Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board that states, in particular Indiana, can require voters to produce photo identification. Very little about the case is what it appears to be. In short, the whole issue and what passes for coverage of it is total bullshit, but it is illustrative as a microcosm of the charades of what passes for party politics in US electoral process.

The Republican Party position claiming a need for Voter IDs is baseless – and base. In short, there is no “Voter Fraud” problem. Visitors to this site understand that America has a big-time Election Fraud problem, but the Bush regime has spent a king’s ransom looking for so-called “vote fraud,” and come up with precisely ZERO – nada, zilch – cases. Remember Gonzales’ US Prosecutors scandal? That was about firing US Attorneys who didn’t want to waste their time and public resources on phantom non-crimes. “Voter fraud” is a faux scandal manufactured by a fraudulent “public interest group,” the American Center for Voting Rights, which disappeared once the charade could no longer be maintained. The entire empirical foundation for this Indiana legislation has been repudiated in the most thorough way conceivable.

The Democratic Party position as a litigant against the new Indiana law because it will disenfranchise the poor and minorities is disingenuous. First, and most fundamental, the right to cast a ballot means little if there is no corresponding assurance that the vote is counted as cast. Any Democratic involvement in legislation of this kind is disingenuous given their lack of commitment to votes being counted as cast, or even to ensuring that voters can register and vote when it matters! Worse, given that Indiana provides IDs free of charge to people without driver's licenses and also allows voters who lack photo IDs to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity, the Dems give fodder to their enemies where they are most vulnerable. The naïve onlooker is left to wonder if maybe the intent of the Dems perhaps is voter fraud. At very least, it feeds into their caricature among the middle class as knee-jerk, addle-headed demagogic panderers to the poor.

So, what’s going on? First, why the legislation in the first place if there is no such thing as Voter Fraud. Well, Rovian Republicans achieve three important ends with this effort: 

First, to the degree they fool people into believing there’s a problem, they motivate their base. A new Daley-style Democratic machine manufacturing votes? Heavens me, what a problem! If, in fact, Richard Daley (the father) got more than his share of graveyard votes, it’s nothing compared to the way the Republicans have milked this myth of a machine itself dead for at least three decades. The Democrats' position that it hurts the poor despite the availability of free IDs and no plaintiffs to support their contention leads the middle class to believe that the intent of the Dems perhaps really is voter fraud or addle-headed positioning with the poor, either of which is leads them not only to desert the Dems, but despise them!

Even those not fooled about voter fraud per se, i.e. those who take the trouble to read or think a bit, are likely confused about – and led to dismiss – the truly serious matter of election fraud. So even when “voter fraud” faux scandals unravel, it’s also to the good. Rather than shining on a light on the scandalous condition of election administration in this country and actual stolen elections, vote-fraud fraud becomes inter-mixed in the public mind with election fraud, and genuine election integrity advocates become linked in the public mind with American Center for Voting Rights types as lunatics and unscrupulous partisans.

Finally, they create a ruse for explaining how yet another reptilian Republican manages to “win” an election despite the murderous wars, scandal, mismanagement, hypocrisy, unprecedented thievery, and utter disregard for decency, truth, and the future of the planet. The claim in the “liberal media” is that despite taking positions that are anathema to 60% or more of the electorate, Rove wins because he has, yet again, outmaneuvered the Democrats, i.e., he stole it fair and square. Unsavory perhaps, but insufficient to lead to insurrection. Rather, it allows an endless diversion of efforts into ensuring access to vote. A diversion because, in the end, access doesn’t matter if the votes aren’t even counted.

And what about the Democrats, and their (weak) prosecution of voting rights through Indiana Voter ID opposition?

Opposing ID requirements allows the Dems to portray themselves as the party of the poor and civil rights, while concretely doing little to benefit these constituencies – the difficult dual mission of the party.

