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Jack the vote ‘04

“So far, electronic voting in California is a lemon. It needs to be fixed…”

That’s republican State Senator Ross Johnson in the wake of last week’s electronic voting fiasco in the Golden State. Diebold machines were put on the front lines for the March 2nd primary without proper testing. Democrat State Senator Dan Peralta called the number of system failures “alarming.” The made in Bush Rangerland voting machines were approved conditionally for the primary. When the dust settled, 573 polling places reported glitches. Since the Diebold machines have not yet been certified for the November election there is renewed interest among pols and citizen groups to not allow the machines to be used in the presidential vote in favor of paper ballots with verifiable vote receipts. We haven't heard a peep out of Georgia on this one. Maybe every state needs a "lemon law" for made in Bush Rangerland e-vote machines.

posted by Groom 4:41 PM

Ideas to Think About (3): What Kind of People Are We?

In developing the system of checks and balances built into the Constitution, the Founders created a mixed government whose goal was not to abolish social class but, instead, to achieve balance and harmony between them. Their pursuit of liberty was tempered by other values: order, stability, and virtue. Their problem was, they believed, human nature. The whole elaborate edifice of separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, with the added complications of dividing the legislature into upper and lower houses and reserving for the states rights not specifically given to the national government was, writes James MacGregor Burns, "based on the theory that men, being naturally selfish, irrational, aggressive, greedy, and lustful, had to be not only protected in their liberty from government but protected from one another by government."

But this was not the only view of human nature in the air at the time the Constitution was written. Tom Paine was only one of the radicals who espoused a different view that, freed of the inequalities built into European societies, ordinary people would be naturally good-natured. "Farmers and mechanics and all others who wore 'leathern aprons,' being more open and fraternal and less grasping and competitive, were more reasonable and virtuous." Thus, a government directly representing the people, of whom these would be the majority, would be reasonable and virtuous, too. Liberty would be protected, simply as a matter of course.

This latter, more optimistic view of what we human beings are is one that many on the left find attractive. It is, unfortunately, wrong. That men are naturally selfish, irrational, aggressive, greedy and lustful can hardly be denied. That they can also be thoughtful, rational, cooperative, sharing and loving is also a fact and the source of all progressive political hope. But that hope depends not only on the checks and balances that keep the dark side from getting totally out of hand. It also depends on institutions that provide fair opportunities to all the nation's children and provide safety nets for the sick, the weak, and the elderly.

Our opponents have long preached the need to protect liberty from government. They have forgotten, it seems, that protection from one another should include protection from malefactors in high places and reject outright the notion that government has an active role to play in providing the opportunities and safety nets on which a decent and civilized life for most of us depend. Here we should heed James Carville's advice and never forget the title of his book: We're Right, They're Wrong.

posted by John 7:18 AM

Poor damned Haiti...but that was day before yesterday's news

When I write about China, I think to myself, people must know something about China.... But, I know that I am fooling myself. I know so damned little about most of Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East and the former USSR and have only a passing acquaintance with South and Southeast Asia, or even Korea, which is right next door from where I live in Japan. Why should I expect people whose lives have taken them to different places to care about the places that I obsess about.

So, now Haiti is in the news (or was, the bombs in Madrid now seem to have blown it away). I can hear the distress when people write about Haiti, but Haiti is, except for reading a bit of Felicitas Goodman on Voodoo a long time ago and catching occasional glimpses of Haitian refugees arrested at sea on CNN well off my radar.... And I'm an anthropologist by training and a cosmopolitan by choice. Sometimes I need a reminder that there are, among my fellow Americans, those to whom Haiti (or other places like Haiti) have a deeply personal significance. Just had a whack on the head by reading Daphne Muse at Black Commentator.

posted by John 6:10 AM

Bush’s “Willie Horton”

Back when Shrubby was governor of Texas he looked the other way when 46 people, mostly black, were arrested falsely in the Texas panhandle town of Tulia on fabricated drug charges. The federally funded multi-agency task force was run by a rogue narcotics officer who got kicked off the Dallas nark squad for sexually abusing women. Apparently Governor Shrub was too busy punching tickets for the bull ride in Huntsville and too much of a closet racist to care. His hand-picked successor, Governor "Castro Street Rod " Perry pardoned all of the “criminals” last year. Now through the work of the NAACP, the forty five who are still alive will share $5 million as a settlement for the racially motivated operation. I’m not George W. Bush… and I do approve this message…

posted by Groom 5:24 AM

Friday, March 12, 2004

In Texas, They Just Execute Them

More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now, it appears that the Army "inappropriately" deployed soldiers to Iraq who already were diagnosed with mental problems, according to documents obtained by UPI.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:34 PM

