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August 5, 2005
So the story of the day seems to be that some punks allegedly working for the Democratic Party in Milwaukee slashed some tires on Election Day. I have no patience for that kind of shit, and, if the allegations are true, the punks ought to get the book thrown at them.
But why is this the story of the day now, nine months after the fact? I read about it way back in November, when it was an irrelevant anecdote thrown out to distract from more serious allegations (most, but not all, of which were eventually shown to be false) of massive voter suppression in Ohio and elsewhere.
This February, a group of Republican operatives formed something called “the American Center for Voting Rights“. If you go to their website, you’ll notice that, in addition to their inability to use hyperlinks correctly, their mission consists of, well, being against evil and in favor of good. Also, there are photographs of suspiciously non-Republican looking people smiling at you.
Today, they issued a report about election fraud in Wisconsin, which has been thoroughly debunked here, and here, and here, and here, and especially here, and in about eighteen other sites you can find with Google. The few news organizations that fell for the legerdemain have withdrawn the story.
Astroturfing with a phony grass-roots organization is standard operating procedure for the corporatist wing of the Republican Party. It’s a pretty despicable way to advance an agenda, so I should probably avoid giving them some free advice. But I can’t help being such a nice guy.
Tip number one to the ACVR: if you want people to take you seriously, resist the temptation to confuse the adjective “Democratic” with the noun “Democrat”. When you issue a press release saying “Examples include paid Democrat operatives charged with slashing tires on GOP get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee”, people will either assume that you are a) an ignorant boob who failed third-grade English, or b) a Republican hack.
Tip number two: the plural of anecdote is not data.
Messing with elections is bullshit. Setting police roadblocks up in majority-black precincts is bullshit. Slashing tires of your opponent’s GOTV-mobile is bullshit. Purging thousands of votes from the rolls for having the same name as a felon is bullshit. Waiting in the rain for fourteen hours to vote in Ohio, because the Secretary of State (a partisan position) allocated a vastly inadequate number of polling booths is bullshit. Giving people cigarettes to bribe them to vote is bullshit. Posing as a voter registration team, and then shredding the registrations of people who register to a different party than yours is bullshit. Sending police to follow voters home from the polling place is bullshit. Using non-auditable voting machines made by a partisan company is bullshit. Shutting down a recount because you think you might lose is bullshit. Certifying the result of an obviously incomplete count because you’re a partisan Secretary of State is bullshit. Dumping votes in the Chicago River is bullshit. Winning a Texas Senate seat by 88 votes, because of late-reporting tallies from rotten burroughs is bullshit.
I have my own opinion about which of these things is worse, and about which party is currently the more grievous offender, but I assume everyone is in agreement that all of this is criminally detrimental to our democracy. They should all be brought to light and ended. The nature of the game is such that Republicans will investigate Democratic fraud, and we’ll investigate Republican fraud. But in name of all that is honest and good, do it openly, instead of fronting as a “non-partisan” investigation. It’s insulting to our intelligence. And refrain from making accusations about “who is worse” unless you’ve actually done a peer-reviewed scientific study on the matter and have enough statisical evidence to support the claim.
And now, I imagine, we’ll move on to Act 2, in which the Republicans in Madison begin shouting again for their pet Voter ID bill. I’ve written about that bill before, and my opinion on it hasn’t changed.
What if, instead of hurling insults back and forth (and I plead guilty as much as anyone), we create a truly bi-partisan task force to examine how we can make our elections more transparent and trustworthy? What if this task force was co-chaired by former Presidents from both parties? What if they issued a final report with a whole list of simple, low-cost, and effective suggestions for reform?
I suspect our Congress would mouth all the right words, say they supported the recommendations, pass a law that pretended to implement some of the report, and then refuse to even fund the pretend law. They are corrupt and intoxicated with power, and it’s time to throw the bums out and institute some real reform.
August 5th, 2005 at 6:45 am
I really like your last two paragraphs, except for one thing … Bi-partisan task forces are bullshit, making them truly bi-partisan is absurd.
