion as a race heats up. Yep, more control by the pro’s. Not a free election!

Don’t all Americans deserve open primaries? (Currently only 19 US states have open primaries!) We must work to hide our affiliation. It’s time to take back the electoral process. We, the people want our voting power restored to full clout, by becoming states with Open Primaries. We want a truly independent ability to opt out of party affiliation, becoming undeclared, without surrendering our ability to vote in a primary of our choice. Our party affiliation must be invisible to government! That’s why it’s called a Secret Ballot — but it’s not secret if THEY know the address of your affiliation. And it’s not a free election if you can’t easily change affiliation to vote in the primary of your choice. Take back the power to choose! Demand an open primary for NY, or whatever state denies your independence to choose! (We need a revolution in balloting.) And it should include “ranked choice voting” so we are not resigned to “voting against” a candidate for fear of wasting a ballot on a very talented someone who “can’t possibly win”.

!! GUNS & BALLOTS !! — A WAKE-UP CALL

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Photo by Jubre2016, Wikimedia Commons (fair use)

Q:  What’s more slimy than a salamander, and more slippery than a one-eyed eel after coitus? Answer: A Gerrymander! 

Many voters know that politicians from both sides of the aisle own the game simply because they know where you store your ballot, which is to say those slippery pols know where you live, and which  party you joined when you registered to vote.   Both sides want to keep it this way so they can rig the primaries by redesigning the districts after each census — by drawing congressional districts to favor one party over another — first done in Massachusetts by a pol named Mr Gerry, which district was said to look like a salamander.  And most voters feel powerless to do anything about these unbalanced districts.  But wait!

Few voters recognize that the smoky backrooms of the party bosses are where elections are decided.  Nobody can run for office on “their” ticket without kissing their ring.  If you were to be allowed onto the primary ballot, you owe them! And they will extract repayment, as this is how the parties control us..

Voters in a few states have been alert enough to prevent this.  How?  They’ve designed their voter-registration and primary balloting so that, once registered, any voter can show up on primary day and ask for a ballot for whichever party has the most interesting nominations. This removes predictability from the gameboys’ tool chest.

If un-affiliated registration became the law in your state, it would mean that your predictability can no longer be gamed by either party, simply by their knowing where you live, when it comes time to redraw districts, meaning they can no longer Gerrymander effectively, after each census. But it would take a ground-swell of citizen action — such as a public referendum demanding a chance to vote on a change of rules, for voters to retake ownership of the election franchise.  Got grit?  Call for a referendum!  Launch a petition drive.

So, what does this post have to do with guns?  If you don’t want the gummit to know that you own guns, shouldn’t we all be just as private about where we store our ballots?  He who snoozes, loses, kids!  WE the People need to take back our power.  We are the gummit, dammit!

 

 

> > ABOLISHING THE US SENATE < <

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Cartoon by Tom Toles, Washington Post (fair use)

 

There’s a viable plan here.  Please consider how to take back our governance:

 

Excerpt, from essay by Thomas Geoghegan, at The BAFFLER :

At a time when we are disoriented by everything happening around us, we are disoriented all the more by our relationship to our federal government because we cannot recognize ourselves in the strange fun house mirror of the “United States” as it is represented in the Senate. It is not just that the U.S. Senate represents a distorted version of the United States but also that it deprives the real United States—the people as they truly are—of acting in its best interests. And in doing so, it deprives us of the full measure of our citizenship and leads many of us not to bother with being citizens at all.

Filibusted

Because of the U.S. Senate, which denies the principle of one person, one vote, it is unsurprising that we have one of the lowest voting rates in the world—far lower than other democracies, whether in Europe or Asia, whether rich or poor. For all the rage over vote suppression in the red states, the Constitution itself is a form of vote suppression. The vote suppression built into the Constitution by frustration of majority rule just makes more tempting the overt suppression of which we justly complain. By design, every single American has a different and arbitrarily weighted vote, by virtue of the Senate structure laid out in the Constitution. Understanding that the odds are against their self-government, it’s easy to see, in part, why 100 million Americans choose not to vote, which in turn makes each vote even more arbitrarily weighted.  [ Continued . . . ]

source : https://thebaffler.com/salvos/abolish-the-senate-geoghegan