Although the Democratic Party and aligned “election reform” groups aggressively solicit donations to fight disenfranchisement, they shirk and slink when asked to act on behalf of those actually disenfranchised. Not only have they legitimized and whitewashed stolen elections of 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006; not only have they supported HAVA and electronic voting and resisted meaningful election reform. But even when confronted with evidence of 82,000 fraudulently “scrubbed” Florida voters in the 2000 general election, voters whose ballots would have easily erased Bush’s supposed 527 vote victory, the Democratic Party leadership kept the news silent. [1] Gore asked Jesse Jackson to disperse his protesters, even as the Republican “Brooks Brothers” mob stopped the recount in Miami. When confronted with solid evidence of a stolen 2004 general election when Ohio votes and voters were manipulated every way possible, party chieftains uniformly pressed Kerry to likewise capitulate.  

All this is impossible to understand without grasping that the Democratic Party’s primary place in the American system is to serve as regime enablers: allow those to wield power behind the scenes and more-or-less directly through the Republican Party to proceed with little resistance to pursue core military and industrial interests such as starting a foreign war for oil, establishing “free trade” abroad while abolishing anti-trust regulations at home, allowing unfettered inter-generational and cross-national transfer of wealth, creating a “war on terror” that has eliminated habeas corpus and other fundamental rights, and, closest to the experience of us in this group, consolidating media control and securing control of the machinery of elections.

The competition provided by the Democratic Party is sometimes real, but always limited. Much the same as Ford competes with General Motors, Kelloggs and General Mills, or Intel-AMD, competition is sharply delimited. They’ll compete on the size of the tail fins, or the prizes they put in the boxes, but not on price or quality because both parties are funded by the same sources. In some ways it’s even worse than that. Sometimes, it’s worse than that:  and often openly employed by Republicans (e.g., the Florida Democratic Party State Chair is employed by the ex-Republican Party State Chair [2]). Republicans advance their careers by winning; Democratic elites advance their careers by “playing ball.” For example, Bill Daley, the Gore 2000 campaign manager who repeatedly urged surrender in the post-election contest, was subsequently invited to replace Dick Cheney on the board of EDS, the Texas based computer services firm on whose board Baker also served. Jeffrey Toobin reported that Baker “would laugh mischievously about what a good idea it was to ask Gore’s campaign chairman Bill Daley to take Cheney’s place. [3]

The real vigor of the Democratic Party leadership goes not into beating Republicans, but into crushing other organized opposition to the system. They are commonly perceived as ineffectual, losers, and worse. But they have been remarkably successful at diverting the energies of those who otherwise might actually effectively fight the system. Even among those of us who recognize Democratic Party duplicity and the utter corruption of current electoral processes, most continue to seek change through Democratic Party-led legislation and Democratic Party electoral gains.

The Indiana case is one more in which the Dems win by losing. It’s tough to keep support when you keep losing. But regardless of whether or not the legal defeat really helps them lose upcoming elections; it certainly provides a ruse for upcoming losses; it helps them maintain control of their own electorate and thereby help “centrist” candidates win Democratic Party primaries. (Wonder why the current Democratic-controlled congress is almost indistinguishable from the preceding Republican ones? The new Democrats are literally Republicans. [4, 5]) And they now have a cause which can be used to support their charade as the party of inclusion. By successfully claiming the mantel of the indigent, the Dems keeps a true opposition party from springing into existence. And then they help to systematically crush that hope, until there is no fight left.

The ruling means the ID requirement will be in effect for next week’s presidential primary in Indiana, where a significant number of new voters are expected to turn out for the Democratic contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. And so we have a convenient ruse as to why Clinton will win despite Obama’s clearly greater popularity, and why the Democratic Party internal fight goes on. 

[1] Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (New York: Plume, 2004).

[2] Jeffrey Toobin, Too close to call: the thirty-six-day battle to decide the 2000 election (New York: Random House, 2001)

[3] Michael Collins, “John Russell Interviews Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman.” Thursday, 19 July 2007 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00271.htm 

[4] Steve Freeman, “Who really won the 2006 US Congressional Elections / Who the DCCC fought for and against.” September 7, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/4cpqen 

[5] Matt Renner, “Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives.” t r u t h o u t. September 6, 2007  http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607J.shtml