Forum Post: Register to Vote Your Conscience - Occupy the Vote
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 4, 2011, 12:04 p.m. EST by ArgleBargle
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This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Whatever our political affiliation may be, I believe it is time we should begin to pay close attention to the many efforts to disenfranchise poor, old and young voters. The protests are important, but if we are to save this country from the corruption of moneyed interests, we should be encouraging students to get State IDs, register to vote, and organize transportation to the polls as needed. We can just occupy, and get nowhere, or we can occupy and vote, and make a difference. If next November leaves us with a corrupt plutocrat in office, we will have the governance we deserve.
The first lesson is this: take it from me, every vote counts.
Al Gore
So why the fuck did Gore and the Democrats throw the race away?
Why did four times as many Democrats in Florida vote for Bush than all of the Florida voters who voted for Nader?
Why didn't Gore and the Democrats try to reconcile the differences that the left Independent Nader and the left Green Party had with the Democrats to create a winning coalition?
Gore and the Democrats were too fuckin stupid to win!
Bush in his selfish power grab out lawyered Gore. I remember it well! The US supreme court stacked with conservatives gave the presidency to Bush by a 5-4 decision right down party lines.
That could happen only because millions of Democrats voted for Bush and presumably like-minded leftists and liberals were alienated by the right-leaning Democratic party. Combined these two factors gave Bush a winning margin to take into court. Had Gore and the Democrats worked to get these voters behind them instead of arrogantly thumbing their noses at these millions of voters Bush would not have had the slim winning margin that allowed the SC to goose-step on our democracy.
Bush didn't win the race, Gore and the Democrats threw the race.
The vote to stop the count was 7-2.
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Whatever our political affiliation may be, I believe it is time we should begin to pay close attention to the many efforts to disenfranchise poor, old and young voters. The protests are important, but if we are to save this country from the corruption of moneyed interests, we should be encouraging students to get State IDs, register to vote, and organize transportation to the polls as needed. We can just occupy, and get nowhere, or we can occupy and vote, and make a difference. If next November leaves us with a corrupt plutocrat in office, we will have the governance we deserve.
Whatever our political affiliation may be, I believe it is time we should begin to pay close attention to the many efforts to disenfranchise poor, old and young voters. The protests are important, but if we are to save this country from the corruption of moneyed interests, we should be encouraging students to get State IDs, register to vote, and organize transportation to the polls as needed. We can just occupy, and get nowhere, or we can occupy and vote, and make a difference. If next November leaves us with a corrupt plutocrat in office, we will have the governance we deserve.
Very good idea.In the meantime we should also start thinking about organize our own political party (what about Global Revolution Party?) and run our own people for office. We want change isn't it? Well,change will only come if we make it happen ourselves. We cannot thrust anymore our corrupt and evil politicians who have passed one law after another to oppress us all. Politicians can go to hell, Republicans and Democrats!
I'm with you on this.
Before registering or voting, you might want to read this:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/occupy-san-diego-abandons-direct-democracy
The real question is if you prefer government to make your decisions for you, or if you feel competent to make your own decisions:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/occupy-san-diego-abandons-direct-democracy/#comment-464543
There are indeed efforts to disenfranchise people. But the 1% who finance those efforts to make people think that their votes are valuable, spend only a few million in chump change at that ploy, while spending BILLIONS of dollars getting out the vote to legitimize their rule.
This is not a republic. In a republic the people exercise their will through their elected representatives. This is a tyranny where the people can petition their tyrants, but cannot exercise their will through them.
90% of public input to Congress and the President opposed the bank bailouts, but the bailouts went through anyway because our government doesn't allow public opinion to influence policy decisions.
Next November will leave you with corrupt plutocrats in office because that's what you're voting for, so that is what you deserve. But it isn't what I deserve because I don't vote for tyranny--I prefer direct democracy. You are the one voting to give government the power and authority to bash my head in for peaceful protests. I don't appreciate that.
In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote, but the Supreme Court ruled that the votes didn't have to be counted and installed Bush. Are you too young to remember that?
Nobody with a conscience would vote in elections that delegate to government the power to wage wars of aggression and destroy the planet for profit. And nobody with any common sense would vote in elections where their votes don't even have to be counted.
Since our government is a corrupt plutocracy, no matter how people vote or who they vote for, there can only be corrupt plutocrats in office.