The Sisyphus Thing

The images from Madrid are a grim reminder that "terrorism" is a permanent feature of modern life. In fact, it's always has been part of life, ever since the first cavemen noticed that the village next door had twice as many women and half as many men. Only the rationalizations and the degree of destruction change. Declaring war on terrorism is like declaring war on earthquakes--you can strengthen the infrastructure, improve detection and prediction and organize first-responder teams to minimize casualties but you can never stop them from happening.

That is the fallacy the American people are struggling with and the myth that the Bush administration has tried to sell us. If we are tough enough, the rightwing logic goes, then they will leave us alone. But, military power alone will not make terrorism go away. We can conquer--at great cost in human lives--the entire Middle East and it will still not deter some loser with an irrational grievance like Timothy McVeigh from striking right here in the homeland.

At some point, we--the American people--have to decide whether we want to effectively contain and minimize terrorist attacks or whether we simply want revenge. There is a place for military action--Afghanistan was one--but our military is already stretched to the limit because of the Iraq misadventure. What we need is a genuine partnership with other democracies to strengthen and share intelligence-gathering, law enforcement, and emergency response capabilities. When military action is required--say, absolute confirmed intelligence that a dangerous group has acquired a "dirty" bomb--there should be a NATO rapid response force ready to move in 24 hours or less.

It's time to level with ourselves--terrorism cannot be stopped entirely and any politician who says it can is a liar. We can minimize the number and deadliness of the attacks, however, not by getting meaner, but by getting smarter.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:51 PM

One day in Spain

I wonder how my fellow bloggers are reacting to the news of the bombings in Madrid and their characterization as "Spain's September 11."

I must confess to a certain grim numbness. To a friend on an e-mail list who wrote,

Ultimately the world we live in is secure because the vast
majority of people are decent human beings. But the
amount of damage a single person can do keeps growing
(this is sometimes refered to as force multiplyer
effect of technology.) Facism isn't the answer though,
there is very little evidence that totalitarian
regimes any safer than liberal democracies and plenty
to the contrary, but I fear that we may learn that the
hard way.

I replied, as follows,

You are, I fear, all too right, and the only "cure" I can think of is
to adopt a kind of olympian callousness, noting, for example, that far
more people die each year in major earthquakes all across Asia, from
Turkey to China, from typhoon-induced flooding in the Bay of Bengal,
from AIDs in central Africa, or from traffic accidents in the USA or
Japan, and the chances that any one of us will wind up a terrorist
victim are measurably smaller than those that we will die of household
accidents or an unexpected illness. As a British friend who lived in
London throughout the period in which IRA bombers were making things go
boom there remarked, you learn to carry on and not think the sky is falling.
Terrorism loses much of its point if martyrdom is received with public
indifference (while, of course, serious police work and preparation for the worst
goes on).

posted by John 8:34 AM

The China Card

As the twin towers of foreign debt and negative trade balance get taller, Beijing is taking a hard look at how Washington runs its bait and switch game on "free trade." Unfortunately, for the Dems, the "free trade" charade finds the "usual suspects" on both sides of the aisle. The Chinese say this is their first attempt at an in-depth analysis of the subject matter... these guys are good.

posted by Groom 4:24 AM

Free Howard Stern

I’ve never been a fan of Howard Stern. Not that I find him particularly offensive; just too much self-regard without a leavening sense of self-deprecation for my taste. But, I admire his willingness to push the limits of free speech because, frankly, I trust Stern a lot more to decide what’s indecent than I trust John Ashcroft to do so. Indecent to me is not puerile sex jokes or Janet Jackson’s tiresome fake boob, but Justice Department lawyers subpoenaing women’s health records.

It should escape nobody’s attention that Stern’s problems with Steppin Fetchit Jr. at the FCC and the Bush Rangers who own Clear Channel began not long after he started to seriously get on Shrub’s case. Clear Channel is owned by the same Texas facists who banned the Dixie Chicks from their stations for exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech; the same crony capitalists who made the Shrubster wealthy through reciprocal sweetheart deals with the Texas Rangers and the University of Texas; the same unindicted co-conspirators whose goal is to sanitize and homogenize every media outlet in America.