To me it is illogical to combine a couple hardcore Democrats and Republicans and expect to get something in the middle as both are constrained by the ideology which seeks to obtain power rather than to provide leadership.
What is truly needed is a non-partisan task force, because people from the middle are more likely to arrive at a middling solution.
You identified the problem with your “The nature of the game …’ statement. You chastised the game leading up to that statement, and you declare your intention to keep playing the game after that statement.
Why?
August 5th, 2005 at 8:55 am
Done right, bi-partisan task forces are better than non-partisan task forces for things like this (as opposed to things like, say, setting up the candidate debates, where both sides have a vested interest in shutting down competing voices). Something like election reform needs to be above even the hint of partisanship, and a prerequisite for achievnig that is to be open about your bias from the start.
All the people with any power in our government are partisans, so any attempt at reform which includes the people who actually have the ability to reform things is going to include partisans. People of good will can be up front about that, and then try their best to set that partisan affiliation to one side. Hacks on either side cannot, and they shouldn’t be on a task force like this.
A bi-partisan group led by Nancy Pelosi and Tom DeLay would not work. But this one was led by President Ford and President Carter. The group of ex-presidents is small, and while they are definitely partisan, they have the experience and viewpoint to understand the good will of (most) people on both sides of the aisle. Their interest is in keeping the system working, not in gaining personal advantage in the game of politics. They’ve already won the game and are no longer playing it. And their stature can hopefully give them the moral authority to stand up to attempts by current office-holders to turn the proposed reform to their own ends.
A truly bi-partisan group needs to include people of good conscience from all points along the political spectrum, conservatives, liberals, and moderates. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.
August 5th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
To defend Ben, I think it’s clear that he doesn’t want to keep playing the game, but in the absense of real reform, it’s the only option, because the Republicans aren’t going to stop with the dirty tricks. Both sides are guilty, but the GOP has turned the weird double act of claiming victimhood from minor Dem offenses while engaging in the worst sort of dirty politics themselves into a kind of art form.
August 5th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
I think our party should claim the high ground. If Democrats are corrupt, drum them out of the party and prosecute them. Make a party-wide commitment to clean government, and make that as much a symbol of the Democratic Party as health care or the environment or civil rights.
Play hardball while doing that, of course. It goes without saying that we should relentlessly hound corrupt Republicans. Make sure everyone knows about all their dirty laundry. The GOP double act (and I think Kevin nails that right on the head) is a sham, and we need to destroy it.
August 5th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
From my perspective, there is no difference between republicans and democrats. All incapable of on honest introspective discussion. What the hell are the left and right radicals afraid of? Okay, you can answer about the righties, but what are you guys afraid of?
August 5th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
On some issues, there are a great many differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. On some issues there are only small differences. On some issues there are no differences at all.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be afraid of. I’ve pointed out continuously that there is corruption in my own party as well as the GOP. I’ve argued continuously that we should go after them, and not shield them behind the wall of partisanship.
Any group of a hundred million people is going to have some corrupt assholes. Any field with as much power as government is going to attract its share of power-hungry bastards. No party is immune from these problems. The only solution is to refuse to accept corruption from your own side as well as from your opponent’s.
That being said, ACVR needs a lesson about specks and planks.
August 5th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
I’ve been thinking about this some more, trying to pin down more precisely what a party-wide commitment to clean government would mean. Obviously, we need something more concrete than just saying we’re against corruption. It would clearly entail kicking offenders out of the party. But what laws and proposals do we need for greater transparency and independence in our representatives?
Do we want something like public financing of elections? Or perhaps something that has the same effect but without running afoul of free speech issues, like requiring any communications network that uses public airwaves to provide equal time to both incumbents and challengers? If the public commons can be reclaimed for democracy, it would go a long way towards reducing the nearly insurmountable barriers that protect incumbent politicians.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:57 am
[...] Remember all the nonsense about voter fraud in Milwaukee? From the New York Times: Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews. [...]