"In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote, but the Supreme Court ruled that the votes didn't have to be counted and installed Bush. Are you too young to remember that?"
You misinterpreted that.
The election doesn't go to the popular vote. It goes to who gets the most electoral votes. In Florida, the vote was extremely close. First they declared in for Gore, an hour later it changed it to Bush(they always make that call before all votes are counted based on probability). Instead of completing a recount, they handed the decision over to the Florida Supreme Court before all the votes were counted. Regardless of this, he won the popular vote.
Regardless of what happened in Florida, the Supreme Court found that there was no Constitutional right that the popular vote be counted.
That means that in any subsequent elections, should a reformist candidate get 100% of the vote, the Supreme Court can decide that the popular vote not be counted, the Electoral vote be prevented, and install whoever they wish.
The Supreme Court has, as its name implies, supreme power. Power is not in the hands of the people or in the hands of Congress or the President (although Presidents can appoint Supreme Court justices), but in the hands of an unelected Supreme Court. The Supreme Court alone can interpret the Constitution and decide whether or not to count the votes, whether or not to bestow or take away human and civil rights, etc.
The other branches can make suggestions, but the Supreme Court has the final say. If Congress tries to legislate around a Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court can, without reason or precedent, strike that legislation down as unconstitutional, and no matter how irrational or absurd their decision, there is no appeal from a Supreme Court ruling because they have supreme power.
In any democratic form of government, whether a democracy or a republic, supreme power, according to the dictionary definition of democracy, would be vested in the hands of the people instead of in the hands of a supreme deity, supreme monarch, supreme dictator, supreme tyrant, supreme president, supreme legislature, or supreme court.
When supreme power over government is not vested in the hands of the people, but is vested in some other entity, at least according to the dictionary, that government is neither a democracy nor a republic. It is a tyranny. It can be a benevolent tyranny or a malevolent tyranny, but it is still a tyranny.
A slave is human property of their owner. Their owner can be cruel or kind, but the slave is still a slave. US voters would prefer a benevolent tyranny to a malevolent tyranny, but they are not opposed to our government's tyranny because they have been taught to believe that it is a democracy or a republic. They want their owner to be kinder and gentler, but they fear and do not want freedom because they don't know how they could survive in a free society.
I don't know how I could survive in a free society either, but I still prefer freedom to slavery. That's why everyone at Occupy San Diego and on this forum thinks I'm a fool. In a sense they're correct, as my preference for freedom over slavery could cost me my life if I were to succeed. That's a bargain I'm willing to make, but it will never happen because it would require that a majority felt the same way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore
It's more complicated than that.
I'm not defending Bush and was incredibly depressed for months after. But I don't believe you're representing it accurately.
I don't think that it's quite that simple; remember that the Supreme Court rules by moral authority and precedent alone; they don't have any actual means of enforcing their rulings. Generally speaking they can get away with things like Citizens United where the issue is brought before them in a particular manner and they choose to issue an unusually broad ruling, but nobody's too happy. Blatant disregard of the spirit of the Constitution, however, would be far less likely to work and the resulting backlash could effectively ruin the credibility of the courts. Once the courts have no credibility, they can sit on their benches and write as many opinions as they want, and without an enforcement mechanism those opinions will have about as great a role in shaping policy as bad fanfiction.
There was no precedent whatsoever for the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v Gore 2000, and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent:
"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
The decision was blatant disregard of the spirit of the Constitution and resulted in ruining the credibility of the courts.
But since people still vote, whether or not their votes are counted or are meaningful, the government remains in power and the Supreme Court still reigns supreme.
As for enforcement, the Supreme Court doesn't need to have enforcement power, as the President and Congress will spend trillions of dollars on Homeland Security, whenever necessary to suppress civil dissent and enforce Supreme Court decisions.
Our government is the tool of the 1%, was created by the Framers of the Constitution, the 1% of their time, to ensure that those who owned the country (the 1%) would always run the country. Power was vested in the government, not in the hands of the people, because it is easy for the 1% to control a representative government, but it would be impossible for them to control an empowered populace.
Here's a brief history of our Constitution:
http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1085
39 rich white slaveholders wrote the Constitution in such a way as to betray the principles for which our founders shed their blood. It was and remains a counterrevolutionary document.
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And who will they vote for?
Whoever is running against signers of the Grover Norquist misnamed "Taxpayer Protections Pledge" that protects the super rich from the slightest increase in taxes. They are in both parties.
