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Autocracy vs. Democracy |
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Saturday, 11 August 2012 09:33 |
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Myers writes: "Everyone I spoke to agreed that if people with business experience think they're going to run government like a business, whether at the local, state, or federal level, all agreed they're bound to fail. It might sound good on the stump. But the very notion misses the profound and important differences in objectives, culture, structure, incentives, obstacles, and stakeholders."
Does Mitt Romney's business experience translate to running a government? (photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
Autocracy vs. Democracy
By Dee Dee Myers, Vanity Fair
11 August 12
 s the 2012 presidential campaign enters the home stretch, Mitt Romney, self-described "business guy," continues to press the case that he is more qualified to lead the nation out of its economic doldrums than Barack Obama, who has spent his entire career in either government or not-for-profit institutions. Romney's argument is at once utterly familiar - and somewhat unexplored.
So I set out to explore it. What skills make someone successful in business? And how are they similar - or different - from the skills that make someone successful in politics? I decided to pose these questions to people who have had successful careers in both.
Autocracy vs. Democracy
Jack Markell, the governor of Delaware who was a technology and financial-services executive before running for state treasurer in 1998, when asked about the similarities, ticks off five "big things" that he believes are essential to both: a compelling vision, the ability to lay out a plan for getting there, the ability to bring people together - and to hold them accountable - and a tolerance for ambiguity. "You have to make decisions based on imperfect information, since that's what you have," he explains. "If you wait for perfect information, in business, a competitor will pass you, and in government, problems will go unsolved."
Erskine Bowles agrees. In both worlds, "you have to be organized, structured, and focused," he tells me. "You have to set goals, objectives, and timetables. And you have to hold people accountable." Like Romney, Bowles ran a private-equity firm before joining the Clinton administration in 1992, where he led the Small Business Administration and served as chief of staff. He later ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate, served as chancellor of the University of North Carolina, and led the Simpson-Bowles Commission in crafting a bipartisan plan to reduce the federal debt and deficit.
But the similarities, though real, have their limits, Bowles says. "You can make government operate in a more business-like manner, but you can't operate it like a business." Perhaps the differences begin with credentials. "Business people have to stay with something and move up gradually; you can't leapfrog," explains Bill Daley, who has moved back and forth between the private sector (as a lawyer and financial-services executive) and the public sector (as a Cabinet secretary and White House chief of staff). "In politics, you can be a state senator and decide you want to move up and run for the U.S. Senate and then for president. You can't do that in the private sector," he says.
Once in office, the process for making and implementing decisions takes on a life of its own. "In business, there is a pretty stable group of factors - employees, shareholders, customers, competitors," says Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who co-founded the telecom company that became Nextel before running for office. "In politics, there are way more": Congress, the public, the press, advocacy organizations, and political parties, to name a few. And leaders have little or no control over any of them.
"The power to persuade is essential to politicians," says Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the recent book The Spirit of Compromise. "Businessmen also need the power to persuade, but they can get away with focusing on a narrower group than politicians."
"Business is a more autocratic environment," Bowles says. "You and your team make a decision, get buy-in from the board, everybody pulls together, and you get it done. But in politics, you have 535 directors, and they manage every line item in your budget. If they don't approve, you can't get it done. And even if they do approve, it takes forever." Daley adds, "Half of them are constantly trying to undermine your strategy and get you out."
The Art of the Deal
And they do it publicly. "In business, that almost never happens," Bowles says. Politicians quickly learn that almost every aspect of their work unfolds in public, from the application process on the campaign trail to the public debate surrounding every decision. That's not true in business, says Daley. "If Jamie Dimon wants to develop a new strategy, he does it in private. He has to execute that strategy, and he'll be held accountable for the results. But the decision-making process happens behind closed doors."
