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Author Topic:   Gambling on Democracy
jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted August 18, 2006 12:24 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Don't Gamble on Democracy
Lowell Ponte
Friday, Aug. 18, 2006


One lucky randomly-selected voter in Arizona's Sept. 12 primary election might win a million dollars.

The reason for this is that a ballot measure called the "Voter Reward Act" on this November's ballot would allocate that much from the state's lottery fund for every major election – and, if passed by voters, it would be retroactive to this September's primaries.

This measure's author is Mark Osterloh, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate***(Now isn't that a shock? A dimocrat attempting to buy an election), who persuaded 185,000 petition signers that this gambling incentive would enhance democracy by increasing voter turnout.

Nowadays more than a third of eligible voters typically refuse to register, and half or more of registered voters cast no ballot on Election Day.

President George Bush was elected with only about one of every six potential votes, but the same would have been true for Democrat John Kerry had he won instead. In our democracy the majority "votes with their feet" by staying home.

"The media invariably blames ‘voter apathy'" for such low turnout, wrote Jill Stewart in Aug. 17's Wall Street Journal, "but it's really more about voter disgust."

By contrast, 95 percent of Australians vote. Those who do not must pay a $15 fine. Their incentive, too, is monetary; albeit stick, not carrot.

In 2002, the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Ala., offered a $10,000 cash prize to one lucky voter. Ballot stubs proving that a person had voted became private lottery tickets.

This lottery, however, was racially segregated.

The winner, picked in a drawing Nov. 17 was, according to the rules, someone who has been "historically excluded from voting in Alabama during the last 50 years."

In other words, no white people need apply – not even those descended from the estimated 100,000 former Confederate soldiers and officeholders denied their right to vote following their defeat in the War Between the States.

Caucasians were therefore denied whatever incentive to vote that this lottery prize might give.

We can only wonder how the marchers, black and white together, who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge March 7, 1965, in one of the greatest historic moments of the civil rights struggle, would have felt about this cynical return of segregation to Selma 37 years later.

One of those marchers in 1965 march became Museum founder and head Joanne Bland. She refused to tell reporters the source of that year's $10,000 prize, saying that the donor wished to remain "anonymous." Was this donor a prominent Democrat – perhaps even the Democratic Party itself – using a racially-exclusive prize as an inducement to increase voter turnout of a group that votes up to 95 percent Democratic? If so, was this tantamount to buying an election?***Yes, as usual but more blatant

During the 1996 general election the Museum gave away a red Jeep Grand Cherokee to the winning minority voter, according to The Associated Press. In Selma's 2000 city election its lottery winner pocketed $1,000.

In 2002 a former Selma city attorney Henry Pitts called the Museum's $10,000 prize an "attempt to purchase votes."

It reminded me of an idea I repeatedly proposed – and one Native America tribe in Washington State that could hear my national radio show actually attempted.

This was to declare that a candidate or ballot proposition committee would pay every voter in an election $25 cash money. (Advertising by candidates in 2002 in South Dakota expended more than $30 per voter.)

This was not "vote buying" in the criminal sense.

The $25 would be paid no matter who one voted for. It would be given to anybody registered in the relevant district who could produce a ballot stub as proof of voting.

My idea had only one catch – that the $25 would be paid if, and only if, the candidate or ballot proposition committee paying it was the winner. If you want the money, you now have a powerful incentive to vote for the person offering it. (Yes, this is the same logic behind politicians promising higher welfare payments or other goodies.)

The scheme of the National Voting Rights Museum was even more cynical and ugly than my idea. It offered a payoff to one voter, regardless of who he or she voted for. But it restricted the payoff only to non-whites, i.e., to members of groups that vote overwhelmingly Democratic. This gave the old civil rights song "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" a whole new meaning.

The deeper you look into this Democratic voter turnout scheme, the uglier it gets. For example, it limited the prize to those excluded from voting "during the last 50 years." Why not those excluded during the past 100 years? Because this would include white women, a majority of whom might vote Republican.

If the aim is merely to increase the turnout of all voters in such schemes, why not make a token payment to every voter as we now do for everyone summoned to jury duty?

The cynicism of Democrat Osterloh phony egalitarianism becomes clear upon analysis. Funding government via lottery has always been scorned as a selective "tax on the stupid."

The half of the population whose IQ is above 100 can see that the one-in-two-million chance of winning Osterloh's lottery is too small to be worth the effort of voting. But the Democratic Party's power comes largely from those whose IQ is below 100.

For such dimwitted people – and who else could be fooled by Democratic politicians?***(Hear, hear!) – this tiny chance for quick, unearned wealth would be seductive.

It would benefit Democrats.

Democracy was supposed to be about responsible voters casting ballots for the common good, not personal greed. But Democrats buy votes by promising to transfer wealth from the productive to the lazy, and the "Voter Reward Act" fits this scheme perfectly.

It will lure hoards of stupid, ignorant, selfish people who otherwise would not have voted.

Experts debate its legality.

Federal law makes it a crime for any person to receive or offer money for voting (18 USC 597). The counter-argument is that Arizona is not a person.

This gamble would set a terrible precedent and make every Arizonan a loser.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/8/18/95148.shtml

**The Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano has been strangly silent on this issue. I'm sure we're all shocked and surprised to find that Napolitanto is a democrat.

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lioneye68
unregistered
posted August 18, 2006 12:34 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The problem is, people who don't vote are generally not interested in politics, and thusly, uninformed. The uninformed vote will go to the party that shreiks the loudest, as these voters won't bother to look further than what the shreikers are saying.

Under these conditions, Bush would most certainly lose the election.

It would be interesting to see how the Dem's would take control of the situation(s) they'd be inheriting. Very interesting indeed.

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neptune5
unregistered
posted August 18, 2006 12:49 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well the president has been gambling not just on democracy but with the American people in general, ever since he was elected in 2000, striking worse on 9/11.

------------------
Virgo Rising, Sagittarius Sun, Pisces Moon

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted August 18, 2006 01:17 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
You're right lioneye.

The uninformed will vote for the candidate/party who shrieks the loudest...and promises them goodies from the federal treasury.

neptune5, Bush made a rational decision to fight terrorists and terrorism on it's home ground...and not on the streets of America. That proved to be a common sense, rational and logical decision...not a gamble....unless, of course you can point me in the direction of ANY successful terrorist attacks within America since 9/11/01.

Can you?

If not, then all the hand wringing, moaning, wheezing, shrieking in unison antics of far left radicals, in the press, in Congress and in radical leftist groups is just pure, unadulterated bullsh*t.

Bush was right and leftists remain what they've always been.....wrong.

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