Conscious Choice: Whither Democracy in America?

July 1996

Whither Democracy in America?

by Aliess M. Brady

Election Day, November 5, 1996. Fifty-one percent of Americans manage to get to their polling places to cast a vote. Will it be a winning vote, a losing vote, or a wasted vote? With only two major presidential candidates (who can conceivably win) and their parties to choose from, it is quite likely the lack of meaningful choice which keeps so many disgruntled voters away.

So, what’s up with democracy in America? Where have all the flowers of freedom and choice gone? Our Constitution and its Amendments grant us the right to vote, but where are the rights of candidacy plainly written? What good is the right to vote without truly representative candidates to vote for? And if the choice continues to be so miserably that of the lesser of two evils, how can we the people ensure greater choice at the polls?

This is precisely the subject of many cases heard by the Supreme Court since 1970 — namely, ballot access law and the unfair burden it places on the freedom of political association. The Supreme Court has held in various opinions and cases cited below, that voters can define their preferences for representation only through candidates or parties or both. "A voter hopes to find on the ballot a candidate who comes near to reflecting his policy preferences on contemporary issues" (Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. lines 709 & 716, 1974). "The right to vote is‘heavily burdened’ if that vote may be cast only for major-party candidates at a time when other candidates are clamoring for a position on the ballot" (Anderson at line 787, citing Lubin at line 716). "... the right to form a party for the advancement of political goals means little if a party can be kept off the election ballot and thus denied an equal opportunity to win votes" (Lubin v. Panish, Williams at line 31).

In 1992, the number of signatures required to get on the ballot for President in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia were:
• New Party: 718,881
• Democrat: 25,500
• Republican: 49,250

U.S. Senate:
• New Party: 1,049,735
• Democrat or Republican: around 48,000

U.S. House (in 1994):
• New Party: 1,593,763
• Democrat or Republican: around 139,000

All Federal, State, and County Partisan Offices (in 1994):
• New Party: 4,454,579
• Democrat or Republican: around 882,000

Though it cannot be neatly argued that restrictive ballot access is the reason behind the failure of third parties or substantive change to capture a majority of the electorate in this century, it helps to illumine the hollow withering of democracy in what often seems a nearly meaningless political process.

Restricted access to the ballot was not always the case. Up until the late 19th century, each political party was responsible for printing its own ballots. Individual states were only responsible for enforcing a fair count. Political parties were private associations and unregulated as such. Free to organize and function without government supervision, an epidemic of fraud and bribery in intra-party elections erupted during the post-Civil War period. Such a break-down in the responsibility and respect required by freedom became an open invitation for the states to step in.

Legislative intrusion took the form of the Australian ballot and the institutionalization of the primary election as we know it today. Once the state took control of printing the ballots, the need for criteria to determine who should be listed on the ballot arose — along with all of the restrictive measures determined by administrative fancy. "Thus the ostensibly neutral state’s control over printing ballots became a crucial wedge to influence government control over party politics." Party Regulation at 266.

Two ways to determine party viability and access to the ballot quickly arose: those who had earned some measure of electoral success in the most recent election and those who could muster sufficient voter signatures to clearly demonstrate that the party and candidate in question deserved a place on the ballot. The early twentieth century saw a wide variety of political parties active in the election process, but such diversity of opinion and preference soon led to states’ debates over voter confusion and administrative efficiency. Efficiency ruled.

As Hitler rose to power in the 1930s and Stalin strangled Communism, democratic freedom in the United States took a downturn. The next major bout of legislative reform came in the guise of candidate loyalty oaths and bans against parties which advocated the overthrow of the government, including explicit proscriptions against any Communist party presence on the ballot. Individual state leadership and preference led to extensive signature requirements, effective roadblocks to keeping the "wrong" sort of party off the ballot.

To this day a hodge-podge of ballot requirements exists from state to state, eliminating any hope of an even playing field for new parties’ candidates or new political perspectives gaining a foothold in national consciousness. Debate in Supreme Court chambers over the constitutionality of excessive state limitations center around these criteria: promoting political stability, preventing ballot overcrowding, protecting the integrity of a two-party system, preventing party raiding by voters of another party, preventing the splintering of political parties and unrestrained factionalism, protecting the reliability and integrity of the election process, prohibiting candidacies prompted by short-range political goals, pique or personal quarrel, avoiding voter confusion, preventing fraud, and perhaps least of all, providing a fair and non-discriminatory opportunity for access to the ballot by all candidates and political parties.

