We Steal Elections, don’t we?: A brief history of the right wing assault on democracy
By Danny Weil on November 3, 2013 11:15 pm / 5 comments
In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations are people and money is speech, opening the flood gates for corporations and plutocrats to spend unlimited amounts of outside money to influence elections and threaten politicians.
An immediate result was millionaire Art Pope spending millions to engineer the Republican take over of the North Carolina legislature in 2010, and then get himself appointed budget director for the state in 2013.
The follow up to Citizens’s United is McCutcheon v FEC, where the Supreme Court will consider removing campaign contribution limits as unconstitutional restrictions on free speech.
Both of these cases have been brought by the same cast of characters who have been promoting voter role purges and voter ID laws to disenfranchise college students, the elderly and minorities revealing a strategy by the right wing to undermine the democratic process and steal elections.
In addition to voter ID laws voter role purges, and billions in outside money, the right wing assault on democracy involves gerrymandering voting districts. On Oct 10, 2013 the NY Times reported ;
After the 2010 elections, the Chamber and other business interests funneled millions of dollars into Republican redistricting efforts around the country, helping draw overwhelmingly safe Republican districts whose occupants — many among the most conservative House members — are now far less vulnerable to challenges from more moderate Republicans” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html?hp&_r=0).
Racial incitement has also been a trusted tool of the right wing. Reagan had his welfare queens, Pappy Bush had Willy Horton, and The “call me” ad was used against Harold Ford Jr.
Presidential elections have been a key target in the right wing theft of elections. This includes Nixon’s break in at the Watergate, Reagan’s 1980 arms for hostages deal with Iran, and the Supreme Court deciding the 2000 election in favor of Bush.
The Supreme Court has played a key role in the right wing theft of elections . This includes Chief Justice Rehnquist overseeing the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton, Rehnquist deciding the 2000 election in favor of Bush, 2010’s Citizens United ruling, and the 2013 ruling overturning part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act .
Another strategy of the right wing to steal elections may be electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail. Many of these companies have ties to conservative groups and it has been postulated that their software can be tampered with. http://www.globalresearch.ca/electronic-voting-machines-designed-to-steal-elections/5310194
It has been reported that the voting machine of Diebold, the largest maker of electronic voting machines, can be hacked.http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/. And it was recently reported that Diebold was criminally charged with bribing foreign officials and falsifying documents.http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/10/diebold_charged_with_bribing_o.html
That Diebold, the company relied upon to provide electronic voting machines, was criminally charged with falsifying documents should have been major news, but not a mention of it was made in the corporate owned media.
Taken together, millions in outside spending, voter ID laws, voter role purges, gerrymandering electoral districts, Surpeme Court meddling, and electronic voting machines represents an assault on the democratic process and the theft of elections. Central to the right wing strategy is racial incitement and discrimination.
Plutocrats and the so called business and government elites have been asset stripping the nation, pillaging the government treasury, and cutting the social safety net in an effort to maintain their wealth, power and privilege. This includes the recent $5 billion cut to the SNAP program.
The only way tese plutocrats and the so called elites can maintain a grip on power is to repress dissent, disenfranchise voters , incite racists and rig elections. This includes the plutocrats in the US Congress who have criminalized protests on Federal property, legalized the indefinite detention of Americans and want to codify the NSA’s mass surveillance of Americans’ phone records.
And as long as it takes millions to get elected, we will continue to have a Congress comprised of plutocrats and corporate friendly candidates who have little concern for democracy or civil liberties. In many ways, the US has come to resemble Steig Larsson’s depiction of Sweden in the trilogy, “ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. According to a review of the book on the DC Bar’s website:
Larsson’s message is that our leaders promise peace and prosperity, but deliver endless war and economic disaster. They talk of family values, but are constantly caught in sex scandals and financial crimes. They preach democracy, but make a mockery of the law to advance their own interests. Larsson’s fictional world is populated with corporate executives, government officials, policemen, and judges who are rotten to the core.
Conditions now are not unlike those which preceded the French Revolution, with the 1% assuming the role of the French nobility. This is a history lesson that should not be lost on the plutocrats and so called elites: the French revolution did not end very well for the French nobility.
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