USA - Elections 2000

Noam Chomsky

The most striking fact about the November 2000 elections is that they were astatistical tie (for Congress as well, virtually). The most interestingquestion is what this shows, if anything, about the state of functioningdemocracy.

For many commentators, the fact that the presidency "is hinging on a fewhundred votes" reveals the extraordinary health and vigour of Americandemocracy (former State Department spokesperson James Rubin). An alternativeinterpretation is that it confirms the conclusion that there was no electionin any sense that takes the concept of democracy seriously.

Under what conditions would we expect 100 million votes to divide 50-50,with variations that fall well within expected margins of error of 1-2%?There is a very simple model that would yield such expectations: people werevoting at random.

If tens of millions of votes were cast for X vs. Y as president of Mars,such results would be expected. To the extent that the simplest model isvalid, the elections did not take place.

Of course, more complex models can be constructed, and we know that thesimplest one is not strictly valid. Voting blocs can be identified, andsometimes the reasons for choices can be discerned. It's understandable thatfinancial services should overwhelmingly support Bush, whose announced plansincluded huge gifts of public resources to the industry and even morecommitment than his opponent to the demolition of quasi-democraticinstitutions (Social Security in particular). And it is no surprise thataffluent white voters favoured Bush while union members, Latinos andAfrican-Americans strongly opposed him ("supported Gore," in conventionalterminology). But blocs are not always easy to explain in terms ofinterest-based voting, and it is well to remember that voting is oftenconsciously against interest. For example, in 1984 Reagan ran as a "realconservative," winning what was called a "landslide victory" (with under 30%of the electoral vote); a large majority of voters opposed his legislativeprogram, and 4% of his supporters identified themselves as "realconservatives."

Such outcomes are not too surprising when over 80% of the population feelthat the government is "run for the benefit of the few and the specialinterests, not the people," up from about half in earlier years. And whensimilar numbers feel that the economic system is "inherently unfair" andworking people have too little say, and that "there is too much powerconcentrated in the hands of large companies for the good of the nation."Under such circumstances, people may tend to vote (if at all) on groundsthat are irrelevant to policy choices over which they feel they have littleinfluence.

Such tendencies are strengthened by intense media/advertising concentrationon style, personality, and other irrelevancies (in the presidential debates,will Bush remember where Canada is?; will Gore remind people of someunpleasant know-it-all in 4th grade?). Public opinion studies lend furthercredibility to the simplest model.

Harvard's Vanishing Voter Project has been monitoring attitudes through thepresidential campaign. Its director, Thomas Patterson, reports that"Americans' feeling of powerlessness has reached an alarming high," with 53%responding "only a little" or "none" to the question: "How much influence doyou think people like you have on what government does?" The previous peak,30 years ago, was 41%.

During the campaign, over 60% of regular voters regarded politics in Americaas "generally pretty disgusting." In each weekly survey, more people foundthe campaign boring than exciting, by a margin of 48% to 28% in the finalweek. Three-fourths of the population regarded the whole process as largelya game played by large contributors (overwhelmingly corporations), partyleaders, and the PR industry, which crafted candidates to say "almostanything to get themselves elected," so that one could believe little thatthey said even when their stand on issues was intelligible. On almost allissues, citizens could not identify the stands of the candidates - notbecause they are stupid or not trying.

It is, then, not unreasonable to suppose that the simplest model is a prettyfair first approximation to the truth about the election, and that thecountry is being driven even more than before towards the conditiondescribed by former President Alfonso Lopez Michaelsen of Colombia,referring to his own country: a political system of power sharing by partiesthat are "two horses with the same owner." Furthermore, that seems to begeneral popular understanding.

On the side, perhaps the similarities help us understand Clinton's greatadmiration and praise for Colombian democracy, and for the grotesque socialand economic system kept in place by violence. And the fact that after adecade in which Colombia was the leading recipient of US arms and militarytraining in the hemisphere - and the leading human rights violator, inconformity with a well-established correlation - it attained first placeworld-wide in 1999, with a huge further increase now in progress(Israel-Egypt are a separate category).

