It's nearly impossible these days to watch TV, listen to the radio, read the paper or go online without encountering something about the race for Governor in Michigan. This is not because journalists are scurrying about to track down information on candidates. No, we know there is an election because of all of the damn paid political ads, like the DeVos ad where he says "Join the team for change" while sitting in a car that we are supposed to think he drives.

In November, you will have what we are often told is the "privilege" of "choosing" between DeVos or Granholm. But by the time you read this there will have been a Primary election on August 8 for candidates on non-partisan ballot issues you are less likely to have seen or heard in the news media. We have been tracking local news coverage of the elections since mid-January and as of this writing little has been reported on in the Grand Rapids Press or any of the 3 GR-based TV station about the candidates and the non-partisan ballot issues. For instance, voters in Kent County will decide on what is termed a Senior Millage, a proposal to increase health care funding for senior citizens. If you haven’t heard about this I would be surprised, since not one story has been devoted to this ballot issue as of this writing (July 29).

In addition there will be races for some county commission seats, state house and a Michigan Senate race. These races are primary races within political parties. So for instance, there are 2 candidates running for a Senate seat currently held by Debbie Stabenow – Keith Butler and Mike Bouchard. The majority of news coverage about these two candidates is that they are running paid political ads across the state, but if you want information on their platform you’ll have to look hard. Even a race that is closer to home, a Kent County Commissioner race featuring incumbent Paul Mayhue, former Commissioner Jim Talen and radio talk show host Robert S. has not received much attention. The local news has reported on this race, but only because of the controversy about an FCC regulation that says someone who is on the radio must give up that position 60 days prior to Election Day. Again, if you want info on why these candidates are running or what Commissioner Mayhue’s voting record is, you won’t find that in the news coverage.

Once you acknowledge the fact that information necessary to make an informed decision is not easily accessible, then you have to look at the process of elections. Much has been written about the claims of fraud in the past 2 Presidential elections in the US. Greg Palast’s book The Best Democracy Money can Buy and Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election & is Rigging 2008 are a good place to start to look at the national scene. Then there is the issue of electronic fraud in the voting machines. Bev Harris’s book Black Box Voting makes some convincing arguments about the lack of transparency and inherent conflicts with having private companies make the machines and create the software to “count” the votes. The Diebold Company is the most notable but others exist like Election Systems and Software ES&S, which is the largest and does election work around the globe. ES&S happens to be the new voting system now used in Kent County.

However, rigging the elections also take on other forms. Spencer Overton writes in his new book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression that constant re-districting marginalizes poor and minority voters. Re-districting, you may recall, is one of the things that got Tom DeLay canned from Congress. He’s not the only one doing it…. he just was more brazen about it and was scrutinized by the legal system in Texas. Overton also talks about how candidates and incumbents don’t spend much time going after low income and minority votes, since they don’t have as consistent a voting record. Part of the low turnout in those populations is due to the fact that people with low incomes rent more often and move more often, which results in not having accurate voter registration information. Then there is the issue around how political campaigns operate. Having run for City Commission in 1997, I know what the official protocol for campaigning is supposed to be. You get an electronic voter data based from the City Clerk. You then target, and only target the people who have a high voting record. This means you only knock on doors and send mailers to about 20% of the people in each district, who again are more likely to be white and have a decent income.

There are other structural barriers to voting as well. In Kent County, if you want to register to vote, you must do so 30 days prior to an election in order to vote. Why not sample day registration. Several states in the country already do this. What about changing the day we have elections? Many countries around the world have elections on Sunday, when fewer people work. Let’s face it, if you work first shift, then have to make dinner for the kids, your window of opportunity to vote is much smaller.

Ok, now back to the Granholm, DeVos race. Another problem with the way that elections are structured in the US is that people too often end up voting for “the lesser of two evils.” They don’t particularly like or can’t get excited about the candidate they are voting for, but they don’t want the other candidate to win. For example, in the past 2 Presidential races many people I know said that they were going to vote for Gore or Kerry because “at least they aren’t as bad as Bush.” Too often people are not voting their conscience, thus we have a form of tyranny in our election system. If people can’t vote for someone that really represents their point of view then voting is a bit of a sham. You want to vote for an anti-war candidate, but if you do the liberals will blame you for Bush getting re-elected. So, in 2004 we had many people who were very anti-war, but voted for Kerry because he....??? Not only was Kerry for the war, he campaigned to fight the war on terror better and said that the US should send more troops to Iraq.

So how can we challenge the tyranny of elections? One thing that could be done is to work towards educating and organizing for an Instant Voter Runoff (IVR) system. An IRV is where you have say 4 candidates running for an office and instead of picking one candidate you rank the candidates in the order of preference. So, let’s say you first picked a Green or independent candidate first, since they best represent your point of view, but your second choice could be a Democrat. If the independent or Green candidate didn’t get many first place votes, there would still be a run-off between the candidates who got more first place votes. This way you can vote your conscience and not feel like you are wasting a vote and then Democrats won’t yell at you for voting your conscience and tell you that a vote for anyone other than their candidate is a vote for Bush or whichever GOP candidate is on the ballot. Some communities and states in the country already have IVR such as Vermont. Check out the great website by the folks at the Center for Voting and Democracy.

But you know there is one last aspect of elections that rubs me the wrong way as well. When people look at big issues like immigration, war, poverty, racism, reproductive rights, etc….too often the plan of action is “we just have to get the right people elected to office.” Here the tyranny of elections makes voting the primary strategy for social change. So people put all their eggs into this basket and if the candidate we back loses we sit around and mope. Elections should never be a strategy in and of themselves. Elections and voting are tactics that we can use in working for a larger social change strategy. Ask yourself - do any of the fundamental rights we have in this country come about by voting for the right people? Was slavery abolished through voting? How about outlawing child labor? Did the reproductive rights of women come about by voting the right people in? Did the Civil Rights movement use voting as the primary tactic in their effort to end segregation and advocate for racial justice? Did politicians with any of these issues just say “hey, let’s give Black people the right to vote?” No, the only reason the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed is because people were in the streets and challenging the system. The tyranny of elections has taken people away from movement building.

Look at the recent elections in Mexico. Everyone in Mexico knows that there was fraud, so what do Mexicans do as a response? Are they just complaining about the outcome and saying we need to work harder in the next election, have more poll watchers, do better Get out the Vote campaigns? No, they are taking to the streets. Mexicans have not put all their eggs in elections as tactics basket. Mexico has great social movements, they have armed insurgent groups, and they do not give up if they lose the election. When Bolivia was faced with the privatization of their water they didn’t run candidates to change the policy, the mobilized the people. Here is what Bolivian labor organizer Oscar Olivera has to say about social movements versus voting. “For ordinary Bolivian working people, politics can no longer mean the useless, mercantile competition of votes. Instead, we must see ourselves as engaged in politics every time we demand our rights. We perform politics when we block the bosses from laying off more workers. We practice politics when we broaden and build our unions. We carry our politics when we criticize and debate the most important issues on the public agenda with the bosses and the politicians. And we engage in politics when we fight together to defend our communities.”

So ask yourself over the next few months who is putting all their energy into electoral politics and who is working on movement building? Then, after the November 2006 election see who is say lets work on movement building and who is saying “we have to focus on getting a Democrat elected to the White House in 2006.”

Jeff Smith can be reached at jsmith ( AT ) grcmc.org.