If we could break a big hole in this lobbyist's power, that would be a significant start.
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Consider Rep Deutch if you live in Florida.
See http://occupywallst.org/forum/rep-deutch-introduces-constitutional-amendment-to-/
Forget it. Voting is not the way. Protesting is. We don't care who the government is, as long as they jail the banksters - all of these rotten criminals. We will keep protesting until they do!!
Boycotting the vote makes as much sense as boycotting the GA..
If you don't participate, you have no right to complain about the outcome.
As originally intended, the GA was a direct democracy. Everyone had a vote and everyone had an equal voice.
Here in San Diego they adopted and frequently use the 90% majority rule. That is not direct democracy. Also, they say that a block should only be used once in a lifetime and then only if the person blocking is willing to walk away.
There's an old criticism of democracy as being two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. It can work, but only if the sheep has a solid, unbreakable block. Not just once, but three times a day every day if necessary, whenever the menu comes up for a vote. Done properly, the wolves, rather than starve, will eventually agree on something other than sheep for dinner. But if the sheep can only block once, that sheep is dinner.
In a direct democracy, everyone's vote is worthwhile. In a majority rule system or in a system where votes don't even have to be counted, voting is a waste of time and can do more harm than good:
http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1189
There doesn't seem to be any limit to how much harm voters will authorize the government to do. The threat of imminent meltdowns from unsafe nuclear power plants, wars of aggression based on lies, torture, assassinations--nothing seems to be disastrous enough to persuade voters that voting to delegate their power to people who, despite empty campaign promises, don't really care about them, is not in their best interests.
The founders of the United States did not participate in the decisions of King George because they weren't allowed to. Despite not being allowed to vote, they submitted a long list of complaints called the Declaration of Independence. You don't have to vote in order to complain.
But if you're given a vote (even a nominal one), and you choose not to exercise it at all, no right to complain.
No right to complain? That is what OWS is about. We don't want the right to complain. We are doing it - right or no right! We are saying to the leaders "stop the monied corruption of our Democracy". If they don't, we protest and get someone in who will do what we want. It is called protest, If they do it, and then go back on their word, then we protest again. And again and again. We will do so until every bankster is in jail.
We need to both protest AND participate. The idea that protesting alone will enact change is nonsense. If you are not voting at all because you choose not to, the politicians have no reason to fear you because you are not a part of their constituency or their potential constituency.
Of course politicians don't fear us. Why should they? We are asking them to jail banksters. Who cares if party A or party B gets in. As long as they jail these criminals, that's OK by the Movement for sure. As mentioned, the vote doesn't matter. If the Movement protests, the politicians will comply. They all move in the same direction from whatever party. You know that. I know that. If the people hated banksters, do you think any Republican or Democrat would speak out for them? Of course not.
They will not arrest bankers out of fear of further protesting. That makes no sense..
Why do you think politicians gave women the right to vote??
Why do you think they voted for the Civil Rights Act, despite it mostly affecting those that couldn't feasibly vote at the time??
Because it ensured them the vote afterwards..
If we make it known that we will all vote in every election(primaries and general) and that politicians that take on our causes will receive our votes while politicians that get in our way will be thrown out, it will work.. It's the only logical conclusion because politicians are 90% concerned with being elected and they will have no other choice but to listen to us.
"They will not arrest bankers out of fear of further protesting. That makes no sense."
Comment: You are correct. That does not make sense. It is what you said, not me. :)
And yet you advocate protesting alone as the solution.. Knowing it won't work. Alright. As long as being voiceless was your goal.
You don't understand the Movement, do you? It is not about someone having a big ego, and getting a whole lot of power. We leave that to politicians. We are protestors who act for the 99%. Protestors right wrongs. If everything is OK, then there will be no protesting. It is happening in Egypt. They protested. They got another government. They didn't like some aspects and now they are protesting again. Isn't that great!
What's going on in Egypt is great.. They're using every outlet available to them to enact change..
Sadly, that's not what you want here. You'd rather limit the movement's potential for no apparent reason. I am the 99%, by the way, and I do understand this movement. In Occupy Philadelphia, most I talked to agreed with me that voting is necessary. In fact, you're the first person I've heard that advocates us boycotting the voting booth.(other than Fox News and New York Post)
I didn't say boycott. What a person votes is personal. The Movement is non political. Some people do want to further their political career through the Movement. Fortunately most people are not like that.