Not so in politics. And the exposed nature of life in the public square affects leaders' attitudes toward risk - and failure. "In business, you have to take risks. Smart risks, but you have to figure out how to make things happen - or the competition will," says Markell. In government, he says, all the incentives run toward caution. So you need to communicate that it's O.K. to take risks - that it's O.K. to fail. "You have to change the culture," he says.
That's difficult when "every mistake winds up on the front page of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times," Bowles explains. And then in an opponent's television commercial.
The power to persuade includes the ability to forge consensus - and to compromise. Business leaders who go into politics have to "unlearn the idea that because you think it's right, it will therefore happen," Markell says. You have to listen, to bring people along, including the legislature and the public. And you have to be flexible and willing to include other people's ideas - even when you don't agree. "Business leaders who say they will be the C.E.O. of their state will be in shock. We are here to lead, not command."
Amy Gutmann believes that even though compromise is synonymous with governing, it's become a dirty word - thanks to the rise of what she calls the "permanent campaign." Campaigning and governing require different skills. To succeed at the former you need to articulate a vision, you need to persuade and inspire. To succeed at the latter, you need to execute. "No business leader can survive without executing on a vision," she explains. "But in campaigns, politicians get elected all the time without governing."
That's why having a business leader as president is often so appealing to voters. "There is a bottom line in business," Guttman says. "The electorate is sick and tired of electing people who articulate an idea but can't do anything to get it done."
There's a presumption among voters that people with business experience "won't waste money and that they can read a balance sheet - which is always a great applause line," Warner explains. The "operational parts of the job" can, in fact, be run like a business. "But there are other parts that can't."
Campaigns often make standing on principle the highest of virtues - and listening to your opponents a sure sign of weakness. It's the virtual opposite of what it takes to succeed in office. Squaring the circle takes a powerful combination of skills. But presidents who can campaign and compromise are generally the most successful.
Guttman offers two examples: President Reagan and the 1986 tax-reform bill and President Clinton and the 1997 bipartisan budget agreement. In each case, the president set a broad goal - and convinced both sides that it was important enough to sacrifice dearly held principles to achieve it. While both presidents were at times accused of selling out by their own sides, they are now held in high regard for their ability to bring people together - and to get things done.
Of course, bringing people together means building trust. And that takes an enormous amount of time - more than most C.E.O.'s are used to spending, Bowles says.
But ever the politician, President Clinton understood this, he adds. And in the run-up to the 1997 budget deal, Clinton made him spend "months and months locked in a conference room" with Republican congressional leaders, Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. The effort paid off.
Soft Costs
If the process of making and implementing decisions - and the skills required to do both - are different, so too are the measures of success. "A dollar in versus output doesn't equate the same," says Warner. In politics, you have to have a longer timeline. Successful politicians don't think in terms of this quarter or even this year, Warner says. "If a road takes five years to build, and provides 30 years of service, how do you measure its value?"
There are also a lot of what Warner calls "soft costs" in politics. "What responsibility do you have to the less fortunate?" he asks. And what do you do when you can't disown the least productive members of society? "You can't just say, ‘You're no longer an American.'"
There are people in the public sector with a range of experiences that have no equivalent in business, but are essential to governing, like keeping a kid in school or helping someone get and hold a job. The value of those skills can't easily be measured against a bottom line. But leaders, regardless of background, need to understand that they're important.
Everyone I spoke to agreed that if people with business experience think they're going to run government like a business, whether at the local, state, or federal level, all agreed they're bound to fail. It might sound good on the stump. But the very notion misses the profound and important differences in objectives, culture, structure, incentives, obstacles, and stakeholders. So: business vs. politics? It's clear that the skills overlap. But they aren't the same.
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The Courage That Comes From Being Different |
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Saturday, 11 August 2012 09:26 |
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Grayson writes: "Keith Ellison understands that the things that make us special are not the things that make us the same - they're the things that make us different. That our differences are not something to overcome, or even to tolerate, but something to cherish."
