On the Value[lessness]
of Your Vote
1/12/08
The sages have raved on
for several millennia about how to construct a government that would provide
justice for all, but every experiment has failed to date at least in the minds
of some who have different notions of what justice ought to be. Most
governments evolved to be authoritarian in nature as the millennium clock
counts off centuries and detailed government histories float by. This
is, consequently, quite disgusting unless you are a radical from the Bay Area
or howl at the moon from the remote mountains of North Korea or Berkeley. We
might have to assume that tough but time-tested government leadership
roles using a host of proven methods, mostly murder, designer marriages and a
general slaughter of the masses, are suitable formats for governments at least
as the far left preaches. The search for justice seems to be
unending. So does the ongoing quest for the meaning and progressive
corruption of that word.
The Greeks are given
credit, probably erroneously, for the first experiments in democracy of the
direct sort although we wonder about the inhabitants of the Indus Valley and
parts of East Asia as we ponder over the Greeks their failures and
their ruins. Many cultures were older, wiser and more stable than the Greeks in
the period of the 6th thru 9th century range, B.C.E.
Citizens of the polis were apparently asked, or probably ordered, to vote on
issues thus demonstrating that democracy was in good working order. Presumably
the votes of the majority signaled the probable outcome of the vote, but we do
not know that for sure. We do not know if every major or wealthy citizen had
the vote, but we do know this voyage was not very popular with the ordinary
people. That much we seem to have inherited from the Athens group
along with a stale heap of platitudes and errant political notions. We do know
that women, slaves and certain others had no vote. Apparently, democracy in the
Greek venue attempted to compellingly ‘equalize’ the citizen’s resources that
soon drifted away from their control in order to inspire a novel form of
population control and a flat freeze on assets that would impress Fidel Castro.
Citizens were expected to work part-time for the government. We are not
sure if that was restricted to voters alone, but the general menial nature of
government tasks suggests that probably all were forced to work to some
extent. If too many mouths appeared in the narrowly proscribed
homestead chow line, it seems starvation was inevitable and a Cambodian Khmer
Rouge vision of sharing was envisioned. We wonder how this was voted on, or, if
it ever came up. Politics requires power to coerce the masses so relinquishing
power is not in the forefront of any political agenda. The right to vote must
be carefully proscribed lest snippets of power stray from firm control by
elites or squirm out of control in a crescendo endangering the political
leaders who might lose their phony jobs and be judged social parasites. The
Greek solution, paving the future ethical way for the Final Solution, utilized
by Planned Parenthood to the vainglorious chants of the New York Times, was
simply to starve babies. This method was welcomed joyously, but indirectly, by
J. J. Rousseau, the Father of the French Revolution, who sent his five children
to the Foundling Hospital in Paris, where the survival rate
was less than 10%. He instructed us about juvenile education it
seems. A bit indirect, judging by today’s instant standards, but this
functioned as an unyielding easy solution to several social problems and
received no abuse from the progressive elements of the time or even today. Life
has been truncated by some short monthly metric by the liberal Supreme Court in
a emotional outburst of concern of justice.
This democratic system
was not popular as we learn from many Greeks, some even of reputed
respectability, intellectual talents and probable literary grace. Plato was
disaffected by his observations on democracy along with the masses,
an improper position for a leading-edge progressive thinker, and promptly chose
an alternate kind of lofty enlightened dictatorship over the obvious
theoretical benefits of democracy. The Romans had a similar system a
few decades later but they had a wealth-weighted system of voting in the
Assemblies where those with money had more voting power than the poor. Does
this sound familiar? It appears that material goods, alone, indemnify the
elites. That makes sense.
No serious experiments
in direct democracy seem to have been allowed on the stern advice of the
Ancients after so disastrous a failure inAthens until certain Americans in
the colonies began looking at alternatives to handle the crazy old King
George and rid capitalism of the now-stale feudalism. Baron de Montesquieu[1] had
provided an incoherent rehash of the old Roman system in time for the American
Revolution by imitating the various offices and assemblies in the Roman Republic in
his writings with the substitute [but equivalent] notion of
‘separation of powers.” He incorrectly assumed that there were separations of
powers in England at the time with the Parliamentary system, but was
wrong and Winston Churchill finally settled the matter by emasculating the
House of Lords. The regent had very little true power since the Magna Charta.
