>On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>>You'll take democracy over constitutional rights? What is your view
>>of Brown v. Board of Education? Or on the other side, US v. Debs
>>(upholding the convictions of the CP leadership for conspiracy to
>>advocate the overthrow of the US govt)? The thing is, mere majority
>>rule can be oppressive when the majority is prejudiced. I'm not
>>saying there is not a deep problem about democracy involved in
>>constitutional democracy, but do you really think that democracy is
>>equivalent to unconstrained majority rule?
>
>I wondered when and if I'd get Justin's trademarked lawyerly
>smackdown on this. Rule of law, checks and balances, yeah, yeah, I
>agree we need a court system to interpret the legal statutes.
>However, I'll stick with what I said: if I had to cede political
>power to some noble, unelected elite or live with the decisions of
>the people, I'd go with the mob every time. Sure, people can be
>prejudiced; their consensus can challenge or contradict the existing
>laws; the majority decision is not necessarily the most rational or
>"best" decision.
The way US elections function, however, what we have is not majority rule but minority rule, in several senses:
1. Ballot access is so restricted that only candidates pre-approved by the ruling class can easily get on ballots in all states in elections for the highest offices. Even if independent and third-party candidates manage to get on them, they cannot effectively compete with ruling-class candidates in propaganda contests, especially after they end up spending almost all their financial resources simply trying to get on the ballots. The monied few rule.
2. Party caucuses and primaries are organized in such a way that a minority of caucus and primary voters in the early primaries -- especially in Iowa and New Hampshire -- tend to exercise a disproportionate influence.
3. Only 50-60% of the eligible electorate vote. Therefore, any winning presidential candidate has only a minority -- 25-30% of eligible voters supporting his agenda. Winning candidates for lesser offices in non-presidential election years can claim even smaller proportions of eligible voters as supporters of their agendas.
4. Non-citizens do not have voting rights, even in local elections.
5. Criminal disenfranchisement laws have taken voting rights away from a large number of working-class voters, especially working-class Black voters: "Using national conviction and corrections on data, we estimate that 3.9 million Americans, including 1.4 million black men, cannot vote because of felony convictions" (<a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o-01.htm>1998</a>).
Since legislators are selected by a minority, they cannot very well claim that they, unlike justices, represent the will of the majority. -- Yoshie
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