Please let me know the source of your statement that Canada has a system of
proportional representation.
Many people have said that Canada and other countries should.
But we have, in fact, what is called "first past the post." The effect is
that many voices are not represented in Parliament.
>December 7, 2000
>
>The Structure of White Power and the Color of Election 2000
>
>By Bob Wing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>What if there was an election, and nobody won?
>
>Thank you, Florida, for exposing as fraud the much-vaunted
>sanctity of the vote in this country and placing electoral
>reform back on the country's agenda. It turns out that a
>real election has more votes disqualified, miscounted, or
>lost than the margin of error of a well-designed poll.
>More importantly, the botched election exposed that voting
>discrimination in Florida was widespread and that racism is
>institutionally structured into the two-party, Electoral
>College system.
>
>Reports out of Florida show that people of color cast
>a disproportionate number of the disqualified votes. On
>election day, black and Haitian voters were harassed by
>police, their names removed from the rolls, and their
>ballots left uncounted by outdated machines. Thirty-five
>years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, racist
>violations of election law are rampant and should be
>pursued to justice in Florida and elsewhere.
>
>But beyond these immediate issues, this election reveals
>again just how central race is to U.S. politics and how
>racism is actually structured into election law. The
>election reaffirms that people of color are the most
>consistent liberal/progressive voters in the country and
>that their clout is increasing -- but that electoral racism
>effectively nullifies almost half of their votes. The Civil
>Rights movement destroyed the monopoly over power by
>whites, but the tyranny of the white majority is still
>institutionalized in the winner-take-all, two-party,
>Electoral College system.
>
>Unless we place fighting electoral racism at the top of the
>racial justice agenda, we cannot challenge the political
>stranglehold of conservative white voters or maximize the
>growing power of people of color.
>
>
>By the Numbers
>
>The idea that race and racism are central to American
>politics is not just a theory that harkens back to the
>days of slavery. It's a current-day lived reality that is
>particularly evident in this country's biggest and most
>sacred political event: the quadrennial presidential
>pageant.
>
>In Election 2000, 90 percent of African Americans voted
>for Gore, as did 63 percent of Latinos, and 55 percent of
>Asians. (No exit poll data on the Native American vote is
>available, but most have historically voted Democratic.)
>Combined, people of color accounted for almost 30 percent
>of Gore's total vote, although they were only 19 percent
>of voters.
>
>Latinos, the country's fastest growing voting bloc, went
>heavily Democratic -- even in Texas -- despite extensive
>efforts by the Republicans to sway them. Most Asians
>followed suit. People of color are becoming a larger portion
>both of the U.S. population and of the electorate, and voting
>largely in concert with each other in presidential elections.
>
>On the other hand, whites constituted almost 95 percent of
>Bush's total vote.
>
>Conventional electoral wisdom discounts race as a political
>factor, focusing instead on class, the gender gap, union
>membership, etc. But, the only demographic groups that had a
>fairly unified vote -- defined as 60 percent or more for one
>of the candidates -- were: blacks, Latinos, Jews (81 percent
>for Gore), union members (62 percent for Gore), residents of
>large cities (71 percent for Gore), and white males (60
>percent for Bush). All but union members and big-city
>residents are racial or ethnic groups.
>
>And, the large numbers of people of color in unions (about
>25 percent) and big cities largely account for the heavy
>Democratic vote of those demographic groups. White union
>members and city dwellers vote to the left of whites who
>live more racially isolated lives, but they barely tilt
>Democratic. Similarly, women voted 54-43 for Gore, but
>white women actually favored Bush by one point. Women
>of color create the gender gap.
>
>The same can be said of the poor: although 57 percent
>of voters with incomes under $15,000 voted for Gore, poor
>whites -- who make up just under half of eligible voters
>in this category -- broke slightly for Bush. The income
>gap in presidential politics is thoroughly racialized.
>As the sociologist William Form pointed out long ago, if
>only a bare majority of white working class people voted
>consistently Democratic, we could have some kind of social
>democracy that would provide much more social justice than
>the conservative regimes we are used to.
