Democracy Now

Four years too late for American democracy, Ukrainians are showing the world how to take back a stolen election. Protesters numbering in the hundreds of thousands fill the streets of Kiev to support their candidate whose likely victory was stolen by state action. The protest ranks are swelling. Police and security personnel have joined the outcry. State media, once firmly in the so-called victor’s control, have rebelled; reporters have publically refused to broadcast one sided state/party propaganda and forced management to accede to their demand. Democracy is on the march in Ukraine, led by its people. The United States could have used some of that democratic spirit in 2000 when BushCheney stole their way into office.

American media report the Ukraine demonstrations as an article of democratic hope. Yet in 2000, these same media reported challenges to BushCheney post-election day maneuvering as sour grapes, rejectionism and sore loser behavior. Americans outraged by BushCheney’s naked power grab were dismissed, their claim to an accurate, accountable electoral process regarded as an unnecessary hindrance to the proper transfer of authority in Washington, DC. Yet Al Gore and the Democrats had the right and claim to victory in the 2000 election. I, for one, am glad Gore pressed his claim as far as he did. Gore’s claims in no way impeded the presidential transition required by the Constitution.

So why weren’t we out in the streets demonstrating, vowing to shut the nation down if our vote was ignored, our election stolen? Why did so many Americans believe that no action was necessary? To a large degree, we did not act more directly because, we’ve rarely done so in the past and never about an election. Elections have always been straightforward events. You vote. They count. They report. It’s over. Sometimes you hear stories about manipulation and fraud, but “that’s rare”. Florida 2000 exposed the dark underside of American elections. But even there, we did not react on a large scale, putting our confidence in state officials and, if necessary, the courts. Electoral instability is not something that happens in America, we told ourselves.

The American response to electoral fraud has been legal and technical. Batteries of lawyers monitored elections across the nation. Experts debated the merits and problems fo voting technology. Somehow Americans retain confidence in elections officials and how they collect, count and report vote totals, even after four years of ineffective, confusing voting reforms and officials’ failure to fully monitor their systems and, at times, even to operate voting machines. A major voting machine manufacturer openly supports the Republican Party; all manufacturers resist scrutiny of “proprietary systems” built into their machines. Combine this with an obsessively right-wing media and America’s passivity and confidence puts democracy at risk.

So far, the 2004 election offers some hope for electoral reform in the US. State and local election officials are under far more scrutiny, their procedures and actions subject to careful review. The counting, recounting and certifying process takes place this year without the political shadow of an uncertain outcome. No one expects the results to give John Kerry a victory, so resistance and interference is considerably reduced. As a result, the public may have a better understanding of how elections work and don’t work. (The SF Chronicle describes some hopeful trends in a recent article.) Perhaps this understanding will translate into improved election procedures and accountability. Given the stakes involved and the experience of the last four years, Americans will be fortunate if real reform takes place. If not, we may need to take lessons from Ukrainians on how to insist on democracy.