Supreme Disenfranchisement

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20372/

 

Supreme Disenfranchisement

 

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted November 2, 2004.

 

Did you know that in Bush v. Gore the Supreme Court wrote: " the

individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote " in

presidential elections?

 

Tuesday's vote should be the highest turnout in decades. But Americans

are now realizing that Florida in 2000 was no fluke, but a broader

reflection of voting in America. Indeed, the U.S. has a deeply

decentralized, fragmented and compromised system of voting – where

Republicans can challenge new voters in key states because basic

voting rights are not enshrined.

 

But there is an even bigger obstacle – and this is critical in the

rush to Election Day – and that is realizing the current Supreme Court

does not believe in voting rights in the way most Americans assume.

 

As voting rights scholar and activist attorney Jamin Raskin points out

in his recent book, " Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. the

American People, " the current court does not believe in the principle

of " one person, one vote. " Instead it has a decade-long record, in

case after case – culminating in their 2000 decision to stop the

Florida recount and make George W. Bush president – of

disenfranchising voters, limiting the right to vote and making

political representation harder for minorities. As Raskin writes,

" Behind Bush v. Gore lies a thick and unprincipled jurisprudence,

hostile to popular democracy and protective of race privilege and

corporate power. "

 

Raskin persuasively argues that this Supreme Court has subverted the

very democratic principles that millions of new voters believe await

them: the right to vote, participate, have access to the ballot, and

faith their vote will count. Indeed, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme

Court wrote, " the individual citizen has no federal constitutional

right to vote " in presidential elections (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104)

Moreover, in Bush v. Gore, the court was emphatic that state

legislatures have the power to bypass the popular vote and select

presidential electors. " The State legislature's power to select the

manner of appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses,

select the electors itself. " (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104)

 

That's the nightmare scenario of 2004. As millions of Americans join

the new democracy movement, the Supreme Court has given this opening

to the Republican Party: if Tuesday's vote is disruptive enough –

polls not closing on time, allegations of voter fraud, lawsuits,

perhaps violence by frustrated voters – then legislatures in the

disputed states can come in and appoint its own electors. The popular

vote would not matter.

 

That's not a crazy paranoid theory. Conservative legal scholars,

including this Supreme Court, have repeatedly pointed out the

Constitution has no specific clause giving individuals the right to

vote. All the " one person, one vote " doctrine comes from Supreme Court

rulings, mostly in the mid-20th century, when the court was seen as

liberal. But that's not today's court.

 

So consider the possibility that the more the GOP does to disrupt the

vote, the more likely Karl Rove can be confident that there is a legal

basis to push the selection of electoral college electors to

legislatures in those states. What swing states have Republican

majority legislatures? Colorado. Florida. Iowa. Michigan. Minnesota.

New Hampshire. Ohio. Oregon. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin.

 

What does this mean for the democracy movement in 2004? It means

people must turn out and vote in a tidal wave that washes away

Republican tactics to produce another presidential coup. And then it

means, once the election is over, a new constitutional amendment to

firmly and finally assure the right of all Americans to vote – and at

the same time, putting the electoral college where it truly belongs:

in the dustbin of history.