I’ve been thinking about the Mid-Term Elections and listening to all the pundits who are proclaiming this and that about the voter’s message based on which candidate won and what the voters had to say in the exit polls. Something is just not ringing true for me and I wanted to ask if it is working for others – or not.
When I wrote my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed? I explored the very foundations of our Federal Government and how it came to be. Our United States Constitution wasn’t the first attempt at governance in the newly born United States. The first attempt involved the Articles of Confederation. I describe the Articles of Confederation as a kind of treaty between thirteen sovereign States where they all promised to get along nicely together when it came to certain “expressly delegated” powers of the central government. There were several difficulties with the arrangement, not the least of which was the States inability to get along nicely together. Eleven years into the new government the new Constitution was offered as a remedy to those problems “in order to form a more perfect union.”
As the founders labored over the Constitution, one of the most fundamental tenets of the new organization was the need to extend the authority of the new government clearly and continuously all the way between the Citizens of the United States to the persons elected to actually do the work of governing. In-other-words, there was a need to demonstrate that the government had the consent of the governed.
The New York Packet on December 14, 1787 carried an editorial from Alexander Hamilton which is known as Federalist No. 22. In the closing paragraph of Federalist No. 22 – Other Defects of the Present Confederation, Hamilton writes the following regarding the problems with the Articles of Confederation:
“It has not a little contributed to the infirmities of the existing federal system, that it never had a ratification by the PEOPLE. Resting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures, it has been exposed to frequent and intricate questions concerning the validity of its powers, and has, in some instances, given birth to the enormous doctrine of a right of legislative repeal. Owing its ratification to the law of a State, it has been contended that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain that a PARTY to a COMPACT has a right to revoke that COMPACT, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.”
Holding that thought close in our minds, let’s return to the Mid-Term Elections just concluded. The voter turnout numbers are not yet official, but it appears clear that only about one third of those who were eligible to vote actually voted. So, let’s consider the other two thirds (the majority) of the eligible voters who did not vote – what can we say about them? They didn’t appear in any of the exit polls so what is the message we should take from them?
We have what is known as a Republican-democracy. We use democratic processes to select an agent to represent our interests in governmental proceedings. Each of our selections is decided on the basis of majority approval, but when a majority of the people who were eligible to vote chose not to vote I’m of the opinion that the only clear message was that the voters just didn’t like any of the choices.
Our only real fact is that for reasons known only to them the choices that faced them were not sufficiently important to cause them to take the time to cast their ballot. Isn’t that just another way of saying “none of the above?” To be fair, there is a plausible argument which would state that the voters who didn’t vote were happy with our government and didn’t see the need to make a choice between the various terrific candidates on the ballot, but I don’t think that argument passes the smile test. Nope, the most credible explanation is that the voters who stayed away were casting a vote of “no confidence.”
In my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, I wrote: “Everybody proclaims disgust with the political system, yet the system continues to get more disgusting. Is the hard-nosed partisanship in politics today the result of a flaw in the design of our system of government? Did our forefathers overlook something important when they were writing the Constitution?” I don’t consider non-participation of voters to be a design flaw. That said, our forefathers would be frustrated and amazed by the number of voters who just don’t vote in our elections.
As eligible voters, we have allowed our system of government to be hijacked by organizations and wealthy people who are simply trying to buy power and our politicians are for sale to the highest bidder. At the end of the day we are the ones who are facilitating our own displeasure and creating the atmosphere of dysfunction that leads to our disgust.
Here is the dilemma we all face when we can’t find a suitable candidate on our ballot – how do we vote “no confidence” in any of the candidates we must consider? The only possible way to express our displeasure and still vote is with a write-in vote.
There are lots of examples around the world where democracies have a provision for the voters to express “no confidence” in their government and cause a new government to be formed. The procedures aren’t relevant to this conversation, but the fact that a formal process is available to them is the point. It is interesting that as our Founding Fathers labored to create the new Constitution in an atmosphere of “no confidence” in the previous system under the Articles of Confederation, they failed to put in place a procedure to express “no confidence” in a future government. Perhaps they didn’t think it necessary in “a more perfect union.”
I have written previously that the Founding Fathers put a lot of power in the voter’s hands when it came to controlling their government. They truly believed that we were able to participate in the election process from start to finish and put good candidates forward to govern our society. Sadly, we have let them down – we have let ourselves down. Unless, and until, we decide to participate in the selection of candidates that will make it onto our ballot so that we have at least one choice we are excited to promote, we are seemingly doomed to deeper and deeper dysfunction.
The Sausage Grinder is broken; will you help to fix it?
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