The whole Howard Stern affair has nothing to with indecency or obscenity and everything to do with silencing a Bush critic who has credibility with NASCAR dads.

When John Kerry says “crooked,” this is what he talking about.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:01 AM

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Is this the best they can do? Tax and spend? Pa-leeze.
Time to cut another big check to Frank Lutz. "We're not lying when we start saying that Senator Kerry is the old-time Democrat of tax and spend," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) told reporters. It's so eighties.

posted by Evelyn 5:55 PM

My approach to this year's vote

As long as everyone is weighing in, I'll share my decision. Perhaps Ben will find it a workable solution to his dilemma.

My number one priority this election year is defeating George W. Bush and getting him and his cohorts out of power. That's the reason I became re-engaged in politics in early 2003. Once I'd made the decision to get involved, the only candidate who expressed my views (healthcare, anti-Iraq War, fiscal sanity, social justice) was Howard Dean. I can see (now) the various reasons his campaign was doomed, but I am still proud and happy that I was a part of it.

Long ago, in an amorphous way, I'd guessed I would vote for John Kerry. Once I actually looked at him and his record, all enthusiasm waned. Nothing I've seen since has helped; and like other Dean supporters who are new (or newly returned) to political activism, it has been even more discouraging to see Kerry's campaign first disparage the Dean positions and then adopt them. Those actions have only reinforced my impression of Kerry as being driven, first and foremost, by political expediency.

So what's a girl to do? I didn't get involved again to support a candidate who represents what drove me away from being involved. My solution? I am going to campaign hard against GWBush and Company. I will spend my time and whatever money I can getting the word out about the lying, cynicism, corruption, and greed in this administration. Fact sheets to bumper stickers, protests to buttons, I'm going to get as many people as possible to understand what a danger this administration poses. I have two goals: (1) convince a few people who were going to vote for Bush not to; and (2) make everyone else who might vote for him feel just queasy enough to stay home. It's probably not a righteous plan, but it's one I can live with and even embrace. I don't want to go back to sitting on my couch and bemoaning the state of politics. I want to stay involved and for this year at least, this is how I'll be able to do it.

posted by Opus 3:25 PM

Ethics are ethics... money is money

We can philosophize and wring our hands all we want but the reality is that this is an eight month trench warfare campaign and Shrubby's crew has already developed a bad case of trench mouth... Obersturmbannfuehrer Rove has already gone negative. Kerry will have the votes. He needs the money. Yes, politics is a "dirty game" always has been, always will be. We all need to wring our hands less and open our wallets more. Otherwise, all clocks will stop.

posted by Groom 2:24 PM

Voting is Not an Ethical Act; It is an Act of Power

The Founding Fathers, by extending the plebiscite to only white, property-owning males, did not do so because they believed that these people were morally superior. In fact, the image of women as the guardians of the nation’s morality was used as one argument against their getting involved in the dirty game of politics.

As Eric Alterman advises, “voting is not therapy.” It is a conscious weighing of many options to choose one which gives you and the people you care about the greatest amount of power and control over your and their destiny. It is in many cases a decision, like so many in life, that involves choosing “the lesser of two evils.” And in the case of Kerry over Dean, perhaps, the “lesser of two virtues.”

posted by Evelyn 12:46 PM

A too-tender conscience?

In his post on voting as an ethical act, Ben Speakmon writes,

If I vote for Kerry, I compromise the things I believed so strongly in when I first rejected him last year; moreover, I lose the right to protest those things further, since I have placed them secondary to other concerns.

I feel Ben's pain. I, too, supported Dean and, being an old-fashioned sort of fellow, consider my pledge to vote for him at the national convention binding until the good doctor says otherwise. The philosopher in me thinks, however, that Ben has gone a bit too far. Since when does having priorities mean that, having chosen priority No. 1, I am therefore bound to forego priorities 2, 3....n? Why should uniting behind our second or third-choice candidate mean that we will never again be able to criticize what we see as defects in policy or character?