The purpose of MC was to limit the taxing powers of the monarchy, thus rendering
the position almost functionally useless and permanently short of cash. The
Romans had scads of checks and balances built into their republic and tried to
spread out and flatten the power base by using such devices as:
two consuls as co regents, several tribunes with unlimited veto
powers, short terms, a ten-year interlude between holding the same office
[Sulla’s Lex Cornelius], which resulted in frequently driving their government
into a cement-like conundrum, but their system was “too complex” for
the Colonials although it lasted about 9 centuries, which would tend to
contradict the notion that it was somehow unworkable. Most governments do not
last 8 years, some less than 8 months as in the case of the instant Soviet
Republic of Munich by Rosa Luxemburg in 1919[2] [3].
They were working on a form of democracy [actually “…a humanitarian theory of
Marxism, stressing democracy and revolutionary mass action to achieve
international socialism.” That is a perplexing mix. The stress recoiled on that
one.
Machiavelli suggested
that the Roman system be revisited as a suitable model for new governments as
it worked well. He was ignored. The puzzlement was how to handle the voters and
‘share power’ with the masses and to not allow the all-too-human trait of spontaneous
demagoguery to guide the ignorant masses down the usual crowded path to
societal destruction. The trick was to offer voter power sharing, as a
political sop, and then control the outcomes regardless of voter preference.
This culminated, in our enlightened times, in the US Supreme Court’s defeating
the Gore court actions by a 5/4 decision along [what else?] party
lines. The courts are more than willing to realign our votes to comply with the
Constitution as we have seen in numerous California referendums.
The ’theory of voting’
has blossomed since just before World War II [4] although
it abounds with multifarious variations too intense and intricate for the
common voters to notice and most physicists to grasp the fundamentals. The
easiest way to view the voting ‘right’ is to take into consideration the
’value’ of your vote on an arbitrary scale from 0 to 1.0 for any political
contest offered to the masses. This is an unsophisticated charade, but it is
all we have unless we read the polls to guide us, which are phony and change
drastically during the intense buildup to an election. We can start with a
survey of several forms of government and their voting habits, the term
democracy being functionally worthless in most cases, and calculate the value
of your vote in a political system where there is, in the first example, only
one party.
The USSR is a
prime example of that concept, along with Cuba. Here, with only one party,
your vote is 0.0. There is no way you can influence any outcome whether
you vote or not for a single candidate. About a decade ago, two famous
political leaders boasted that they got more than 99% of the vote in their
countries; they were Fidel Castro and the late Saddam Hussein, who was properly
jubilant and appreciative that only 65 or so Iraqis voted against him. The
intrinsic validity of ‘voting’ in these singular cases is celebrated only by
imbeciles, Shrumists[5],
Communists, certain Methodists and many others with major cognitive
deficiencies such as the editorial staff of the New York Times. The chart below
shows how much your vote is worth depending on how many political parties
participate in the fray and their relative distribution in terms of percent of
members. There is no power shared with the voters by authoritarian systems in
decision making with only one party. This is only political window dressing
thrown up to form some talking points for Marxist wannabees and other vermin.
Some clever politicos, such as in North Korea, have dreamed up a synthetic
three party system, but the lower pair are controlled like cheap puppets by the
big nasty one and, as such, your vote is worthless in N. K. Now, when there are
two parties, the chance of having some voting power exceeding zero begin to
improve in some cases. In the 90%/10% case where the big party is much larger
than the little ones [Mexico had little parties for decades with no power]
your vote is worthless. The Mexican PRI party stuffed the ballot boxes for
decades to make sure they almost never lost an election.
The excitement that
enraptures the imagination of simple people begins when there is some semblance
of a two party system and they are two parties, nearly equal in voter numerical
reckoning. In this unusual case, despised by experienced politicos
adhering to the old proven political theories, any errant and criminal
cross-voting may determine the final outcome. This is a form of anarchy in the
eyes of party leaders who mutter about traitors and scabs when the precinct
votes are tallied after a failed election. Predictions fail miserably when a
third, small size splinter party is in the fray. It is interesting that out of
all the Presidential races since 1900 only 7 have had binary contests between
Republicans and Democrats[6],
and the 1948 contest had 5 noisy contenders. It is interesting that Eugene V. Debs
ran 5 times as a Social Democrat, and later as a straight Socialist[7],
and garnered zero electoral votes for his noble efforts in two decades.
Norman Thomas ran an astonishing 6 times as a Socialist and won nothing[8].
In these eleven races, there were no splinter effects as the contests were not
even close. William H. Taft received only 8 electoral votes as a
Republican and American Independent George Wallace’sAmerican Independent
Party was only the third party candidate to get more than zero electoral votes
in a Presidential election, for an impressive 46 electoral votes in 1968.[9] He
probably diverted Democrats from voting for Humphrey and doomed his old party.