When an election is a largely meaningless statistical tie, and a victor hasto be selected somehow, the rational procedure would be some arbitrarychoice; say, flipping a coin. But that is unacceptable. It is necessary toinvest the process of selecting our leader with appropriate majesty, aneffort conducted for five weeks of intense elite dedication to the task,with limited success, it appears.

The five weeks of passionate effort were not a complete waste. They didcontribute to exposing racist bias in practices in Florida and elsewhere -which probably have a considerable element of class bias, concealed by thestandard refusal in US commentary to admit that class structure exists, andthe race-class correlations. There was also at least some slight attentionto a numerically far more significant factor than the ugly harassment ofblack voters and electoral chicanery: disenfranchisement throughincarceration.

The day after the election, Human Rights Watch issued a (barely-noted) studyreporting that the "decisive" element in the Florida election was theexclusion of 31% of African-American men, either in prison or among the morethan 400,000 "ex-offenders" permanently disenfranchised. HRW estimates than"more than 200,000 potential black voters [were] excluded from the polls."Since they overwhelmingly vote Democratic, that "decisively" changed theoutcome. The numbers overwhelm those debated in the intense scrutiny overmarginal technical issues (dimpled chads, etc.). The same was true of otherswing states. In seven states, HRW reported, "one in four black men ispermanently barred" from voting; "almost every state in the U.S. deniesprisoners the right to vote" and "fourteen states bar criminal offendersfrom voting even after they have finished their sentences," permanentlydisenfranchising "over one million ex-offenders." These are African-Americanand Latino out of any relation to proportion of the population, or even towhat is called "crime." "More than 13% of black men (some 1.4 millionnation-wide) are disenfranchised for many years, sometimes for life, aresult of felony convictions, many for passing the same drugs that Al Goresmoked and George W. snorted in years gone by," U. of New Mexico LawProfessor Tim Canova writes.

The few reports in the mainstream U.S. press noted that the politicalimplications are highly significant, drawing votes away from Democraticcandidates. The numbers are large. In Alabama and Florida, over 6% ofpotential voters were excluded because of felony records; "for blacks inAlabama, the rate is 12.4 percent and in Florida 13.8 percent"; "In fiveother states - Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Virginia and Wyoming - felonydisenfranchisement laws affected one in four black men" (NY Times, Nov. 3,citing human rights and academic studies).

The academic researchers, sociologists Jeff Manza (Northwestern) andChristopher Uggen (Minnesota) conclude that "were it not for disenfranchisedfelons, the Democrats would still have control of the U.S. Senate." "If theBush-Gore election turns out to be as close as the Kennedy-Nixon election,and Bush squeaks through, we may be able to attribute that to felondisenfranchisement." Re-examining close Senate elections since 1978, theyconclude further that "the felon vote could have reversed Republicanvictories in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida and Wyoming, andprevented the Republican takeover" (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8). Citing thesame studies, the Santa Fe New Mexican (Nov. 19) pointed out that 5.5% ofpotential voters in New Mexico - where the election was also a statisticaltie - were disenfranchised by felony convictions. "As many as 45 percent ofblack males in the state can't vote - the highest ratio in the country,"though the total figures are not as dramatic as Florida. Figures were notavailable for Hispanics, who constitute 60% of the state's prisoners (andabout 40% of the estimated population), but the conclusions are expected tobe comparable. "Neither party seems interested in addressing the issue,Manza said. Republicans feel they have little to gain because these votersare thought to be overwhelmingly Democratic. And, he added, `Democrats aresufficiently concerned about not appearing to be weak on crime that I'm surethey would not be jumping up and down on this'."

The last comment directs attention to a critically important matter,discussed prominently abroad (see Duncan Campbell, Guardian, Nov. 14; SergeHalimi and Loic Wacquant, Le Monde diplomatique, Dec. 2000; also Earl OfariHutchinson, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 14). For the past eight years,Clinton and Gore disenfranchised a major voting bloc that would have easilyswung the election to Gore. During their tenure in office, the prisonpopulation swelled from 1.4 to 2 million, removing an enormous number ofpotential Democratic voters from the lists, thanks to the harsh sentencinglaws. Clinton-Gore were particularly devoted to draconian Reagan-Bush laws,Hutchinson points out. The core of these practices is drug laws that havelittle to do with drugs but a lot to do with social control: removingsuperfluous people and frightening the rest.

