October 30, 2010

Solidarity 2.0



If you want to live in a country where We The People govern ourselves, all you have to do is start acting like it.

Every two years, there’s some election of some sort. Every two years, the corporate owned media reports the election results as being split between somewhere around 50%.

That’s not true. Because each year, about 60% of the population DOESN’T VOTE.

Mathematically that means that the people who vote only make up around 40% of the population. And since that population of people who actually vote is split nearly 50/50 between two pro-war, pro-corporate parties who don’t give a fuck about you, we are being ruled by the electoral decisions of 21% of the population.

People on the blue side of the 40% of people who vote love to talk about Ralph Nader as being a ‘spoiler candidate.’

With a majority of people not voting, I think we need to start looking in the mirror for who’s REALLY spoiling our elections.

Mathematically, if everybody who didn’t vote in 2000 out of apathy or cynicism had voted for Ralph Nader, Ralph Nader would have been our 43rd president. Not Bush. Not Gore. It wouldn’t have mattered that over a million people were illegally barred from voting due to fictional criminal records. It wouldn’t have mattered that the supreme court decided the election in Bush’s favor when Gore had won the most votes.

The election would have been a landslide for the Green Party, with 60% voting Green, and only 20% voting Republican, and only 20% voting Democrat.

So why doesn’t this happen? We’re told all the time by the Droopy Dogs of left-wing, the cheerleaders for apathy and cyncism, people like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges that we should try “not voting” as a way to protest, or that third parties don’t have a chance of winning because the corporate power over our lives is SO complete, blah blah blah, doom and gloom.

Here’s the truth-- we have the vote. We are the ones who are really in charge, but we either throw away our vote by supporting candidates that don’t support us, or we stay home in protest.

So what’s the real answer? This is my call to arms:

You need to get off the internet, and get into your community. You need to start working to build the third party movement into a force to be contended with. The Green Party is only 10 years old and at a national level is skeletal at best. We need people to organize in their communities, and build third parties like the Green Party up at the local and state level. Poland threw off Communist rule by organizing people all across the country in small local, decentralized groups. It was called the “Solidarity” movement.

We need a “Solidarity 2.0” here in the USA.

In truth, if you want a government where we the people govern ourselves, all you need to do is start acting like it.

VOTE.

Or, if you don’t mind being ruled by the will of 21% of the population, stay home.






1 comment:

  1. fyi

    The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

    Elections wouldn't be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.

    Now 2/3rds of the states and voters are ignored -- 19 of the 22 smallest and medium-small states, and big states like California, Georgia, New York, and Texas. The current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states, and not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution, ensure that the candidates do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Voter turnout in the "battleground" states has been 67%, while turnout in the "spectator" states was 61%. Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

    The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

    The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president.

    In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado-- 68%, Iowa --75%, Michigan-- 73%, Missouri-- 70%, New Hampshire-- 69%, Nevada-- 72%, New Mexico-- 76%, North Carolina-- 74%, Ohio-- 70%, Pennsylvania -- 78%, Virginia -- 74%, and Wisconsin -- 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska -- 70%, DC -- 76%, Delaware --75%, Maine -- 77%, Nebraska -- 74%, New Hampshire --69%, Nevada -- 72%, New Mexico -- 76%, Rhode Island -- 74%, and Vermont -- 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas --80%, Kentucky -- 80%, Mississippi --77%, Missouri -- 70%, North Carolina -- 74%, and Virginia -- 74%; and in other states polled: California -- 70%, Connecticut -- 74% , Massachusetts -- 73%, Minnesota -- 75%, New York -- 79%, Washington -- 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.

    The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District of Columbia (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These seven states possess 76 electoral votes -- 28% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

    See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

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