The 2008 Election Results, Dysfunctional Democracy and Constitutional Crisis

On November 4, 2008 after another bruising and divisive campaign as the night wears thin it becomes clear for the second time this decade that the Presidential candidate with the most popular votes is not the winner of the Electoral College system. That next morning Americans wake in disbelief with the world asking how did this happen again.

As the weeks pass the popularly chosen candidate decides not to concede, as Democrat Al Gore did in 2000, leading to a Constitutional crisis. In this state of confusion, many Americans take to the streets in support of their favorite candidate, further dividing the nation while believing that their visible show of support could sway the Supreme Court. However, this time the Supreme Court is demanding a political resolution to the crisis.

The United States of America is now the only country in the world with an Electoral College system, which has four times prevented the candidate with the most popular votes from becoming President. The Electoral College system was created as a compromise to the slave owning states, offering greater electoral power without requiring them to extend voting rights to African-Americans. Currently voters in smaller states like Wyoming and Delaware have more than four times the voting strength for President as do Californians and New York voters. With most states either strongly Democratic or Republican, this divisive system leaves only a hand full of states, or swing states, to determine the final outcome of the election.

Now we now know the signs were all around us. In March 2007 an Associated Press poll found that 75% of Americans believed our country was moving in the wrong direction. The percent is even higher after another divisive election season with the candidates, political parties, and special interests spending over two billion dollars advocating for their candidate while criticizing their opponent. During the final weeks before the election, again the two battleground states were Florida and Ohio. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the final days to sway those few undecided voters and to suppress the turnout of their opposing voters. Once the beacon of democracy, how did the United States of America become a nation with such a dysfunctional democratic political system?

What is democracy? As President Lincoln proclaimed, "Government of, by and for the people." According to many democracy advocates there is a three step process to creating a government of, by and for the people. The first and most important step is the belief that it is possible and desirable. The second is to learn more about democracy reform efforts. The third step is doing something specific to revive democracy. Additionally, advocates include at least four reforms: Electoral College, national voting system, campaign financing and a National Democracy Day Holiday.

To create a one person one vote election, all advocates agree the path to reviving democracy in America starts by reforming or removing the undemocratic Electoral College system. To do this requires either a Constitutional Amendment or the passage of state compacts. Several states have already taken legislative action to allocate their Electoral College votes to the candidate with the most popular votes. The organization National Popular Vote at http://www.nationalpopularvote.org is leading the effort to create a one person one vote democracy in America.

To have confidence in the election results, an import democracy reform is a national and verifiable voting system. For instance, the Count Every Vote Act of 2007 (HR 1381) is national legislation that would create a nonpartisan uniform election standard. The current highly political fifty state election system with voting machine corporations donating to candidates creates a situation where our vote can not be guaranteed. For instance in 2004, the state of Ohio, the state that ultimately gave the election to George Bush, the Secretary of State was Bush's campaign co-chair and the state's electronic voting machine company donated heavily to the Bush campaign. In a democracy, elections are transparent, professional and non-partisan.

Special interests with big money spent over two billion dollars influencing the outcome of the Presidential election. Taking the special interest money out of the political system has proven to be very difficult. The 2007 Supreme Court decision gave the big corporations, wealthy individuals, and Political Action Committees even greater influence over the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election. In dissent Justice David Souter warned, "This kind of corporate and union spending seriously jeopardizes the integrity of democratic government." After the results of 2008, Americans are now willing to listen to advocates of publicly financed elections, the only way to ensure that the people own the political system and not the special interests.

Like most Tuesdays on November 4th Americans were busy working, some with two jobs and thus they found it difficult to go vote. In many democratic countries the election-day is a national holiday. The National Democracy Day Holiday Resolution (H.R.) 63, entitled Democracy Day Act, proposed by Rep. John Conyers to celebrate those who have dedicated their live to the advancement of democracy and to give all Americans the time to vote is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Will it take a Constitutional crisis for us Americans to act to revive democracy? To create a functional democracy with Constitutional integrity, lets start today by believing we have the power, lets take the time to learn more about democracy and then lets do something to revive democracy.