Temporary restraint in the interests of winning an election? Sure. The No. 1 priority is the No. 1 priority, and we don't want to hand ammunition to the enemy. But a candidate isn't even a hemisemidemigod. Even if elected President, he will still be a fallible human being, and the last thing the country needs is another imperial nincompoop in the Oval Office surrounded by sycophants who make sure that he hears nothing but what he wants to hear, trapped in the kind of co-dependence that mistakes sheer blind pigheadedness for courageous firmness of purpose.

posted by John 7:05 AM

The Conscience of an Independent: Voting as an Ethical Act

I have always found the suggestion that voting for a third-party candidate or an independent is "throwing your vote away" as a preposterous and insulting notion. It implies that one's vote doesn't mean anything unless it agrees with what a large faction of the population thinks. It denies legitimacy and value to a citizen's thought and his principles; nothing in our Constitution or our history ordains the existence of political parties, much less the two we have right now. The idea that one's vote is somehow more valid if cast into a teeming mob as opposed to standing alone or with a much smaller group always struck me as ridiculous. Of course everyone's vote matters, not just as citizens of this republic but also as a practical matter. Ask the 527 people in Florida who voted for someone other than Al Gore last time, or the 336 that swayed New Mexico.

Similarly, I reject the concept of a "protest vote". A protest vote is not voting -- refusing to participate in the system entirely, abandoning oneself to its whims and evils, and not taking responsibility for the direction of this country we are fortunate and proud to call home. Someone who votes for a third-party or independent candidate is not protesting the natural order of things; he wants to change them because he disagrees deeply with the way things are.

Much talk about the upcoming election among Democrats revolves around "blue" and "red" states, "safe" and "swing" states. In "safe" states, "protest votes" are not considered immoral because they are extremely unlikely to sway the general result. In "swing" states, the Democrats not only expect but demand votes on the grounds that Shrub will snatch up four more years in D.C. Furthermore, not voting for the Democrat is called immoral because the voter would rather "make a point" than remove Chimpy.

Since Dean dropped out, these thoughts have weighed heavily on me, as they are with Jerry in his excellent post from yesterday. Based on the above, I am trying to approach my vote this year from an ethical perspective. Since I deny the idea that some votes are moral and some immoral, and that some are valid and some invalid, I think it is proper to frame my decision as an ethical question. My vote matters as much as anybody else's, so I must assume that I am the deciding vote; that all other things are equal and that Kerry and Bush are exactly tied, and my choice will decide who gets the presidency. If I vote for Kerry, I compromise the things I believed so strongly in when I first rejected him last year; moreover, I lose the right to protest those things further, since I have placed them secondary to other concerns. If I write in Dean, I throw the election into the House, where Bush will no doubt win it. I then know that I could have stopped any further damage from Bush, but I also know that I do in fact have the courage to stand up for the things that are important to me, and that I will not be intimidated or bullied by anyone for any reason.

All Americans are responsible for what Bush has done. We the people, in order to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, ordained and established our own Constitution. While most people reading this didn't vote for Bush, we are still answerable for the conduct of our government. Where do I stand ethically now, as a citizen? Why should I vote for someone who compromised our country so deeply, one by complete disregard for the best traditions of our nation and the other who stood by in complicit silence? But how can I not do everything in my power, including voting, to remove someone who will literally stop at nothing to remake this country to fit with his twisted, religious vision?

One way or another, I will make a decision by November, because I will not abandon my responsibility as half of our country has done. I just want to be able to sleep for the next four years, no matter what I do.

posted by Ben 5:07 AM

All Clocks Stop

That's what Langston Hughes wrote in "Madrid," his classic Spanish Civil War poem." Now we've got a trinity of railway stations blowing up in the Spanish capital and authorities there are putting it all on ETA, the Basque separatist movement. But with Spain helping the US in Iraq and elsewhere, it becomes difficult to rule out the participation of Islamic terrorist groups, notably, the Salafists, an Algerian-based crew with cells in Spain and known for its skill at doing bomb attacks. I remember in my previous life living in Paris getting the news that Franco's hand-picked successor Admiral Carrero Blanco was blown up in his car. The government in Madrid said it wasn't a bomb, but a "natural gas explosion." ETA, the Basque separatists, took credit for the attack. They usually call in. This time around... no call.

posted by Groom 4:54 AM

Ideas to Think About (2): The Great Experiment

In the first post in this series, I proposed that Republicans have positioned themselves as adherents of the proposition that America is a Sacred Mission and that Democrats should take the opposite view that America is a Great Experiment. Responses to this thought suggest that we need to think a bit more about what labeling America “a Great Experiment” means.

Few, if any, of the Founders themselves were under any illusion that the institutions they created by writing the Constitution were divinely revealed and fixed for all time. They were, after all, revolutionaries, who had fought to overthrow another set of institutions still largely grounded in the notion that kings rule by divine right.

