People Before Parties: Politics and Electoral Reform Group Releases Recommendations for Electoral Reform at #OWS

Two weeks ago, I relayed a number of recommendations for electoral reform being considered by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street in NYC, in which I have been active.  This past Sunday, the group came to full consensus on the proposal, which has now been posted in full on the group forum at NYCGA.net.  That document is published here in its entirety.  Please distribute widely.


People Before Parties: Recommendations for Electoral Reform
A proposal of the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street

Free and fair elections inspire good citizenship and public service.  They engage the intelligence, good will, and real interests of the people.  Free and fair elections ensure that citizens can control their own political destiny, and make genuine contributions to society through sound self-government.  Free and fair elections can remedy myriad ills and counteract the abuses of a government that has come to prey upon the resources and spirit of citizens.

The centralization of political power in the hands of two narrow political factions at all levels of government is neither democratic nor republican. Lawmakers representing these factions have rigged our electoral system to ensure their continued monopoly on public office in the United States.  No party system whatsoever is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people has been transformed into government of the people, by the parties, for entrenched interests.

Whatever our political differences may be, surely on this we can agree: our government does not represent the interests or will of the people. It is time to institute free and fair elections in the United States.

A vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed.  Americans are not apathetic.  They have been demoralized by a forced choice between two corrupted political parties. The two-party system is incapable of providing adequate representation for the many diverse interests constitutive of the American electorate. This is a crisis of democracy and representation. It is a crisis of government.

In the federal system, the states are the laboratories of democracy. We urge the people of states, localities, and General Assemblies nationwide to begin a series of bold new experiments in democratic self-government, to open our political system to the millions of people who go unrepresented by the entrenched factions.

We call for experimentation with reforms to create a level playing field for all voters and for all candidates for elected office – whatever their party affiliation may be, or whether they have none at all –, and to curtail the influence of corporations and narrow political factions over our system of government.

We recommend experimentation with (in no particular order):

• Alternative voting methods. Our voting systems should promote honest participatory democracy.  There are alternatives to plurality voting, such as ranked choice voting, approval voting and range voting, liquid democracy and so on.

• Independent, nonpartisan redistricting. Voters should choose their representatives, lawmakers should not choose their own voters.  A bipartisan commission is not a non-partisan commission.  Independent council and computer drawn districts can remove partisan bias from the redistricting process.

• Smaller and more localized districts.  It is time to expand the number of representatives in local and state government and in the House of Representatives. This will ensure a closer relationship between the people and their elected officials, putting the latter on a shorter leash.

• Proportional representation. Winner-take-all, single member district plurality voting has allowed narrow political factions to wield disproportionate influence within our system of government.  Proportional representation has been used in the United States in the past to break up party monopolies.  It can be implemented again.

• Expansion of franchise.  Laws that restrict the right to vote should be repealed.  Those who are denied the right to vote because they have, for example, served time in prison, should be re-enfranchised. Participation can be encouraged through simple reforms such as election day voter registration.

• Term limits. Election to public office is not a lifetime appointment.  Fortunately, the people need not wait for officials to implement laws limiting their own terms.  The people can impose term limits at any election by voting for alternatives to the representatives of the entrenched factions.

• Ballot access reform.  Ballot access laws that favor the major parties and discriminate against independent and third party candidates, which are common in all fifty states, should be repealed and replaced with fair and reasonable alternatives. The default state of the ballot should be open.

• Primary election reform. A public election should be open to the public.  If parties desire to hold closed primary elections, they can provide for their own caucuses or conventions.

• Initiatives and referenda. The people retain the right to originate ballot initiatives and referenda and to recall any elected official.

• Vote counting.  Electronic voting machines are produced, operated and serviced by a small number of corporations with significant ties to powerful political factions.  Unless there are significant controls to protect against the rigging of such machines, hand-counted paper ballots should be re-introduced into our voting systems.

• Holiday voting. Voting should be encouraged not discouraged.  Election day should be ruled a holiday to encourage voter turnout.

• Fusion voting. Parties should be able to nominate the candidates of their choice across party lines.

• Combination and synthesis. A liquid democratic primary with an instant runoff between the top four candidates from the primary in the general election. Countless other possibilities.
This list is not exhaustive.

We urge assemblies across the country to deliberate on reforms that can help break the ruling political monopoly in government through free and fair elections, and put people before parties. We urge the people of states, localities and general assemblies nationwide to demand the implementation of electoral reform and begin a series of bold new experiments in democratic self-government, from the bottom up.
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This proposal was developed by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street between September and November 2011. It contains input from well over 100 individuals who attended group meetings in Liberty Plaza as well as many others from across the country who influenced the proposal through online discussions.  The document was produced through a collaborative writing process.  It was approved by the Politics and Electoral Reform group with full consensus support on November 6, 2011.