Also, Perot apparently had a solid effect in 1996 on the outcome as the earlier
contests did not seem to qualify as splinter party cases capable of influencing
the outcomes. J. Strom Thurmond’s votes came mainly from
the Southern block of Dixiecrats in 1948 and had little effect on the outcome
if you believe that the South would have voted against liberalism anyway. But,
that is admittedly conjectured. In those cases, nothing would have changed even
if the Electoral College had been scraped and the popular vote used to
determine the winner. An exception would be the 2000 Gove v. Bush race where Al
Gore won the popular vote. Many liberals are unaware that we have an electoral
college and believe that the popular vote should have been used to put Al Gore
in the White House, e.g. the New York Times and other political stooges.
Are votes really equal
if not worthless in many cases or are they moderately valuable in limited
cases? The votes cast for Eugene Debs in the name of socialism
probably had no value at all, demonstrating only a tautological essay in mental
somnambulism or lunacy. Debs was probably a heartthrob only for losers,
Marxists, hobos, non-voting migrant workers and certain inhabitants of Oakland, Boston and San
Leandro. Votes are not equal from region to region! Let us ask: How many votes
does it take to get Senator Joe Biden of Delaware elected compared to
Senator Feinstein of California. Biden got about 70,000 votes last
election and California Senators required several million to win. It should be
clear that unit votes to elect Senators from different states are not very
equal, by a mere ratio of 75:1 or so in big/little ratio, but are closer to
equality for House Representatives unless your state is very small and rates a
Congressional District regardless of the population. Note, also that all small
states have two Senators just like big states. Biden has much more power than
Feinstein or Schumer. Consider the table below:
|
No
of Parties
|
Party
Fractional Distribution
|
Maximum
Value of Your Vote
|
Comments
|
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
No chance to vote.
|
|
1
|
100% one party
|
0
|
Don’t bother to vote unless the
Commissar is watching
|
|
2
|
90%/10%
|
0
|
Don’t bother to vote.
|
|
2
|
50%/50%
|
1.0 or so
|
Get to the ballot box!
|
|
3
|
49%/49%/2%
|
1.0
|
Max voting power if you vote in
the minority party that provides the extra majority or plurality votes or
provides essential crossover votes.
|
|
4
|
49%/49%/1%/1%
|
1.0
|
Same as above with more technical
difficulties. The two 1% parties may oppose each other and cancel out.
|
The political excitement
soars when there are the dreaded splinter parties that now become kingmakers in
the political parlance. Here, the control of the political world fades away and
drifts unceremoniously into the hands of a few voters, most of whom are only
reflexively reacting upon their emotions, an outcome that frustrates seasoned
politicos. For the case where three parties are distributed as 49%/49%/2% the
2% [or small splinter party] becomes the kingmaker as shown by George Wallace
in 1968 and Ralph Nader some time later in 2000. Splinter parties can invent
some regal and lofty notions and make unreasonable demands upon the big parties
in carnival contest terms and now any wispy or silly notions about Majority
Rule or other delusions vanish in the political mists. There is a fast hustle
to fix the outcome with promises. Power is at risk. We do not know if Wallace
was offered anything, however. The big parties usually knuckle under with a
smile as they have little choice but to grovel ingloriously at the feet of
their sudden political superiors and submit to some of the demands of the
splinter group although they will never give up everything. Plans for future
legislation or more wholesale looting of the tax base become vastly complicated
in the following cases where several parties vie for control. The larger
parties must now metamorphose into a different metaphysical shape and construct
odd and frequently uncomfortable coalitions. Speeches on previous
steadfast and dedicated true-blue and eternal policies may have to be redacted
by expert spin masters to minimize the voter’s wrath and prevent
them from believing that their leaders sold them out, which is exactly what
they did. Look at France as an example[10]:
Citizen And Republican Movement Or MRC [Jean
Pierre Chevenement]
Democratic And European Social Rally Or RDSE
(Mainly Radical Republican And Socialist Parties, And Prg) [Jacques Pelletier]
French Communist Party Or PCF [Marie-George
Buffet]
Greens [Yan Wehrling, National Secretary]
Left Radical Party Or PRG (Previously Radical
Socialist Party Or Prs And The Left Radical Movement Or MRG) [Jean-Michel
Baylet]
Movement For France Or MPF [Philippe De
Villiers]
National Front Or FN [Jean-Marie Le Pen]
Rally For France Or RPF[Charles Pasqua]
Socialist Party Or PS [Francois Hollande]
Union For French Democracy Or UDF [Francois
Bayrou]
Union For A Popular Movement Or UMP [Nicolas
Sarkozy]
What a mess! The
opportunities for chicanery abound in this myriad goulash of puppeteers and
grifters. It is interesting that the Royalist Party of France is absent from
the list and must have been amalgamated with one of the 13 parties listed
above. The Law of Competition specifies that in any contest somebody must win
something so Nicolas Sarkozy was just elected in France. How, we may never
know or care.