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to congress, talks during a press conference with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, not pictured, in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, March 15, 2012. (photo: AP)
The Courage That Comes From Being Different
By Alan Grayson, Reader Supported News
11 August 12
 ongressman Keith Ellison started life outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant English-Speaking Straight mainstream. He is African-American, and he was raised as a Catholic.
Many people who find themselves out of the mainstream swim desperately toward it. They seek the shelter and comfort of conformity.
Not Keith.
At the age of 19, Keith Ellison converted to Islam. He has raised his four children within Islam. He explained it this way: "When I looked at my spiritual life, and I looked at what might inform social change and justice in society... I found Islam."
Converting to Islam is perhaps not the best way to further political aspirations in America today. But in Keith Ellison's case, it shows the courage of his convictions.
When Keith Ellison was sworn into Congress, he took the oath of office with his hand on the Koran -- specifically, Thomas Jefferson's personal copy of the Koran. And remember, he's a Muslim; what did you expect him to put under his hand, Green Eggs and Ham? (That would definitely not be halal.)
And that's when the hating started. The poorly-named Congressman Virgil Goode from Virginia bleated: "If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office, and demanding the use of the Koran." It's interesting to think about what kind of immigration policy would have kept Keith Ellison's ancestors out, since they arrived in America in chains.
Glenn Beck, then on CNN, invited Keith Ellison on his show, and asked this not-so-perspicacious "question": "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." Keith responded with a quiet dignity utterly foreign to that show: "I have a deep love and affection for my country."
Think about how much easier it would have been for Keith Ellison to change his religion not to Islam, but to Protestantism, and to go along, and to get along, and to try to fit in. But that just wouldn't be Keith Ellison. He draws his strength, and his courage, from not being just like everyone else.
Keith Ellison understands that the things that make us special are not the things that make us the same -- they're the things that make us different. That our differences are not something to overcome, or even to tolerate, but something to cherish.
Keith Ellison is facing a primary next Tuesday. I hope that you will support his campaign. Because the mere existence of Congressman Keith Ellison represents a very important principle:
E Pluribus Unum.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
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Is It Finally Time to Let the South Secede? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=8327"><span class="small">Joshua Holland, AlterNet</span></a>
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Friday, 10 August 2012 14:09 |
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Holland writes: "According to Chuck Thompson, a veteran travel writer who toured the American South, a degree of mutual enmity between Northerners and Southerners continues to be a source of cultural tension and political gridlock."
Would America be better of if the North and South separate? (image: unknown)
Is It Finally Time to Let the South Secede?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
10 August 12
The author of a new book challenges Northerners and Southerners to consider the possibility of a friendly divorce.
 erhaps we shouldn't be surprised that cultural friction between the North and South persists to this day. After all, we fought an incredibly brutal, ugly Civil War. The battlelines that were drawn then continued to divide us through the Reconstruction period and well into the middle of the 20th century, as federal troops were once again deployed to enforce the civil rights acts.
According to Chuck Thompson, a veteran travel writer who toured the American South, a degree of mutual enmity between Northerners and Southerners continues to be a source of cultural tension and political gridlock. We remain divided even as we have grown to become the world's superpower. In his new book, Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto For Southern Secession, Thompson argues that it may be time for a divorce - to shake hands and go our separate ways.
Thompson appeared on last week's AlterNet Radio Hour to discuss his book. A lightly edited transcript of our discussion is below (you can listen to the whole show here).
Joshua Holland: Chuck, you seem to be channeling the frustration of a lot of Northern liberals. I may have even said myself that we should have let the Confederacy walk in 1860. But I haven't heard a lot of people calling to break up the Union today. You're known as a comedic travel writer. So my first question is to what degree are you being tongue-in-cheek here? To what degree are you being serious?
Chuck Thompson: I am being serious. I understand that the meta arguments here that call for secession can be received as somewhat absurd in some corners. I acknowledge that it is probably a remote possibility. Within the framework of that argument I think there is a lot of room to highlight a lot of these problems and a lot of these frustrations that you refer to. One of the goals of this book really was to more or less articulate - to put some facts, figures and research behind a lot of this frustration of Northern and Southern liberals, of which there are many. I encountered many Southern liberals while conducting my research.
