PHOTO/JOSEPH SOHM
SAN JOSE, CA — Electoral politics is one path the 99% can use to achieve economic and social justice. However, the 1% created forces and rules that make it difficult for the 99% to exercise power through elections.
The Bernie Sanders campaign illustrated how even the exceptional enthusiasm, resources, and energy of dedicated people fighting for a bold, righteous agenda can be thwarted by the ruling class’s law and practices. For example:
As soon as the US Supreme Court gravely weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act in their 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, 21 states created measures making it more difficult to vote, measures like voter ID laws that targeted youth, elderly, poor, and minority populations.
State and local election officials have the power to purge rolls of voters likely to support candidates and measures for economic and social justice. Laws that prohibit voting by the incarcerated and felons who have served their time in prison is one example. The 122,454 voters in Bernie Sanders’ native Brooklyn, NY, who found on primary election day, that they had been suddenly removed from the rolls, even though many had voted for years, is another.
Voting officials can arbitrarily limit the number of voting locations or machines in certain areas. Such limitation can suppress the vote of certain communities. During the 2016 Arizona primary, there were only 60 voting locations in the heavily Democratic and Latino Maricopa County (greater Phoenix) for two million registered voters. No wonder there were long lines of hundreds of voters waiting for hours. Many left without voting.
Electronic voting machines have been found to be easy to hack into, making the results questionable and impossible to verify.
In the 2016 California primary, hundreds of thousands of “no party preference” voters, most of whom, according to polls, wanted to vote for Sanders, were forced by election authorities to vote on provisional ballots; most were never counted.
The two major pro-capitalist political parties have passed laws that make it difficult for smaller parties to participate in elections.
There is a multitude of ways the election processes can be manipulated beside those outlined above. The time period and methods to challenge results are very limited. Therefore, electoral campaigns for social and economic justice must have a robust program, involving a large number of committed people, for monitoring elections and intervening to prevent fraud and protect democracy.
