One Man, One Vote Is Now an Illusion

The New York Times and many other news outlets have just reported that Elon Musk spent over $250 million supporting Donald Trump's campaign for president.  The combined campaigns raised nearly $4.7 billion dollars.  The amount of money is obscene.

This is a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the 2010 Citizen's United decision by the Supreme Court, which found that corporations and other organizations were citizens and so entitled under the free speech amendment to support political candidates, and that the amount of money they spent in support of a candidate, as long as such spending was not coordinated with the campaign, could not be limited.

This decision has been criticized on various levels, mostly as a blow to democracy because of the increased influence on campaigns by corporations and wealthy donors.  And that is true.  But from a legal standpoint, what's wrong with that? This question has not, to my knowledge, been addressed.

What wrong is that it makes the Supreme Court rule of "one man, one vote" meaningless, an illusion.  What is this rule?  It holds that in drawing congressional districts, all citizens in a state should have roughly equal representation.  

Why is that of crucial importance?  Because ours is a representative democracy and in the House of Representatives, as opposed to the Senate, each person's vote should have an equal value.  Each person should have an equal voice as to the direction of our country.

But what if each person's voice is not in an important sense his own?  What if huge amounts of money are spent to influence his vote, if he is bombarded with advertising to make him vote for one candidate or the other?  The outcome of the election is still based on those votes, but how people vote is greatly influenced by the advertising and emotions that are put in play.

And this is not the marketplace of ideas envisioned by the 1st Amendment.  This is biased marketing that appeals to the emotions, not the mind. Even if "alternative facts" were not part of that advertising, it still would be an appeal to emotion rather than rational thought.

A democracy based on emotion rather than rational thought is a democracy in form only.  A democracy depends on reasoned debate, both by the elected representatives and by the public.  Because reasoned debate is a search for the truth.  Whereas emotional debate doesn't get past the emotions; it is not about the search for truth.  And a democracy based on emotion is likely to attract a demagogue as leader and be in danger of slipping into an autocratic state.  Witness the ascendence of Donald Trump.

There is only one way to reverse the impact of Citizen's United.  Adopting Federal financing of elections wouldn't work because the Court's holding would prohibit legislation that sought to limit donations that were not coordinated with a campaign.  The only possibility left would be a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court's decision.  And that is a process that is unlikely to succeed, certainly in our current polarized state. 

So until the Court once again has a liberal majority, or at least a neutral conservative majority, which could be persuaded to overrule Citizen's United, we are stuck with elections that are a contest of mega-donors and often appeal to the darkest forces within us.

A Troubled Republic On This July 4th

As we celebrate this July 4^th, the state of our republic is troubled. Two core principles of American democracy are under attack … the role of government and the democratic process. And the attack is cynically being waged under the banner of protecting our system and our rights from the power of government.

As we all know, the Declaration of Independence’s most famous line is, “All men are created equal,” and that they have “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Less commonly known are the words that follow … “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” In other words, the role of government is to act in a way so as to secure the rights of the people to equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Both of these thoughts were truly revolutionary in a world where governments were in the hands of and benefited solely those with power and wealth. This new view of the role of government and the equality of all people was the cornerstone of the American republic, despite the fact that it would take almost a century for African-Americans to become legally equal and another 50 years for women.

Over the course of the last century, after suffrage was made universal and all citizens were finally deemed to have the rights embodied in the Declaration, the role of government in securing those unalienable rights for all evolved of necessity to helping the less fortunate through a variety of government programs.  Prominent among them have been universal education, Social Security, labor laws, government welfare, and Medicare/Medicaid.

Without these programs, government recognized that the legal equality of all people was meaningless. People needed to be given real equal opportunity to pursue their rights. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed on this basic principle, but would of course regularly disagree on the particulars of government programs to secure that equality.

With regards to the process of our democracy since universal suffrage, it can best be summarized by the dictum, “One man, one vote.” This means that every citizen of voting age should be able to vote and that each person’s vote should count the same.

Viewed in this light, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United makes a farce of our democratic process by caring only for form, not substance. If those with wealth and power have the ability through television advertising to in effect control an election because of the disproportionate influence of such advertising, then those with wealth and power have achieved their aims through the back door.  Who votes is of little consequence if the real power lies elsewhere.

Only if candidates are on an equal or relatively equal financial footing can there be the fair contest of ideas that is essential to our democracy and to the efficacy of freedom of speech.

The health of our economy and the business community is of vital importance to the health of our country and the welfare of its citizens. But we have long since passed the day when one would say, “What’s good for General Motors, is good for the country.” The same criticism holds true for the radical pro-business, anti-government policies of the Koch brothers, the Tea Party, and their Republican allies. Our democracy depends on a balance between private rights, the public good, and government.

We are as Lincoln said, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Let us not pervert that heritage by making our system a government “of big business, by big business, and for big business.” Let us learn from the past, not return to it.