There's this seething frustration people have. There's this kneejerk reaction to blame the South. The sort of Northern media strafing of the South for a lot of the nation's ills is a longstanding tradition. What I wanted to do was to get away from the traditional stereotypes of the dim-witted, mouth-breathing, Southern racist redneck and really look at what's going on today. Find out why people are still having these issues with the South, and put some hard research and some facts and figures behind this general unease with the influence that the South has on the rest of the country.
JH: So we know we have an overtly religious political culture down South, and a culture today that is pretty hostile toward organized labor. What is it in your travels or in your research that prompted you to call for Southern secession?
CT: I get tired of everybody bitching about the problem. It's like what Mark Twain said about the weather. Everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. People have been having this problem with the South for my entire lifetime, and as my research pointed out to me, since even before there was a United States of America. Even in the Continental Congress, before the Declaration of Independence was signed, there were a lot of Southerners from South Carolina - particularly a family called the Rutledge family - sort of running the show back then and didn't want any part of the United States. So a lot of the problems that have arisen between North and South have been around for a long time.
So, as I've said, I've spent a lot of my life hearing from everybody from Seattle to Savannah. Almost every American, at one time or another, has said that it's too bad the country didn't just split when we had the chance. We didn't let the South go when we had the chance. We would have avoided a lot of problems. We - meaning this group in the north as we might identify ourselves - could take the country we want into a direction that we think is befitting of America without this push and pull that comes from the Southern states. At the same time the South could do the same thing.
What really led to this call for secession was understanding that a lot of people from the South are just as sick and tired of people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid having an impact on their country as I am sick of people like Newt Gingrich and Jeff Sessions, Eric Cantor, Haley Barbour having an impact on my country.
So why shouldn't each of these societies that are really very different from each other in the way they approach the fundamental building blocks of society - education, religion, commerce, politics - both sides of the country really approach their problems in the way they want to put their societies together in very diametrically opposed ways. Why shouldn't people be allowed to live in a pseudo-theocracy if they want to? If the majority of the people in a very large part of the country wants to have the Ten Commandments emblazoned in front of their legislative houses, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
My call here for secession isn't really a punitive thing towards the South, though I admit to a lot of these Northern frustrations. It's an effort to identify these differences; to acknowledge that they're very striking and very strong, and to say each one of these sides might be better of without the other.
JH: So we could have a divorce without an excessive amount of acrimony.
CT: I would hope so. Why not?
JH: How are you defining the South? Are we losing the research triangle in North Carolina? Are we losing Texas in this deal? And is there any chance we could give them some of the duller states. We're not using South Dakota, are we?
CT: There are some noncontiguous pockets of what would be left of the North that I think would be culturally more comfortable in the South. It's the first question I started off with in doing the research. It's a lot trickier than we might imagine. As for the research triangle in North Carolina? Yes, we're going to lose it. Texas is really interesting to me. The best line I heard about Texas during the research was from a student at the University of Georgia who said the Texas state flag is a perfect representation of Texas, in that it looks just like the American flag without all the other states.
Even though Texas was part of the original Confederacy, it's always been an all-around pain in the neck to categorize. They've never really been much of a team player, let's face it. In my breakdown of the South I did not include Texas as a Southern state. I completely acknowledge there's a lot of room for argument there, and that's probably the easiest point in my book to argue against. I could argue both sides of it myself. In the end I decided that Texas would stay with the North in large part for economic reason. Texas is really one of the economic anchors of this country.
JH: So it wasn't just for the barbeque?
CT: Barbeque, cheerleaders and Dr. Pepper.