I never said vote for a political candidate or party. I'm saying that we should, in fact, vote whenever it is available to us. Every legal venue of achieving our goals should be exercised. If you're not willing to drive to the nearest voting booth, then it's fair to say your end goal(just YOU, not the movement) is obviously protesting alone and not actually achieving anything
You mean that you will protest until every protester is in jail. Our government doesn't jail banksters. But it did send 21 tons of CS gas to the Egyptian military junta to suppress protests in Tahrir Square the week before the US-sponsored "election" which enabled the junta to not only remain in power, but to claim to be a democratically elected government.
A government that can give 21 tons of CS gas to a brutal dictatorship in a single week, has enough CS gas stockpiled to knock out every protester in the world, not just in the US.
Unless people stop voting to legitimize corrupt governments like ours, such governments can continue not only to suppress civil dissent, but to claim that they are doing the will of the voters by suppressing civil dissent.
Not yet it doesn't jail banksters. That is why we have to keep protesting until they do. Simon Wiesenthal got his register of War Criminals going. We can do the same with a register of banksters. We need to name and shame them all - get them all put in jail. This means every crook who put a widow out of her home, caused someone to commit suicide, or lost money for a pension fund. Let's get them! Bang these criminal banksters up in jail where they belong.
Well said, and simple. Yet some will never get it! LoL
As long as half the country continues to vote to legitimize and authorize the current government, we can protest all we want but the government is not going to jail its big donors.
Which is all the more reason to get out and vote because half the country will all ways get out and vote, thats one of the reasons we are in this mess to begin with. The other half meanwhile was apathetic to voting allowing extreme right wing policies to be voted in by citizens that did vote and paid attention to issues and united with others with a like mind to push their agendas. You will never get a huge majority to boycott voting and by boycotting voting yourself you are giving in to the corporate system. We can vote our way to victory, it will probably take till 2020 before we manage to complete the changes needed to bring our vision of government to being. But it is not only possible to do this it is the only way we can be seen as legitimate in the eyes of those who do not agree with us. As much as I would like to change everything to meet our vision, other citizen view points must be taken into consideration.
The half the country that votes is almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans (with a few independent and 3rd party voters).
That's why the 1% funds both major parties in almost equal amounts, so that no matter who wins, the 1% still control the agenda.
However people vote, they end up with the 1% agenda. The only choice voters have is if they'd rather have a Democrat or a Republican promoting the 1% agenda, a black or a white, a male or a female, etc. The agenda remains the same, only the puppets change, and the people have no vote on the agenda, only a nonbinding referendum on which puppet they'd prefer.
As for being seen as legitimate in the eyes of the 1% and the eyes of those who, whether they understand what they'd doing or are just too apathetic to do their homework and find out what they're voting for, vote for the 1% agenda, I'd rather not. If I were to appear legitimate in their eyes, my conscience wouldn't let me live with myself.
It is those who vote who are giving in to the corporate system, but they are too apathetic to bother to find out what their vote is actually doing.
The idea is to find and elect people who do the who do the peoples work. Your whole method of protest by not voting plays right into their hands. The problem is the candidates we are forced to chose from are selected by the 1% so we are screwed by both parties. But as I said if we seek out and nominate people who will do the peoples work, and start from locally and go up through the levels of government we win. But your free to do as you please but its exactly what the 1% want you to do.
No the idea is to allow the people who do the work to make the decisions. It isn't who people vote for, but that the Constitution vested power in "representatives" rather than in the hands of the people.
Whenever the cops come to an Occupy site, they look for the leaders. If they can take out the leaders they can destroy the movement. Since Occupy is a leaderless movement, there are no leaders.
In the plutocracy established by the Constitution, there are leaders, elected by the people, so it is easy to co-opt, buy, or take them out if they're not obedient to the 1%.
Leaders, no matter how well-meaning, cannot do the people's work. Ten brick-layers can elect a leader, but that leader cannot do the work of ten brick-layers.
Only if those who actually do the work have power, instead of being forced to elect leaders, will power be vested in the people (the dictionary definition of a democratic form of government) instead of in their leaders. A tyranny, where a few have power over all, can be benevolent or malevolent, but it is still a tyranny.
Voting in hopes of a more benevolent tyranny will never establish a democracy.
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