Ralph Nader: Let The Voter Beware...

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http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040806Hartmann.shtml?mail=07

 

Ralph Nader: Let The Voter Beware...

 

by Thom Hartmann

 

published by CommonDreams.org

 

Ralph Nader: Let The Voter Beware...

 

The frauds and deceptions of the Bush administration

are legion and, sadly, to be expected, based on the

Bush family's past (from sweetheart business deals

going back to WWII, to smearing John McCain in South

Carolina in 2000, to lying to the American people just

before the election of 2002 about the threats Iraq

posed).

 

But few people expected Ralph Nader - one of America's

finest defenders of the public interest and the

commons - to employ deception in an election.

 

Specifically, Nader has gone to great lengths to

exploit the lack of knowledge most Americans have

about how other democracies around the world work, and

thus deceive people about both the history and present

reality of our electoral system and the role of third

parties in it.

 

When the Founders and the Framers of the Constitution

put together American democracy in 1787, it had never

been tried before in the way they visualized. In

ancient Athens, it took 6001 citizens to turn out and

agree to pass a law; Rome was a republic, but not of,

by, or for " the people " ; and the Iroquois Confederacy

had no " executive branch " to elect, a remnant from the

days of kings that the Framers were unwilling to give

up. Thus, the Framers of the Constitution had no

" truly democratic " model to work from.

 

So they created a flawed constitution.

 

The major flaw was that national elections are held on

a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all basis. Which

means that if three or more candidates compete in a

race, it's virtually guaranteed that somebody with

less than a majority of the vote will end up winning

political power. The result of this flaw is

non-democratic minority rule, instead of the

democratic ideal of majority rule.

 

A good example of this happened in the 2002 election

in my state of Vermont, where the Republican

candidates became Governor and Lieutenant Governor

with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote

respectively because each had more votes than his

Democratic or Progressive opponents alone. (Example:

Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin -

32%; Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican

" won. " ) The majority of Vermont voters selected

liberal or progressive candidates, but conservatives

are in charge of the state - the exact anti-democratic

result that gave some of the Framers nightmares.

 

James Madison was the most outspokenly worried about

this. In the 1787 Federalist #10, he goes into a

lengthy discussion of the danger of " factions " - one

aspect of what we today call political parties -

emerging. First he puts a good face on the problem,

suggesting that the new Constitution will solve the

" violence " done to democracy by factions. But in the

next sentence, he admits his fear that he and the

other Framers had not truly solved the problem of what

would happen if " factions " were to emerge.

 

" Among the numerous advantages promised by a well

constructed Union [based on the Constitution], none

deserves to be more accurately developed than its

tendency to break and control the violence of

faction, " wrote Madison. " The friend of popular

governments never finds himself so much alarmed for

their character and fate, as when he contemplates

their propensity to this dangerous vice. ... The

instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into

the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal

diseases under which popular governments have

everywhere perished... "

 

The problem was that if factions were to emerge as

political parties, it would mean there could only be

two of them, for if more than two parties emerged then

the majority of people would almost always remain

unrepresented, while the most well-organized minority

would end up ruling.

 

Madison concluded by saying he felt the Constitution

he and Hamilton were promoting with the Federalist

Papers was the best solution they could come up with

to solve the problem of factions.

 

But, as he noted, the constitution wasn't perfect:

" The valuable improvements made by the American

constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and

modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it

would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that

they have as effectually obviated the danger [of

factions] on this side, as was wished and expected. "

His only solution was to beg Americans not to form

factions.

 

Although George Washington was soon thereafter elected

unanimously and by acclimation, America's second

presidential election (won by John Adams) almost

immediately led to the creation of Madison's feared

" factions " in the form of Vice-President Thomas

Jefferson's " Democratic-Republican " party (today

called the " Democratic Party " ). Ever since then, we've

largely been a two-party nation - because our

Constitution is written in a way that causes anything

else to result in the least democratic outcome to an

election.

 

Most of the rest of the world, however, has learned

from our mistake and taken a different path.

 

Of the 86 other " fully democratic " nations in the

world (according to the UN), only a few like Greece

and Australia had repeated our mistake, although

Australia solved the problem with a national variation

on what in America is called Instant Runoff Voting

(IRV), where you select your first, second, third,

etc., preference among candidates, and if there's no

majority winner, the " instant runoff " is instantly

recalculated.