JH: What about the people who live in those states? It's easy to say they vote for the crappy government they deserve, but consider that in Utah - the reddest state in the country - 30 percent of the population vote Democratic. I'm not saying that voting Democratic is a perfect proxy for one's ideology, but there's a good chunk of people down there who we would be consigning to basically English-speaking Mexico. In Alabama, it's 40 percent. Do you just say, 'here you go you have to live in a third-world country with crappy education systems, no healthcare, and a government of snake handlers?'
CT: [Laughing] You're tougher on the South than I am! Let me give you two answers to that. One is that in my imaginary secession legislative framework, I'm building in a period of 10-20 years where there's free and open citizenship for anybody who feels caught on the wrong side of the divide. A tofu-scarfing liberal in Mississippi would be free to come on back over to the North, as well as maybe some survivalist NRA fanatic in the hills of Washington state would be legally entitled to take up residency in the new Confederate homeland. So I've built something into the imaginary structure for that.
The larger point goes back to what I said about even if you consider the argument for secession absurd, it really does give us a lot of room to address other issues. One of those that you allude to in your question is one of Southerners who are not the mouth-breathing, white-supremacist, gun-toting rednecks. That is the stereotype, but the fact of the matter is that's a minority in the South.
JH: Fifty-seven percent of African Americans live in the American south.
CT: That's right. That's exactly right. One of the big mistakes that people who make these sort of polemics and screeds against the South is that they assume "Southerner" equals conservative white male. Now if you want to be really mean you include "racist" with Southern white male, that's the stereotype.
But let's even say that it's conservative, evangelical Southerners. The fact of the matter is that's not what the whole South is. There are a lot of African Americans in the South. There are increasingly a lot of Hispanics in the South. There are a lot of liberals in the South. There are atheists in the South. One of the things I really try to do with this book was not solely traffic in those easy stereotypes that I think a lot of people trap themselves with. That's not to say I didn't find a lot of those Southern, evangelical, white conservatives. I did and they're in the book, but I also made a huge effort not to define the South solely on the classic Northern stereotypes.
JH: Ultimately, while I share your befuddlement with Southern politics I have to say that I've traveled extensively in the South. I lived in Arkansas briefly. I love the South, and I've met good, progressive people everywhere I've gone.
CT: What did you love about it?
JH: I love the culture of the South. I love the people of the South. I really had some great experiences dealing with Southerners. Even those Southerners I couldn't necessarily discuss politics with.
I guess a related question is this: We have a really screwy political system with lots of deeply entrenched problems. Do you see anything that could be gained by the South's secession that couldn't be achieved by, say, getting money out of our political system? Or bringing back the fairness doctrine? Maybe reforming the filibuster in the Senate? Do you know what I'm saying? Those things aren't likely to happen in today's environment, but the South splitting away isn't too likely either.
CT: That's right, but a lot of these problems have been deeply entrenched in American society long before this dysfunction befell our political system. Politics is really only one way in which the South is quite a bit different it approaches its society. I think religion is the really big factor here and I think that's what's really not going to change in the South. Yes, there are evangelicals and religious lunatics in all 50 states in the country. Only in the South, though, do they represent a voting quorum. Only in the South can you appeal to voters in very overtly religious terms and expect success on a consistent basis. Again, that's not to deny that this exists in the rest of the country. It does, but in the South is where its power base is.
I think that is the piece of the puzzle here that informs the politics of the South, in the same way that evangelical Christianity is the least tolerant of any sort of diversity or diversity of opinion. It's Bible literalism. Everything is true and you adhere to everything; it's black and white. When that is the foundation of the majority of the people in your society, when that becomes your whole social framework, then that's the politics that grows out of that society. So we get that same sort of blinkered view of humanity of politicians in the South who come up to the North - we get this absolute, no compromise stance between these hardcore conservatives and other politicians.