Just to give the reader
one more example, check out the Italian system:
Italian Political
Parties
Center-Left Union Coalition [Romano Prodi]:
Ulivo Alliance (Including Democrats Of
The Left Or Ds [Piero Fassino]
Daisy-Democracy Is Freedom Or Dl [Francesco
Rutelli])
Rose In The Fist (Including Italian Social Democrats Or Sdi
[Enrico Boselli]
Italian Radical Party [Emma Bonino])
Italian Communist Party Or Pdci [Oliviero Diliberto]
Green Federation [Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio]
Communist Renewal Or Rc [Fausto Bertinotti]
Italy Of Values Or Idv [Antonio Di Pietro]
Union Of Democrats For Europe Or
Udeur [Clemente Mastella]
Republican European Movement Or Mre [Luciana
Sbarbati]
Center-Right Freedom House Coalition [Silvio
Berlusconi]:
Forza Italia Or Fi [Silvio Berlusconi]
National Alliance Or An [Gianfranco
Fini]
Union Of Christian Democrats Of The Center
Or Udc [Pier Ferdinando Casini] Northern League Or LEGA [Umberto Bossi]
Christian Democracy (Per La Autonomie) [Publio
Fiori]
New Italian Socialist Party Or New Psi [Gianni
De Michelis]
Italian Republican Party Or PRI [Giorgio La
Malfa]
Social Alternative [Alessandra Mussolini]
Social Movement-Tricolor Flame Or Msi-Fiamma
[Luca Romagnoli]
Social Idea Movement With Rauti Or Mis [Pino
Rauti]
South Tyrol People's Party Or Svp (German
Speakers) [Elmar Pichler Rolle]
Union Of Valley Aosta Region Or Uv [Guido
Cesal]
Notice that there are
two Communist parties?! It is interesting that the CIA site lists four parties
for the US: Democratic Party [Howard Dean], Green Party [??], Libertarian
Party [Steve Damerell], and the Republican Party [Ken Mehlman] as of 2006. Note
that Perot’s Independent Party is not listed. I guess the CPUSA with
the ubiquitous Gus Hall has collapsed.
The table below shows
the US system where independents [read not affiliated] constitute
about 1/3 of the voters and must vote some other way than ‘independent’ as
there is no independent party candidates. Confusing?? Yes.
Now consider the Gore v.
Bush Case in 2000. Here, we have the Greens siphoning off about 2% points
resulting in winning no seats or electoral votes but taking votes away from the
Democrats thus apparently giving Republicans a precarious victory. The leftist
pronouncement on this outcome was that the election was stolen. A count and
several recounts using multiple definitions of Enchanted Chads produced no
evidence that Gore ever won in even one of the four key precincts in Florida.
Earlier, Perot’s first attempt garnered 19% of the vote forcingClinton into
the plurality position and robbing the Republicans of another victory by the
slimy hand of a spoiler. In these two cases, the assignment of relative vote
value becomes extremely complicated, if it were not so in other examples given
above. The Independents must vote somewhere on the ballot so they default to
providing the swing votes that supply the win unless there are large
number of defectors in either the Dems or Republicans. Their power rises as the
party loyalists become more stubborn and dedicated to the various causes. Exit
polls are notorious for being absolutely erroneous as in the John Kerry
episodes, so we cannot really tell who provided the critical votes in Florida
in 2000, but know for certain that the Democrats were furious with Ralph Nader,
the Green Party Candidate[11],
who soaked up about 2% in a close race and they challenged his every chance to
register in the courts for the next election in 2004, a testament of the true
meanings of democracy if there ever was one. Certain conservative candidates
got excessive votes as well according to the gnomes who can predict where the
votes can come from and how many. 10,000 voters from New York were
technically able to vote in Florida. Sometimes a democracy is not a
democracy and this notion fits in with the belief that certain votes are
miscast, a crime against humanity.
