It's your fault

Many voters, especially those under 30, only get interested in the presidential campaign while neglecting all the other, and in some ways, more important campaigns. Not only are senate and house elections crucial, but so are state and local. A significant part of the problem is that many people are too busy with their own affairs to consider politics much. A secondary factor is the breakdown of the public sphere. With the internet, radio, and cable TV a person can now access only those sources which support their predetermined beliefs, while attacking those with different beliefs.* The so-called mainstream media (MSM) have failed in their own way. In order to seem objective and unbiased, the MSM engage in false equivalency in which both sides of an issue are always portrayed with equal value and weight regardless of who is actually wrong or right. It is very difficult today to make an informed and educated decision. However, the stakes are extremely high. If you’re not taking the time to get properly informed and to vote, what happens is your fault.

Let’s see what the political outcome has been.

At the federal level the Senate and House are broken. Due to the rise of the Tea Party (see media issues above) the Republican Party has lost its traditional conservative foundations and has become very radical. In Congress they use two weapons in particular:

1. The Filibuster is a prolonged speech which prevents progress to a vote in the US Senate. In can be overturned by a cloture vote with a 3/5 majority. Until 1975 there were only a handful of filibusters in any given year. In 1975 the rules changed so that a filibuster no longer required speaking, simply notification of filibuster. If the ensuing cloture vote failed then the law or nomination being filibustered was stopped. Through the 1980s cloture votes increased to about 40 per year, and in the 1990s and 2000s they were up to about 60 per year. Then after 2008 the number jumped to around 120 per year, increasing to over 250 per year after 2012. Essentially every single bill or nominee was filibustered, and required a 60 vote cloture to pass rather than a simple majority. This allowed the Republican minority party to shut almost everything down. In 2015 with the change of majority in the Senate the filibusters dropped to 80, and continue to decline.

2. Gerrymandering is where partisan commissions draw district boundaries so voters from the opposing party are divided in a way guaranteeing the majority of seats to the party presently in power regardless of future voting outcomes. This happened in 2012 in the US House, and is predicted to happen again in 2016.

The state level, with even lower voter oversight, has seen some very radical developments. This sort of behavior serves as a reminder that “state’s rights” are merely attempts to get around the US Constitution and oppress selected minority groups of people.

1. Voter Suppression consists of a variety of attempts to reduce voter turnout in targeted demographics. Tactics include: onerous ID requirements accompanied by shutting down DMV offices in selected areas; opening insufficient numbers of polling stations in selected areas; mis-registering selected classes of voters; “purging” voters lists; denying voting rights to ex-cons.

2. Pre-Emptive Laws are state laws banning localities from enacting specific ordinances. Examples include: banning local ordinances which protect LBGT people from discrimination; banning localities from adjusting the minimum wage to suit local conditions; banning localities from enacting local environmental protections.

3. Bill of Attainder is a law which singles-out an individual or group for some form of punishment or its equivalent. It is forbidden for both Congress and the States in Article 1, Sections 9 and 10 of the US Constitution. However, it has been recently practiced on ACORN and on Planned Parenthood, especially at the state level.

This is the state of American Democracy because not enough people pay attention, or vote.

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*The closed loop of information and denial of contradictory facts is called by academics epistemic closure.