Though each of these points is pertinent to a discussion of ballot access, one has to wonder just how childish and incompetent American political leaders deem the average voter to be and how little they trust the process by which they make their living. While it’s true that the nation has grown tremendously since its inception in the 18th century and that larger numbers of people and political associations will quite likely preclude simple and effective presidential politics, does that mean we should go the way of China and the former Soviet Union and vote for order over freedom of choice and lively political debate? Have we grown so large that we would be better served by stronger local government and a looser federation of states? Or do we simply need to revisit the predominately two-party system?

Debate and the desultory heat of presidential politics already rages in Russia now as voters lean from a desire for the familiarity of order under "communism" and a genuine hope for a better life. With eleven candidates on the ballot, Michail Gorbachev (whom voters blame for the entire mess of giving them such hard choices) among them, the race has come down to a choice between hard-line communist Gennadi Zyuganov and "democrat" Boris Yeltsin.

Though some voters dismiss Yeltsin’s scare tactics of a return to repression and the gulag under Zyuganov, realizing it’s still a race between two old communists, others genuinely fear the outcome. Communism or fledgling democracy and freedom? Many philosophers and political scientists have argued that the remote vastness of Russian geography has lent itself to totalitarian rule, making any tendency toward a representative democratic process unsustainable.

The physical and cultural distances between republics have made it exceedingly difficult for grass-roots politics or coalitions to remain intact, if they manage to form at all. This may be changing, however, as communication technology continues to sweep the industrialized world.

A taxi-driver in Yaroslavl insightfully concedes that in Russia, people have no concept of freedom. "They see freedom as license. They don’t realize that freedom requires self-discipline. They are afraid that freedom leads to anarchy. They view it as the ability, if one can, to lord it over those weaker than they are," reports Time magazine. Is there any difference between this man’s opinion and the reality of freedom’s expression in America? How many people do you know who appreciate the discipline and attention required by the freedoms we could wield but lack the will to enforce at the polls?

There are two motions now gaining ground which are designed to shake up the two-party ballot, namely Fusion and NOTA: None Of The Above. Fusion allows third party members to vote for major partisan candidates with the distinction of having their vote linked to their own party name, such as Citizen’s Alliance for Clem Balanoff, for example. In states where it isn’t banned, fusion allows a third party or political association that is not running a candidate to endorse and/or campaign for a partisan candidate, with the distinction that come election day, their votes, voices and platform are heard. Balanoff would know, for instance that eight percent of his vote came from a politically organized group and which one it was.

NOTA, introduced by Ralph Nader, is not at all popular among legislators for obvious reasons. If the NOTA line is binding and receives a plurality of votes, then it would force a new election with new candidates. Nader argues that "none of the above" does not have to be just an expression of disgust, its mere presence on the ballot would serve to enforce an issues-based campaign in which voter preference, rather than special interest, might again reign supreme.

Bearing in mind that representative democracy is thus far only an aberrant blip in the history of human society and government, dare we treat it so blithely? Given an even playing field and generous third party access to the ballot from state to state across the nation, just how would we vote? Would we adhere to our convictions and vote accordingly or succumb to the zero-sum game of good ol’ American competition, play chicken and swerve toward the guy we think can win?

People say that they’re afraid to vote for a third party candidate because it would take votes away from their second, major party favorite — that voting according to their true preference might backfire and they’d get stuck with the worse of two evils — equaling a wasted vote. But pause for a moment. If you don’t express your true preference with your vote, then you aren’t really counted. No one knows how you really want things to be and then you truly have wasted your vote.

Do we trust ourselves so little? Do we demean what we really feel is right out of fear for what we know is wrong to the point at which we absent ourselves from the process, ensuring that our voices will remain silent and unheard, and then complain that our leaders fail to grasp the direction we want to go in? If we don’t vote according to true preference and conviction, how can a truly representative leadership exist?

Is it any wonder that we’ve been spinning in circles for 30 years while those without qualm or scruple take us in the direction of short-term gain, profit, and laws which protect the corporation and a free marketplace while effectively side-stepping the universal laws of environmental supply and demand and destroying our life support system in the process?

Recall Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which classes of human beings were designed according to the needs of the economy, controlled by biogenetically engineered eggs and sperm, where the populace was pacified with sex, drugs, and other forms of entertainment, and where children were morally conditioned as they slept to accept whatever the State fed them as beatifically right and just.

Forty years ago Huxley revisited his fictional account of this society, drawing parallels to the perils of social conditioning under capitalistic democracy in America, burgeoning population growth busting the seams of earth’s capacity, and the implications of the trend toward big business and big government, saying "The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial — but democracy in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit."

Aliess M. Brady has a Masters in Socialist-Communist Thought/International Politics from George Washington University, 1991, Washington, DC.

Petition signature requirement data were supplied by Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News.

Party Time: an overview of other parties.

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