|
No
of Parties
|
Party
Fractional Distribution
|
Value
of Your Vote
|
Comments
|
|
3
|
33%/34%/33%
|
1.0 or an equal chance to make a
difference for the independent party.
|
The US system, where
independents make up about 1/3 of the electorate.
|
|
4
|
33%/34%/31`%2%
|
Depends on what party. Greens get
1.0 for sure.
|
The 2% here is the Green Party,
which did not field a candidate in 2006. They apparently misdirected the
outcome in 2000.
|
|
5
|
Close for the two majors
|
1.00 if you voted for Wallace.
|
The 1948 race was very close.
|
It must be seen as
clear, bald terms that the Green Party wrecked the chances of the Democrats, or
so the Dems believe, as they still spit and fume over the episode. So, we must
give a value to the Greens who voted for their candidate, and by algebraic subtraction,
determined the outcome. The enigma here is that no respectable Green would ever
vote for Bush, yet they did and get a full 1.0 for their heresy. That
leaves questionable assessments for the absolute value of Democratic voters and
the Republicans as well. Given the snarly mix of independents and Greens, it is
not certain which major party gets the highest vote value from the two big
parties.
The reader who has come
this far has now seen the intricacies of the political world but might still
seek solace in the fact that they may just have some shared power with the
political parties even by serendipity. This is true only as a matter of degree.
If the average voter ponders the political landscape for enough time he or she
will notice that he or she has little or no inputs as to candidates. What is
your vote worth now? You get a choice to vote upon a field of proven
undesirables? That is power? Here, the shared power of the vote, generously
bequeathed by the politicians who designed this novelty, has been corrupted.
Your selections for whom to vote are selected by party leaders based on polls,
money, idealism, money, union endorsements, money and more money. Unless you
are a major benefactor or fund-raiser or belong to some political Dynasty, have
an electrifying political message or can manage to deliver a wheel barrow full
of cash at a White House Tea, the best you can get from your political
contributions is a piece of an earmark or a night in the Lincoln Bedroom,
probably with fresh sheets. We once more must take a closer look at H. Ross
Perot, who financed his own campaign and created his Reform Party[12] and
could never have pandered or begged for the 20 million dollars or so he spent
if he had played the usual political game with either of the established
parties. He could not call in IOUs. He had no chance except as a spoiler. Two
other examples from way back are the two Wallaces [13] who
made some impact on the political scenes of their era. Although Henry A.
Wallace and J. Strom Thurmond got 1.1 million votes each Henry received no
electoral votes and Strom got 39 with his States Rights Party. Hubert H. Humphrey was probably directly defeated by George C. Wallace
because the rest of the votes were almost exactly split.
More recently, Senator
Corzine spent 65,000,000$ of his own money to win a Senate Seat in New
Jersey and another 25,000,000$ to get into the governor’s seat as well.
While being in the majority party of that state, his money propelled him
headlong into the offices he selected by the power of his money. His party had
no choice but to follow along and wag the tails for the lead dog. He would
otherwise grow old and grizzled as he waited patiently his turn in a long line
of Democratic candidates.
It should be clear that
the notion of power sharing with votes is more complicated than taught in high
school civics or trumpeted by politicians. With the courts in a position to
overturn the will of the voters in sensitive referendums and other laws the
notion of the power of the vote is degraded to the level of absurdity.
rycK
Comments:
ryckki@gmail.com
[5] http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/Default.aspx?mode=post&g=541b8678-fbcf-4b88-80f8-a67cd523ebad
[10] These
can all be found on the CIA websites on the Internet, one for each country.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
|
1992
|
William J. Clinton
George H. Bush H. Ross Perot |
Democratic
Republican Independent |
370
168 0 |
44,909,889
39,104,545 19,742,267 |
|
1996
|
William J. Clinton
Robert J. Dole H. Ross Perot |
Democratic
Republican Reform Party27 |
379
159 0 |
47,402,357
39,198,755 8,085,402 |
|
1948
|
Harry S. Truman
Thomas E. Dewey J. Strom Thurmond Henry A. Wallace Norman Thomas |
Democratic
Republican States' Rights Dem. Progressive Socialist |
303
189 39 0 0 |
24,179,345
21,991,291 1,176,125 1,157,326 139,572 |
|
1968
|
Richard M. Nixon
Hubert H. Humphrey George C. Wallace |
Republican
Democratic American Independent |
301
191 46 |
31,785,480
31,275,166 9,906,473 |
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