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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - January 19 2004
Americans need to question their style
of democracy
In a speech on November 19 last year, President George W. Bush
extolled the virtues of democracy.
"We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic
country in the heart of the Middle East," he said. The call for
democracy has become so constant that one Gulf-based political analyst,
Moghazy al-Badrawy, likens it to a boring, broken record that nobody
believes.
But while Arabs are sceptical about America's motives and its methods
of bringing democracy to their world, closer to home few people
are querying the supposed base of their society.
Perhaps they should be. It's not only the growing reality of Fortress
America and the increasing level of civil constraints that are causing
some Americans to question their democratic basis; the integrity
of the electoral system itself is under fire.
Take last year's November 5 election in Atlanta, Georgia.
Using the new federally mandated electronic voting system, with
demographics virtually unchanged since the previous election four
years earlier, the state experienced a whopping turnaround from
Democrat to Republican.
The reversal of traditional voting patterns was so huge that not
a single poll came close to predicting it. Eventually suspicion
fell on the integrity of the new electronic voting system.
It turns out that the ATM-like system is owned by Diebold Inc,
a company run by one of President Bush's most lucrative campaign
contributors, a man who recently said he'd do whatever it took to
deliver the election to his good friend the President.
An article on ww.inthesettimes.com by Mark Lewellen-Biddle explores
the backers of a new law that makes e-voting mandatory across the
United States and the manufacturers of e-voting machines.
He calls them a "rats' nest of conflicts" that includes major defence
contractors, and asks why those companies with the most to gain
from a particular electoral outcome are mucking about in the American
electoral system.
The November issue of GQ magazine analysed the mechanics of the
new system. It reported that several hundred academics, a who's
who of American computer science department heads and associates,
had serious concerns.
The experts said the system did not have a voter-verifiable independent
audit (paper) trail. There was no room for independent verification,
no one was allowed to see source codes except the original programmers
and, in the case of the Georgia election, last-minute "on the fly"
changes that avoided the rigorous certification process trumpeted
by election officials were made to the software.
Then there was the proprietary nature of the voting software and
the secrecy, in the name of commercial interest, that shrouded its
development and application.
In contrast, Australia has designed a system that addresses and
eases these concerns.
With a transparency that should be the gold standard by which all
democracies conduct themselves, it made the software running its
electoral system completely open to public scrutiny.
Although designed by a private company, drafts as well as the finished
software code were posted on the internet for all to see and evaluate.
This ruins one American election official's comment that no country
in the world has the rigorous certification and testing standards
used in the US.
Free elections represent democracy in action. It's absurd that
this story, even the suspicion of corruption of the electoral system,
is not front-page news across the nation. It's not. Instead you'll
find it only in the alternative media.
Is this a sign of the hijacking of the media by corporate interest?
Or is it a testament to the power of myth, the idea of democracy
rather than the reality, a kind of collective amnesia of the American
people and evidence of the "disinformation that dominates the information
age" (as Noam Chomsky calls it).
Certainly President Bush continues to use the term liberally, inflecting
it to mean liberty and freedom, as if that were a state available
to all human beings if they just adopted the American way.
But perhaps it would be good to remember that democracy American-style
actually means commercialism, competition, free market, industrialism,
mercantilism and private enterprise. While not exactly an environment
that ensures freedom from poverty, from dictators or even a level
playing field, not to mention the right to vote in a government
of the people's choosing, it does make perfect, commercially justified
sense, especially for those with the most to gain.
Ultimately, perhaps the concept of democracy is just that; a concept,
an opiate for the masses, a sense of freedom unshackled from reality,
something administered to make you feel good, like a fine-wool blanket,
light and warming, but ultimately smothering.
So is America a democracy in name only?
Over the coming year as the US gears up for its "democratic election",
it might be apposite to ponder this question and the strange fact
that the bigger the lie, the louder the lie - and the longer the
lie is told, the more people will generally believe it.
After all, the Greek philosopher Plato said in The Republic that
democracy leads to anarchy. Not exactly the situation that the world's
only remaining superpower, with an entire universe (don't forget
the Moon and Mars) to conquer, is keen to encourage.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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