When there were Republicans and Democrats fighting it out in the '80s during the Reagan years, there was the famed Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan give-and-take. This is how politics works; it's the art of compromise. The ruling power says to the opposition we won the election so we're going to get these big things. Don't give us too much trouble and we'll work with you. We realize you have a constituency. Let us get our big things through without a lot of hassle and we'll make sure you're taken care of on some level. That's sort of how it has worked for the most part. In the South, it's different, because there is no such thing as compromise. If it's God's law that is driving you, if God says gay marriage is an abomination, if God says abortion is an abomination, then you simply can't compromise. That's not in your DNA if you really believe that. That's where I think a lot of the dysfunction of our political process comes into play.
And I don't think that's going to change, regardless of whether you pull the money out of it or not. This ties into how the South deals with education. Southern states don't typically fund their public schools the way other states do - they're typically at a much lower level. There's less commitment to the ideal of public education in the Southern states than there is in the rest of the country. That's why we see over and over when the statistics come out, the South has the lowest SAT scores, lowest graduation rates, the most illiteracy. Whatever measures you want to put on academic performance it's those core Southern states that are always leading the bottom of the back. In the bottom 10, eight or nine of them are always going to be Southern states.
I wanted to look into this. Why is that? Is it just that Southerners are stupider than the rest of us? Clearly that's not the case. It's the same gene pool. The more you look at it the more you realize there's just a lower commitment to public education in the South than there is in the rest of the country. That's been going on for hundreds of years. It's not changing.
I was in Arkansas. I spent a week in Little Rock while they were searching for a new superintendent of schools last year. The dysfunction that I saw just in attending these public meetings where they were talking about what they needed was astonishing.
JH: We see a lot of liberal animosity towards the South. Were you at all concerned in writing this book about whether you would reinforce the stereotype of the coastal, elite liberals looking down their noses at the middle and the South? Was this a concern?
CT: Sure, people are going to jump to that conclusion. As you know -- and as I found out in writing web articles and books -- most of the really heated criticism you get from people are always from people who don't even bother to read your article or your book in the first place. That's going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. I really did make an effort not to be strident - though I'm certainly judgmental - and to find good things in the South, which there are. You deal with Southerners on an individual basis and they're great. They're friendly, hospitable, gregarious, and they like to party. They like to drink, to give you their food, they like to play music. It's a lot of fun.
I didn't try to be this super-strident jerk who was just sitting there bashing. I really am trying to put some numbers and some facts to this argument. These are two very different societies that have been economic and social frenemies from the day they were founded. The dysfunction has got to stop at some point.
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FOCUS | The Greatest Election-Stealing Conspiracy in US History |
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Friday, 10 August 2012 13:00 |
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Slater writes: "The Republican strategy here is simply too blatant to be believed, hence the relatively muted press coverage on the issue. Indeed, while Republican lawmakers have been busy undermining the basic rights of Americans for months now, it was not until recent weeks that the New York Times and Washington Post started paying attention."
African Americans have been targeted by Republican voter suppression efforts. (photo: NAACP)
The Greatest Election-Stealing Conspiracy in US History
By Alex Slater, Guardian UK
10 August 12
 n Washington, conventional wisdom is everything. It's the driver of perceptions, and often of self-fulfilling political prophecies. That's why you might notice a guarded confidence amongst the Obama campaign these past few weeks: generally speaking, most realistic experts predict a victory for the president in this November's election.
This perception is reinforced by current polling, some of the most recent being published by Quinnipiac University, the New York Times and CBS News, giving President Obama an edge over Romney in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Certainly, it will be a tight race, but by any realistic standard, the money is on Obama to pull out a victory, even narrowly.
But it's exactly the likely closeness of the race that may turn Washington's conventional wisdom on its head on election day. That's because, until relatively recently, political experts and journalists have been oblivious to a widespread and pernicious phenomenon occurring in many critical swing states – one that, unless checked, could erase Obama's electoral edge.
This phenomenon takes the form of a spate of new voter laws: efforts by Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass restrictive new voting rules just in time for election day. As a result, at least 5 million Americans could essentially lose their right to vote, according to the non-partisan Brennan Center in New York.