Unprecedented? What can contemporary America learn from ancient Athens?

Though the ongoing economic crisis and the response to it are often described as "unprecedented" by commentators, politicians and economists alike, many of these very same individuals can be found drawing conclusions on the best way forward based on analyses of its historical precedents such as the Great Depression or the Panic of 1873. Enlarging the scope of one's historical frame of reference, however, reveals precedents that reach back to ancient times. Consider, for instance, J.B. Bury's History of Ancient Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, published in 1900. The Irish historian describes the state of Athenian and Attic society in the midst of the crises that precipitated the Solonic reforms and the eventual foundation of ancient Athenian democracy:

Every year the oppressiveness of the rich few and the impoverishment of the small farmer were increasing. Without capital, and obliged to borrow money, the small proprietors mortgaged their lands, which fell into the hands of capitalists, who lent money at ruinous interest. . . . Even in Attica the small peasant could not cope with the larger proprietor. Thus the little farms of Attica were covered with stones, on which the mortgage bonds were written; the large estates grew apace; the black earth, as Solon said, was enslaved.

The condition of the free laborers was even more deplorable. The sixth part of the produce, which was their wage, no longer sufficed, under the new economical conditions, to support life, and they were forced into borrowing from their masters. The interest was high, the laws of debt were ruthless, and the person of the borrower was the pledge of repayment and forfeited to the lender in the case of inability to pay. The result was that the class of free laborers was being gradually transformed into a class of slaves, whom their lords could sell when they chose.

Thus while the wealthy few were becoming wealthier and greedier, the small proprietors were becoming landless and the landless freemen were becoming slaves. And the evil was aggravated by unjust judgments, and the perversion of law in favor of the rich and powerful. The social disease seemed likely to culminate in a political revolution. (Emphasis added, Chapter 4, Section 4, ca. pp. 180-181.)

Sound familiar? Effectively, this is the basic template for so many reports and analyses of our current economic and financial crisis. In the Financial Times, Edward Luce describes the "Crisis of Middle-Class America":

The slow economic strangulation of . . . middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

The trend has only been getting stronger. Most economists see the Great Stagnation as a structural problem – meaning it is immune to the business cycle. In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

At the Business Insider, Michael Snyder argues in a similar vein that the American middle class is being "systematically wiped out," and provides numerous statistics to back up his argument. Some excerpts:

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace . . .

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Even the partisans of the Democratic and Republican parties and the ruling political class have begun to call for a radical response to this social, political and economic crisis. Commentators Christian and Robbins at Investors Business Daily wonder if "Washington's failures will lead to a second American revolution":

People are asking, "Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?" Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency. Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There's no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.

As is typical of mainstream corporate media commentators such as Christian and Robbins, they fail to properly diagnose the problem because they are incapable of liberating themselves from the ideology of the imperial presidency they claim to oppose:

Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily. Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He's diminishing America from within — so far, successfully. . . .

Opinion polls suggest that in the November mid-term elections, voters will replace the present Democratic majority in Congress with opposition Republicans — but that will not necessarily stop Obama.

This is the precise mentality that sustains the imperial presidency. It fails to account for the most pernicious effects of the global warfare and corporate welfare state, which is beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike; and it turns a blind eye to the irresponsibility of American voters who continue to place their trust in an ethically degenerate, morally and intellectually bankrupt ruling political class. Laughably, these commentators even seem to believe that the Republican Party is part of the solution rather than one-half of the problem that is the tyranny of an oligarchical two-party state and duopoly system of government.

Faced with a similar crisis, the great statesmen of ancient Athens devoted themselves to constitutional reforms that would empower the people over and against a parasitic ruling class and political oligarchy whose power was built on the destruction and enslavement of their social and political "inferiors." The eventual result, of course, was the invention of Athenian democracy, a founding pillar of western civilization. And us? What shall we do? Freedom and independence today begins with freedom and independence from the tyranny of the Democratic and Republican parties, from the ruling political class, the two-party state and duopoly system of government.

Orwell in New York: Predictable Partisanship and Non-Partisan Elections

As you may or may not know, the mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, has assembled a commission to review and suggest reforms to the city's charter. Among the most prominent issues being considered by the commission is that of nonpartisan elections. New York is one of the few cities in the country which still has partisan elections. According to statistics at the National League of Cities, of the nation's ten largest urban centers, only three still retain partisan elections: New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. A proponent of non-partisan elections, Nancy Hanks has been following the commission very closely over the past few weeks at the Hankster, be sure to check in there for updates on that front.