Sustainable Agriculture is Important to the Environment But So Are Sustainable Finance and Economies

Only the bad stuff makes news and the end of July was no exception with three different environmental reports that financial institutions, businesses and politicians should take heed of.

Yet somehow, it all seems to carry on regardless. In the aftermath of the most catastrophic economic situation since the 1930s, there is still no sign of contrition from those widely regarded to be most culpable.

They are the financial institutions that speculated wildly on continued growth when bundling dodgy property loans (given to people who had little prospect of repaying them) into obscure financial packages - called mortgage backed derivatives - that not even some bankers and economists understood.

Is this writer the only person on the planet who can see a similarity to pyramid selling?

Legislation to tighten control and regulation of banks and other financial institutions in the USA, UK and Europe, according to economic experts like Prof Raghuram Rajoram, of Chicago University, and former member of the UK's Monetary Policy Committee, Dr Sushil Wadhwani, are toothless while the emphasis is still on a recovery based on growth.

Yet it's feared that the strict austerity measures introduced in the UK, US and Europe are endangering economic recovery and while it may be necessary to cut the massive government debts that propping up the banks has caused it should be done more gradually. Some would go further.

What's needed, according to Dr Wadhwani, is a more sustainable - and differently structured - economic model. Yet, he says, policy makers and financial regulators are still using the same techniques used in previous recessions and making the same policy mistakes and has said: "there's not enough contrition being shown.... Banks haven't absorbed the appropriate lessons of the mistakes they made, in fact they're not even willing to admit that mistakes were made."

There's that word sustainable again. It's familiar in the spheres of environment, agriculture and the need to grow more food. It should be familiar in the financial and political worlds also.

But what have financial investors and Funds done? They've turned their attention to other sources of investment in the form of speculation on basic commodities like grain, artificially pushing up prices of basic foods beyond the means of the poorest on the planet.

Of course, in their small and insular world, any commodity in short supply is likely to be a good investment - buy up scarce stocks or options in future trading and the price will rise giving more profit for the investor.

There's plainly no room in the world of money for ethics.

It's instructive to put the reports mentioned earlier into this context. Firstly a report on climate change revealed 2010 has been the warmest year on record.

Then came a report that global warming might be the cause of micro-organisms dying out in the world's oceans. Phytoplankton have been diminishing at the rate of 1% per year since the mid-20th Century. They are crucial to the marine food chain and to drawing down carbon dioxide as well as producing around half the oxygen we breathe.

Finally the Financial Times, London, revealed the leaked contents of a report by the World Bank into investors from rich nations buying up African farmland. It's due in August and expected to conclude that foreign investors without the slightest agricultural expertise are threatening local resources by buying up farmland in places like Africa in order to gain on commodity prices.

Anti poverty campaigners have raised concerns about the effect of speculative land buying on the poorest local producers, whom they push out while at the same time investing little in improving agricultural techniques to meet the huge growth of food production needed to feed a growing global population.

It may be naïve but wouldn't it actually benefit investors to put their resources into those techniques - such as the new generation of low-chem agricultural products, including biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers - into training small producers to use them and into infrastructures to get the produce to market to ensure a sustainable return on their investment?

Or is it all about short term gain and selfishness for a minority of already-powerful people with no real concept of living on the same, shared planet, in the same, rapidly-deteriorating environment, breathing the same globally warmed air?

It has to be more than chance that running the world on a continuous economic growth model in a largely unregulated market coincides with accelerated destruction of rain forests, soil fertility, global warming and a host of now annual extreme weather events, like the latest devastating monsoon in Pakistan.

Sustainable economic systems are plainly as important to people's survival as they are to the planet's and it's a lesson of history that financial institutions, regulators, politicians and powerful multinational businesses all need to learn - fast.