 

Had this been in place in the US in 2000, for example,

and had most of Nader's voters chosen Gore as their

second choice (as most polls indicate was the case),

then when neither Gore nor Bush received more than 50

percent of the vote, Nader's first-choice votes (he

being the lowest of the vote-drawers) would have

reverted to their second-choice and Gore would have

been elected by the majority of the people (as he was

anyway, but that's a different rant).

 

Few other democracies are locked into a two-party

system like ours because most emerged in their current

forms after 1861, when John Stuart Mill proposed the

idea of proportional representation in his book

" Considerations on Representational Government. " It

solved, once and for all, the problem of Madison's

factions making a nation less democratic.

 

Under proportional representation - in use in

virtually all the other democracies of the world - the

percent of the vote a party gets determines the

percent of seats they have in Congress or Parliament.

It's far more democratic than our system, and if

Madison were alive today he'd be wishing he'd thought

of it in 1787 when he helped write and sell the

Constitution.

 

While many local governments in America are becoming

more democratic by instituting IRV (mostly at the

urging of the Green Party), we still have a federal

system that is purely winner-take-all, and thus " most

democratic " when only two parties compete. (And even

then only partially as " democratic " as IRV or

proportional representation nations.)

 

Which brings us back to Ralph Nader.

 

In a February 2004 appearance on Meet The Press, Nader

said to Tim Russert, " You'd never find that type of

thing [resistance to a third party] in Canada or

Western democracies in Europe. It is an offense to

deny millions of people who might want to vote for our

candidacy an opportunity to vote for our candidacy.

Instead, they [the Republicans and Democrats] want to

say, 'No, we're not going to let you have an

opportunity to vote,' for our candidacy. "

 

Nader added, " There's a tremendous bias in state laws

against third parties and independent candidates bred

by the two major parties, who passed these laws. They

don't like competition. "

 

Amazingly, many people are taken in by this argument,

as they don't understand the difference between our

system and those of most European nations, and don't

realize that our election system was developed before

there were any political parties whatsoever.

Tragically, Nader's argument is most readily believed

on college campuses, where study of American history

and political science in both high school and college

is at an all-time low.

 

Why would Ralph Nader try so hard to mislead his

audiences? He is no fool, and as an attorney he

certainly knows the history and content of the US

Constitution. Many progressives are baffled as to why

he would work so hard to perpetuate ignorance -

particularly among young voters - about the crucial

issue of how democracies work and how our republic can

be made more democratic.

 

Unfortunately, at the moment, third parties mean less,

not more democracy when it comes to voting in most

elections in the US (because they cause

minority-supported candidates to be elected and

majorities of voters are thus unrepresented). Yet

third (and fourth and fifth, etc.) parties are also

critical to bringing out issues that the two big

parties don't or won't address.

 

The simple solution is to institute IRV in the United

States, a step that many communities across the

country have already taken. But to do this at the

national level will require the agreement and

participation of at least one of the two major parties

- which is why many Progressives are supporting the

Greens and, at the same time, infiltrating and

becoming active in the Democratic Party.

 

It's similar to the strategy conservatives

successfully used in the 1970s after the 1964 defeat

of Barry Goldwater, when they proceeded to infiltrate

and ultimately take control of the Republican Party

and then bring Reagan to power. As progressives do the

same with the Democratic Party - while still helping

keep the Green Party and other progressive movements

strong - we can then use the Democratic Party to push

for IRV, re-enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,

an end to " corporate personhood, " and other

progressive and truly democratic reforms.

 

As Franklin D. Roosevelt proved, only by influencing

(both from without and from within) the power of one

of the two national parties can progressives truly

make the United States of America a more democratic

and egalitarian nation. As more and more progressives

join the Democratic Party, participate in meetings and

caucuses, and present themselves as delegates, we will

gain enough power to bring about changes (such as IRV)

that will result in a renewal and reinvigoration of

this great democracy, and pave the way for third,

fourth, and fifth parties to participate in a truly

democratic fashion in America.

 

But first we must correct the misperception Nader is

pushing that the problem third parties face is purely

the fault of the existing two parties. While it's true

they resist third parties as a challenge to their

power, the real problem is a flawed electoral system

left over from 1787.

 

And, as Australia demonstrated, a two-party system can

be changed to a multiparty system - but only when the

nation's citizens realize the true source of the

problem.

 

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project

Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of

a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show.

www.thomhartmann .com His most recent books are " The

Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, " " Unequal Protection:

The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human

Rights, " " We The People: A Call To Take Back America, "

and " What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy. "