>
>Despite the pronounced color of politics, Ralph Nader
>(and his multi-hued progressive pundits) blithely dismiss
>the fact that he received only one percent of the votes of
>people of color and that the demographics of his supporters
>mirrored those of the Republicans (except younger). In The
>Nation, Harvard law professor Lani Guinier points out that
>more votes were considered "spoiled" -- and therefore
>disqualified -- than were cast for the so-called
>"spoiler," Ralph Nader.
>
>
>Electoral College: Pillar of Racism
>
>The good news is that the influence of liberal and
>progressive voters of color is increasingly being felt
>in certain states. They have become decisive in the most
>populous states, all of which went to Gore except Ohio,
>Texas, and (maybe?) Florida. In California an optimist might
>even envision a rebirth of Democratic liberalism a couple of
>elections down the road, based largely on votes of people of
>color.
>
>The bad news is that the two-party, winner-take-all,
>Electoral College system of this country ensures, even
>requires, that voters of color be marginalized or totally
>ignored.
>
>As set forth in the Constitution, the Electoral College
>negates the votes of almost half of all people of color.
>For example, 53 percent of all blacks live in the Southern
>states, where this year, as usual, they voted over 90
>percent Democratic. However, white Republicans outvoted
>blacks in every Southern state (and every border state
>except Maryland). As a result, every single Southern
>Electoral College vote was awarded to Bush. While nationally,
>whites voted 54-42 for Bush, Southern whites, as usual, gave
>over 70 percent of their votes to the Republican. They thus
>completely erased the massive Southern black (and Latino,
>Asian, and Native American) vote for Gore in that region.
>
>Since the South's Electoral College votes go entirely
>to whichever candidate wins the plurality in each state,
>whether that plurality be by one vote or one million votes,
>the result was the same as if blacks and other people of
>color in the region had not voted at all. Similarly negated
>were the votes of the millions of Native Americans and
>Latino voters who live in overwhelmingly white Republican
>states like Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana -- and
>Texas. The tyranny of the white majority prevails. And the
>impact of the mostly black voters of Washington, D.C. is
>unfairly minimized by the unfair denied statehood and the
>arbitrary allocation to it of only three electoral votes.
>
>In his New York Times op-ed, Yale law professor Akhil Amar
>reveals that the hitherto obscure Electoral College system
>was consciously set up by the Founding Fathers to be the
>mechanism by which slaveholders would dominate American
>politics.
>
>The Constitution provided that slaves be counted as
>three-fifths of a person (but given no citizenship rights)
>for purposes of determining how many members each state
>would be granted in the House of Representatives. This
>provision vastly increased the representation of the
>slave states in Congress.
>
>At the demand of James Madison and other Virginia slave-
>holders, this pro-slavery allocation of Congresspersons also
>became the basis for allocation of votes in the Electoral
>College. It is a dirty little secret that the Electoral
>College was rigged up for the express purpose of translating
>the disproportionate Congressional power of the slaveholders
>into undue influence over the election of the presidency.
>Virginia ended up with more than a quarter of the electors
>needed to elect a president, and Virginia slaveholders
>proceeded to hold the presidency for 32 of the
>Constitution's first 36 years.
>
>Since slavery was abolished, the new justification for the
>Electoral College is that it allows smaller states to retain
>some impact on elections. And so it does, but to the benefit
>of conservative white Republican states. As Lani Guinier
>reports, in Wyoming, one Electoral College vote corresponds
>to 71,000 voters while in large population states (where the
>votes of people of color are more numerous) the ratio is one
>electoral vote to over 200,000 voters. So much for one
>person, one vote.
>
>The Electoral College remains a racist mechanism that
>renders powerless the presidential votes of almost half of
>all people of color in the country. This year the Electoral
>College will apparently enable the winner of the conservative
>white states to prevail over the winner of the national popular
>vote -- a tyranny of the minority.
>
>
>Two Party Racism
>
>The two-party system also structurally marginalizes voters
>of color.