As James MacGregor Burns explains,

They conceived of themselves as engaged in a grand ‘experiment’—a word they often used—the outcome of which would shape their nation’s destiny, and hence their own and their posterity’s, for decades to come. They saw themselves—in a word they would never have used [it wouldn’t be coined for another century]—as pragmatists, as men thinking their way through a thicket of problems, in pursuit of that goal.

The nation had won its liberty, but the victory had not resulted in more prosperity, security or equality for its citizens. Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts showed how close the new nation was to falling apart. As they worked on the Constitution, struggling to address these and other problems, the Founders found small comfort in the classics of political thought they read.

Glumly they recalled the apparent lessons of history: that republics had disintegrated as they descended the fateful road marked by steps leading from LIBERTY TO DISORDER TO ANARCHY TO POPULAR DESPOTISM and finally to TYRANNY.

The systems of checks and balances they devised in the new Constitution was not designed to ensure that the body politic would be free from conflict—no such thing is possible—but, instead, to ensure that equally damaging tendencies to monarchy, oligarchy and mob rule would, if all went well, be set against each other in a manner that would keep the damage under control, ensuring civil order and creating an environment conducive to economic growth. No party or special interest would be able to impose its unimpeded will. There was, the Founders believed, no other way to preserve the liberty to which, as revolutionaries, they had pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

posted by John 1:00 AM

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Score One for Human Rights

The AP reports that all four men who were arrested on their return to Britain from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay were released Wednesday without charge. A fifth man had not been arrested when the group arrived at Northolt Royal Air Force Base Tuesday, and he was freed within hours.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:41 PM

By their own words ye shall know them

If you want to know who America's real enemies are, just listen to their own words. Compilation courtesy of William Rivers Pitt at truthout.com.

And don't forget, do pass this along to all of your independent and sane Republican friends. John McCreery

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:25 PM

Homeland Security

Did you hear the one about the three guys from a company that developed a way to collect and analyze real-time security data throughout the U.S. economy who went for a high-level meeting at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and found the place so disorganized that they had to do their pretty darn secret presentation in a hallway while some guy--probably named Mohammed--ran a vacuum sweeper in the background? It's good to know we take this stuff seriously.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:56 PM

Chicken Little Only Has to be Right Once

Don't you hate it on days when William Safire makes sense?

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:42 PM

Dear Diary...

Am I a sellout? Remember that mad as hell white male who started this blog a little more than a year ago? What happened to that guy? He used to get out of bed in the morning--after a sleepless night spent seething about Shrub Bush and his idiotic obsession with Iraq or his tax cuts for the country club set or his calculated inability to distinguish a stem cell from a baby--stumble to the computer and fire off 300-400 nasty words in five minutes.

And when he thought about the Democrats and how they had rolled over and played dead while Shrub and his merry band of criminals ran roughshod over every vestige of truth, justice and the American way for nearly two years, he typed even faster. The mid-term election of 2002 was as pathetic a performance by a group of scared bunnies pretending to be a political party as you're ever likely to see.

Then came Howard Dean, a life raft on the sea of triangulation. Suddenly, there was a voice that spoke for the millions of people who were outraged by the Bush administration's manipulation of 9/11 to boost its crude, divisive agenda. True, Dean has certain issues of...likeability, but he had courage and, virtually alone in the face of the Tom Daschle/Al From appeasement, he was determined to stand for something more than "the Republicans are going to steal your social security."

I determined then and there that I would NEVER vote for a Democrat who voted for the war or for Shrub's second round of tax cuts. NEVER.

Little by little, as Dean's popularity and fundraising ability grew, the other candidates began to steal his positions. By the time we got to Iowa, John Kerry sounded a lot like the Howard Dean of nearly a year earlier. And he was taller and a Viet Nam vet. The rest is pre-history.

I read the polls and I have to admit I'm not as angry these days. Not that the administration isn't still doing terrible things but now those things are being challenged. Shrub is not handling the pressure well. Because of Bill Clinton's zipper, he got a free ride in 2000. This time is shaping up differently.

I now think I may have been hasty with that NEVER thing. In fact, if you want to hear something truly disgusting, I'm starting to think that that orange-haired party hack Dick Gephardt would the best choice for vice president. He could probably turn Missouri and Ohio blue.

Funny, isn't it how the very real possibility of victory turns principle into expediency? In this case, however, I really do believe the ends justify the means.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:00 AM

Headless Roland Still Wanderin'

A lot of people in the U.S. and South Africa may breathe a sigh of relief if Zimbabwe goes ahead with its threat to execute 64 "mercenaries" found hiding in a cargo plane in Harare over the weekend.