In early May, an article in the New York Times laid out some background issues on the measure and the coalitions that were likely to take shape both for and against the idea. Ironically, the antagonism has coalesced along a predictably familiar partisan fault line: leading Democrats and the Working Families Party are strongly against the reform, while Republicans and the Independence Party have come out in support of it. From the NYT:

Several Republican leaders have also expressed openness to the idea . . . Many of the city’s Democratic leaders are steadfastly opposed to nonpartisan elections.

supporters, including leaders of the city’s Independence Party , said that party politics had outlived its usefulness in city elections . . . In a strongly worded letter to the Charter Revision Commission . . . leaders from a cross section of groups, including the Working Families Party, the N.A.A.C.P. and Common Cause New York, said that asking voters to consider nonpartisan elections “strikes us as highly cynical” [Emphases added.]

Yesterday, Democratic leaders held a press conference to voice their opposition to nonpartisan elections in NYC. Revealingly, however, rather than defend partisan elections, speakers instead emphasized the virtues of the two-party system, which is not surprising, but all the more absurd, given that New York City has a one-party state. The New York City Council has 51 members: 46 Democrats and 5 Republicans. From the New York Observer's report on the press conference:

Outside New York's Municipal Building on Wednesday, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio stood at the podium--backed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and former comptroller Bill Thompson--to dismiss the notion of nonpartisan elections . . .

"Nonpartisan elections undermine our democracy," said the towering Mr. de Blasio, who appeared to have something of a sunburn. [He continued:] "They create a system that is dominated by wealth, suppresses voter turnout and makes it harder for minority candidates to compete." . . . "I think we can all agree the two-party system has served America and served New York pretty well," Mr. Markowitz said.

Are such statements not perfectly Orwellian in character? The professed deference to the two-party system is nothing but a cynical defense of the ruling political class – which, in this case, comprises a one-party state. Further, imagine the gall of any Democratic or Republican leader who would defend the two-party system's one-party state by implying that it is not dominated by wealth, that it doesn't suppress voter turnout, that it does not work against the interests of minority candidates. This disconnect is particularly obvious in the case of New York City. As mentioned above, one party has monopolized the city council. The mayor's office was purchased by Michael Bloomberg for $102 million in 2009. Voter turnout numbers in 2006 reveal that roughly 2 out of 3 New Yorkers opted not to cast a ballot (these are numbers for the state, but are likely comparable with the city). Finally, even despite the successes of minority candidates, structural racism is indisputably endemic to the ruling parties, their politics and their policies. We have not even broached the topic of topic of independent or third party politics, ballot access issues etc.

The Democrats' defense of "democracy" here demonstrates the willingness of the ruling political class to engage in outright falsification of reality to maintain the system that ensures their hold on power.

The Return of the Whig: Centralization and the Crisis of Democracy

Following a work-related blogging hiatus, Septimus is back online at The Whig, and in force. Catching up on news from recent weeks, he reflects on the Pew Research survey which found record levels of public distrust and discontent with Democratic-Republican Party government. Arguing that the public mood stems from "a dissatisfaction with the two political parties, and the concentration of power in Washington," Septimus focuses in on the latter, writing:

Power is being taken away from the local politicians that you can meet and know. When the national government is deciding where to build a local road, what the local speed limit is, what the local drinking age is, what the local building code is, whether you can resell children's toys at a garage sale, what the policies of your local elementary school will be, what local business gets a tax break, who your local bank will lend money to, whether a local factory gets built, whether a local port can expand, where your local mass transit can buy their vehicles, where your health care comes from (and on and on and on...) what real authority does your local government still have, exactly? What are your chances of real participation? How can you hold your local politicos to account when in all probability, their hands are tied?

That is not to say that there is not a good reason for each federal regulation or power. Each one can undoubtedly be justified. But when combined, it is not only overwhelming, but also unresponsive and distant. As the Russians say, "Heaven is high above, and the Czar is far away." Now you may reply, "But at least we get to elect our Congress." But how much do we really?

Most of us live in districts so gerrymandered, that we don't really have a choice in November. Combine complex campaign finance laws and large political donors, with unresponsive and corrupt political machines in the Democrats and Republicans, and the real question is not the large number that are discontent, but that so many remain content.

This situation is only exacerbated by the fact that the only choice voters are afforded – or rather, the only choice they believe they are afforded –, is that between reproducing the problem, i.e. voting Republican against a Democrat or voting Democrat against a Republican, on the one hand, or not voting at all, on the other. We have already reached a point at which the great majority of eligible voters simply do not vote in the majority of elections. This is a crisis of democracy that undermines the promise of representative government. Needless to say, Democrats and Republicans are unresponsive to this crisis because it is, arguably, a primary condition of their continued lock on the levers of power. However, the fact remains that the American non-vote is a vote of no confidence in the two-party state and duopoly system of government.