When the latest phase of the "war on drugs" was designed in the 1980s, itwas recognised at once that "we are choosing to have an intense crimeproblem concentrated among minorities" (Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of thefew Senators who paid attention to social statistics). "The war's plannersknew exactly what they were doing," criminologist Michael Tonry wrote,reviewing the racist and class-based procedures that run through the systemfrom arrest to sentencing - and that continue a long and disgracefultradition (see Randall Shelden, Controlling the Dangerous Classes: ACritical Introduction to the History of Criminal Justice).

Twenty years ago, the US was similar to other industrial countries in rateof incarceration. By now, it is off the spectrum, the world's leader amongcountries that have meaningful statistics. The escalation was unrelated tocrime rates, which were not unlike other industrial countries then and haveremained stable or declined. But they are a natural component of thedomestic programs instituted from the late Carter years, a variant of the"neo-liberal reforms" that have had a devastating effect in much of thethird world. These "reforms" have been accompanied by a notabledeterioration in conventional measures of "economic health" world-wide, buthave had a much more dramatic impact on standard social indicators: measuresof "quality of life." In the US, these tracked economic growth until the"reforms" were instituted, and have declined since, now to about the levelof 40 years ago, in what the Fordham University research institute that hasdone the major studies of the topic calls a "social recession" (Marc andMarque-Luisa Miringoff, The Social Health of the Nation; see Paul Street, Zmagazine, November 2000). Economic rewards are highly concentrated, and muchof the population becomes superfluous for profit and power.

Marginalisation of the superfluous population takes many forms. Some ofthese were the topic of a recent Business Week cover story entitled "WhyService Stinks" (Oct. 23). It reviewed refinements in implementing the 80-20rule taught in business schools: 20% of your customers provide 80% of theprofits, and you may be better off without the rest. The "new consumerapartheid" relies on modern information technology (in large measure a giftfrom an unwitting public) to allow corporations to provide grand services toprofitable customers, and to deliberately offer skimpy services to the rest,whose inquiries or complaints can be safely ignored. The experience isfamiliar, and carries severe costs - how great when distributed over a largepopulation, we don't know, because they are not included among the highlyideological measures of economic performance. Incarceration might beregarded as an extreme version, for the least worthy.

Incarceration has other functions. It is a form of interference in labourmarkets, removing working-age males, increasingly women as well, from thelabour force. Calculating real unemployment when this labour force isincluded, the authors of an informative academic study find the US to bewell within the European range, contrary to conventional claims (BruceWestern and Katherine Beckett, Am. J. of Sociology, Jan. 1999; also PrisonLegal News, Oct. 2000). They conclude that what is at issue is not labourmarket interference, but the kind that is chosen: job training, unemploymentinsurance, and so on, on the social democratic model; or throwingsuperfluous people into jail.

In pursuing these policies, the US has separated itself from otherindustrial countries. Europe abandoned voting restrictions for criminalsdecades ago; in 1999, the Constitutional Court of South Africa gave inmatesthe right to vote, saying that the "vote of each and every citizen is abadge of dignity and personhood."

Prior to the "neo-liberal reforms" and their "drug war" concomitant, the USwas heading in the same direction, the National Law Journal (Oct. 30)comments: "The American Bar Association Standards on Civil Disabilities of aConvicted Person, approved in 1980, state flatly that `[persons] convictedof any offence should not be deprived of the right to vote' and that lawssubjecting convicts to collateral civil disabilities `should be repealed'."

Without continuing, the Clinton-Gore programs of disenfranchising their ownvoters should be understood as a natural component of their overallsocio-economic conceptions. And the elections themselves illustrate therelated conception of the political system of two horses with the samecorporate owner. None of this is new, of course. There is no "golden age"that has been lost, and this is not the first period of concentrated attackon democracy and human rights. Insofar as the November 2000 elections areworth discussing, they should, I think, be seen primarily from theseperspectives.