Part 2

I stand all amazed at the craft and cunning that keeps the American political system functioning so well for the incumbents. Here is a partial list of how it is done:

 The party in power [aka, the majority power] has multiple methods at its disposal to keep the minority party marginalized and unsuccessful.

• Delay Congressional legislation desired by the minority party or quash it altogether. The list of how and why would fill volumes.
• The majority can regularly and frequently postpone legislative sessions until the witnesses and proposers of the other party’s bills can no longer afford the time or expense or the frustration to show up on the day the majority plans a vote.
• There is always the filibuster if logic, legal persuasion, or common courtesy rules do not achieve the desired result of frustration.
• The majority–especially when they have the presidency—can block or even veto legislation.
• Either party can amend or otherwise propose unreasonable or unrelated counter “com-promises” and hold on until the end of the session.
• Vote down every opposition proposal until the minority compromises itself into a weak shadow of its original self to get anything at all done. A prime example is the Utah legislature that is so overpopulated with Republicans that Democrats might just well not even show up.
• Defund federal government programs not desired by the party in power, e.g., for the Re-publicans, eliminate humanitarian programs and foreign aid. For the Democrats, cut the military back or tax advantages for churches.
• If desperation looms, either party can refuse to approve the budget and allow the government to shut down in a stalemate and see who blinks first.
• History has shown some effective measures that get retried from time to time, as recently as the last four years.
• Delay or suppress voting rights for blocs of voters likely to oppose the majority party’s fondest interests.
• Manipulate voting dates and locations; postpone, remove voting stations in dense areas of the opposition party, e.g., high density of minorities who are poor, unable to travel, or whose work schedules do not allow for changes. This would include areas of recent foreign immigrants whose English skills are lacking, African-American and Latino communities, and rural areas. Take Oregon, for example. The cities have heavy liberal voting populations and rural areas heavy conservative voting concentrations. Gerrymandering works well in such areas.
• Gerrymander [alter] voting districts to dilute populations of undesired voters. Majority governments do it with some regularity.
• Suppress eligible voter rights with stringent or difficult to understand or comply with regulations, e.g., literacy restrictions and registration rules, such as education levels, especially by changing rules with some frequency. Think about the old South.
• Then there is the time-honored process of invalidating votes:
• Declare a miscount. If the count still doesn’t do what the majority wants, do it again.
• Throw-out legitimate ballots or accuse the vote counters of doing so to invalidate an elec-tion, whatever works.
• Stack the ranks of voting poll workers with your party and/or challenge or invalidate Vot-ing Poll workers to suit your needs.
• Challenge voting machines, voting box placements, the honesty of freedom from bias of the voting machine and vote-counting companies.
• Find hanging chads, accuse precincts and minority parties of faking votes, e.g., stating that dead people voted, zealots voted more than once in one or more precincts, counterfeit ballots were stuffed in, and state that legitimate votes by the majority in power were somehow lost, sto-len, or misplaced. Create chaos. Think old Chicago Democrat machine politics were actually doing all of those things—anything for the win.
• Finally, sue, sue, sue. If at all possible, get that suit to be heard by SCOTUS. This is likely to be more successful in a court that is 6-3 in favor of one ideology or another. Or, you might just get lucky, as the Republicans did in Bush v. Gore, case in which, on December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual re-count of that state’s U.S. presidential election ballots. The 5–4 decision effectively awarded Florida’s 25 votes in the electoral college—and thus the election itself—to Republican candidate George W. Bush. The dreadful thing about that case is that the actual vote that mattered was to decide whether or not to continue counting with the Republicans slightly ahead. The decision was finalized by an ardent Republican, Sandra Day O’Conner, a lifelong conservative who voted with the majority. She also cast the swing vote four times in cases where Roe v. Wade hung in the balance—and still does.

What if anything can be done to change things?