It's no surprise that these laws are almost uniformly designed to disenfranchise young people and minorities – the very demographics that make up part of Obama's base. And 5 million votes flagrantly stolen from the Democrats, especially in the swing states where Obama currently has the edge, could easily spell a Romney victory.
The Republican strategy here is simply too blatant to be believed, hence the relatively muted press coverage on the issue. Indeed, while Republican lawmakers have been busy undermining the basic rights of Americans for months now, it was not until recent weeks that the New York Times and Washington Post started paying attention.
As well they should, because it's no exaggeration to say that the results of these partisan tactics could make the Floridian recount of 2000 look like a minor political spat. We're looking at an election doomsday scenario that could eclipse any political scandal in American history.
Hyperbole? Not when you examine the new laws more closely. The legislation being passed by Republicans across the country takes various forms, all designed to stop likely Obama voters casting ballots.
The most common tactic is to heavily restrict the types of identification required at polling stations. In Pennsylvania, for example, that means requiring all voters to present very limited types of ID only available from the state's department of transportation. Since many inner-city voters don't drive, or many young voters have out-of-state driver's licenses, these likely Obama voters will all be stopped dead in their tracks before they reach the polling booth. The problem is so severe that the state of Pennsylvania itself has admitted that nearly 10% of voters do not have the required identification. In Philadelphia, an Obama stronghold, that figure is closer to 20%. Attorney General Eric Holder summed it up perfectly when he called these voter ID measures the equivalent of a "poll tax", at the NAACP summit in July.
In Florida, where history proves that less than 1,000 votes can swing a national election, the efforts to stop minorities and the poor from voting are not just limited to new voter identification laws. In fact, voter registration drives have been banned, and early voting, thought to favor Democrats, has been significantly curtailed. Even more worrying is Governor Rick Scott's attempt simply to remove Obama voters from the election rolls. In May, Scott ordered a purge of his state's voter lists, based on drivers' license records, which he acknowledged to be deeply flawed.
As a result, the state's division of elections initially found a mind-boggling 180,000 "ineligible voters" by performing a search of a computer database with inaccurate information. Yet, the purge goes on: the Miami Herald found that 58% of the people in a sample of 2,700 "ineligible" voters were Hispanic, and 14% were black. Whites and Republicans were least likely to be barred from voting. Even a second world war veteran was told he was not a citizen and so to stay away from the voting booth.
Of course, Republicans justify their efforts to suppress the vote by arguing that they're simply preventing illegal voting. That sounds entirely fair – until you consider that the proven occurrence of voter fraud is almost non-existent. In fact, not a single person has ever been prosecuted for voting illegally. Yet, the public seems ambivalent about voter ID laws, which is why similar dirty tricks continue, taking various forms in other competitive states such as Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
Luckily, progressive groups and the federal government are pushing back. In Pennsylvania, groups like the Advancement Project and the ACLU have filed suit on behalf of 38 plaintiffs, challenging the constitutionality of the new laws in state courts. The Advancement Project is also intervening in Wisconsin, fighting the fact that 78% of young African-American men lack the appropriate ID to vote, for example. The US department of justice is also intervening in Pennsylvania and other states, questioning whether new laws disproportionately discriminate against minorities. And the Obama campaign is acutely aware of the danger, with dozens of staffers in the campaign headquarters and out in the field monitoring daily developments in every critical state.
These counter-efforts are critical, yet the fear among Democrats is that they may not be sufficient to stop the new laws taking effect before the election. That is a significant danger, not only to the legitimacy of the results of the presidential race, but for the very core of America's democratic process. And, of course, it highlights the need for uniform standards across the country that guarantee free and fair elections.
That's a battle for a later date. For now, we can only hope that voters will get wise to the Republican tactics and make every effort to make their voices heard on 6 November.
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f course Paul Ryan wants to be Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate.