>
>First of all, to win, both parties must take their most
>loyal voters for granted and focus their message and money
>to win over the so-called undecided voters who will actually
>decide which party wins each election. The most loyal Democrats
>are strong liberals and progressives, the largest bloc of whom
>are people of color. The most loyal Republicans are conservative
>whites, especially those in rural areas and small towns. The
>undecideds are mostly white, affluent suburbanites; and both
>parties try to position their politics, rhetoric, and policies
>to woo them. The interests of people of color are ignored or
>even attacked by both parties as they pander to the "center."
>
>Another consequence is that a disproportionate number of
>people of color see no reason to vote at all. The U.S. has
>by far the lowest voter participation rate of any democracy
>in the world. The two party system so demobilizes voters
>that only about 65 percent of the eligible electorate is
>registered, and only 49 to 50 percent usually vote (far
>less in non-presidential elections).
>
>Not surprisingly, the color and income of those who actually
>vote is skewed to higher income, older, and more conservative
>white people. In the 1996 presidential election, 57 percent
>of eligible whites voted compared to 50 percent of blacks
>and 44 percent of Latinos. Seventy-three percent of people
>with family incomes over $75,000 voted compared to 36
>percent of those with incomes below $15,000.
>
>In addition, current electoral law disenfranchises millions
>of mainly Latino and Asian immigrants because they are not
>citizens. And, according to Reuters, some 4.2 million
>Americans, including 1.8 million black men (13 percent of
>all black men in America), are denied the right to vote
>because of incarceration or past felony convictions.
>
>
>Proportional Representation
>
>To remedy these racist, undemocratic electoral structures,
>Lani Guinier and many others propose an electoral system
>based on proportional representation. Canada, Australia,
>all of the European countries except Britain, and many Third
>World countries have proportional electoral systems. In such
>systems, all parties that win a certain minimum of the popular
>vote (usually five percent) win representation in the Congress
>(or Parliament) equal to their vote. To win the presidency,
>a party must either win an outright majority or form a
>governing coalition with other parties.
>
>Thus, for example, the German Green Party, which gets about
>seven percent of the vote, is part of the ruling coalition
>in that country. If we had such a system, parties representing
>people of color could be quite powerful. Instead, in our current
>system, voting for a third-party candidate like Nader takes votes
>>from Gore and helps Bush. And someone like Jesse Jackson, who
>won 30 percent of the Democratic popular vote in 1988, is not
>a viable candidate and his supporters have virtually no clout
>in national politics.
>
>If we fail to place fighting electoral racism at the very
>top of a racial justice agenda, we will continue to be
>effectively disenfranchised and white people, especially
>conservative white Republicans, will enjoy electoral
>privileges that enable them to shape the policies and
>institutions of this country at our expense. We must fight
>for a system of proportional representation, for eliminating
>the role of big money in elections, and for making voting
>readily accessible to poor folk.
>
>Until we win a proportional system -- or unless there is
>some other major political shakeup -- the vast majority
>of people of color will continue to participate in the
>Democratic Party. Therefore we should demand that the
>Democrats more strongly represent their interests. We must
>fight the Democratic move to the right, led by people like
>Al Gore, or the majority of voters of color will be left to
>the tender mercies of the racist, pro-corporate rightwing of
>the Democratic Party. However, our ability to do this --
>or to support or shape third parties that truly represent
>our interests and include our peoples -- depends upon our
>ability to form mass, independent racial justice organizations
>and to build alliances with other progressive forces both
>inside and outside the electoral realm.
>
>Building electoral alliances -- around issues, referenda,
>and candidates, both inside and outside the Democratic Party
>-- is key to the maturation of a racial justice movement that
>functions on the scale necessary to impact national politics,
>social policy, or ideological struggle in this country.
>
>--
>
>Bob Wing is executive editor of ColorLines and a longtime
>fighter for racial and economic justice.
>
>Copyright (c) 2000 Bob Wing. All Rights Reserved.
>
>Bob Wing, Editor
>ColorLines Magazine
>3781 Broadway
>Oakland, CA 94612
>510-653-3415 (ph)
>510-653-3427 (fax)
>mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>http://www.colorlines.com
>
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Dr. W.R. Needham
Director, Canadian Studies
St Paul's United College
University of Waterloo, N2L 3G5
Tel: 519-885-1460 ext 209
Fax: 519-885-6364
web: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/ECON/faculty/needham.html
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