Check out Josh Marshall's post today.

posted by Evelyn 8:55 AM

Non-stonewall stonewall

“He’s going to answer all the questions they want to raise,” said the mouthpiece to the press. In one hour, in private, to two hand-picked leaders of a ten member committee that the White House itself set up as a containment PR operation and tried to pack from the start.

Fewer members sitting in on the session means less chance of any leaks. Mecca and Joe Coral ought to take action on how much beyond an hour the “interview” will go, whether or not the “interview” questions must be vetted in advance by a representative of the White House, and if everyone on the ten member committee had an opportunity to propose questions for the president.

John Kerry ought to keep jabbing hard at Shrubby and Karl and their mother-may-I take three steps forward political charade.

posted by Groom 4:58 AM

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Doing The Right Thing

About half the country -- 51 percent -- favors allowing gay couples to form civil unions with the same basic legal rights as married couples, up 6 percentage points in less than a month, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. A slightly larger majority also rejected amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriages in favor of allowing states to make their own laws, an increase of 8 percentage points in recent weeks.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:36 PM

Save That Mattress

The stock market indexes had these values on Friday, January 19, 2001, the day before George W. Bush was inaugurated:

Dow-Jones: 10587.59
Nasdaq: 2770.38
S&P 1342.54

Today, at market close, the indexes stand at:

Dow-Jones: 10456.96
Nasdaq: 1995.16
S&P 1140.57

That's a decline of only about 1% for the Dow-Jones, but 28% for the Nasdaq and 15% for the S&P.

Bush's tax cuts were supposed to be good for investors. The tax cut on dividends was going to usher in the Second Coming of the stock market, which would usher in an era of untold bounty the likes of which we had never seen before.

But the stock market indexes are, so far, another Bush-era statistic heading south, or still hanging around the Greyhound station.

Please don't let my mattress burn before January 2005. Vicki Meagher

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:01 PM

Double Blow: A Good Day In Seattle

It's been a good 24 hours out here. Local gay couples were denied marriage licenses, after which they promptly turned around and sued King County commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Ron Sims for violating their civil rights. Sims, though odious in some respects, has made plain on numerous occasions his contempt for Washington's DOMA lookalike. The case will go to trial quickly and a decision reached before summer; considering the power and reach of the equal protection articles in the state constitution, chances are good that the law will be thrown out.

As a followup, the state House gave approval to the Senate-approved "Cajun" primary system, which will now go to Governor Gary Locke for his signature. Though he has said he does not approve of the idea, he has not promised to veto it.

So what's so special about the Cajun system? Unsurprisingly, it copies the system in Louisiana: basically, in any primary election, for president, governor, or whatever, the top two vote-getters in the primary both advance to the general election regardless of party. This means that if two Republicans come in first and second in the primary, the election will be contested between those two Republicans. It is easy to see why partisans on both sides fought the measure; by losing a guaranteed spot in any election, the power of a political party to compel voters to select its preferred candidate is all but abolished. Third-party and independent candidates need no longer face an uphill battle against an entrenched two-party race; in open races that draw as many as twenty candidates, finishing first or second is much more achievable than running alone. The result should be more independent candidates and the compulsion to form broad coalitions among disparate groups to achieve electoral victory. Political parties will become just another special interest group, with money and power of course, but not an unbreakable grip on elections.

Washington warned the country in his farewell address about the dangers of faction, and implored Americans to avoid them. Sadly, without the force of his example, they sprang up almost immediately after his death and have throttled independent thought in this country for over 200 years. With measures like the Cajun primary, it may be possible to reclaim something that should never have been taken away from the people: the right to choose their own candidates and elected officials.

posted by Ben 1:07 PM

Explaining Things to Ralphie

As a fellow dweller in the New Jersey suburbs, I relished the closing shot last Sunday of Tony Soprano in his back yard with an assault rifle doing night duty by the pool to protect Carmela and Anthony Junior from an errant bear. While less dangerous, the deer that roam our yard have eaten so much expensive landscaping that I have yearned for Tony's muscle to take care of the problem.

But I think I will guard my favor equity with the mob for a more useful purpose. A new poll in the Washington Post finds that Nader now commands about 3% of the vote nationally and that the Nader vote is coming at Kerry's expense. As Charlie Cook points out in today's The New York Times, it won't take many Nader votes in key states like New Hampshire and Florida to keep Kerry from winning.

posted by Evelyn 12:07 PM