Way Better than Watergate

My old friend and classmate David Vaught, who has managed campaigns in the state of Illinois and whose family has been involved in electoral politics in that state for most of this century, e-mailed me this bit of wisdom the other day:

"It is only when elections are close and there are recounts that voters see how dirty the election process is. Often it is an accumulation of local yokels doing their thing, but much election baloney, still after hundreds of years of doing elections, has not been cleaned up."

He's got it exactly right about the election that was held last week. Democratic and Republican pols had looks of mock amazement and mock shock on their faces upon the discovery of election "irregularities" in Florida and elsewhere, and you have to ask yourself why they even bothered faking it. The cynicism of the electorate reached a high-water mark the morning Jim Baker (whom the networks insist on calling "former Secretary of State Baker" instead of "former campaign chairman for President George Bush in the election he lost to Bill Clinton") sat down with Cokie Roberts (whose makeup and hair-helmet needed serious work) to explain why the Bush campaign went into the federal courts to try to bring state and county electoral officials to heel.

Let me see now... Isn't George W. Bush the candidate who named Scalia and Thomas as his two favorite Supreme Court justices? And aren't Scalia and Thomas (along with the odious Rehnquist) the justices who have been behind the Supreme Court's recent decisions on so-called "federalism," which have limited the federal government's ability to enforce federal laws on the states, and which have totally eliminated the ability of state employees to sue their states under federal laws against discrimination on the basis of age and sex? Wasn't George W. Bush the candidate who kept chanting in stump speech after stump speech that he trusted citizens, not the "government," to invest their retirement money wisely?

So what happened between Nov. 6, the last time Bush told us how much he trusts us, and Nov. 11, when Baker went before the cameras to tell us that he and Bush distrust not only the voters, but Florida electoral officials so much that they intended to induce a federal court to stop the hand recounts going forth in that state? What happened to make Baker tell us that we should trust machines more than people?

Well, it's rather simple. Democratic and Republican politicians alike have become accustomed to elections that are declared over when the polls close. Over the past 200 or so years, this has served as insurance that the mischief and "irregularities" that occurred while the polls were open would not be investigated, nor would the effects of such mischief or "irregularities" be corrected in the final vote tally. They have also counted on an electoral system that resembles the school system in this country more than anything else. The rallying cry of politicians from both parties regarding schools and the system by which we elect our governmental officials has been, "Local control! Local control! Local control!"

Local control has meant that even federal elections for president, vice president, the Senate and the House are conducted by the states. The states have been free to write their own laws regarding the procedures for these and any other elections, and the states have been free to delegate down to county level the power to design ballots, purchase voting machines (or not purchase them), to count votes by machine or by hand, even to pick the polling places where citizens go to vote.

Do you think there's a soul in the CBS, or NBC, or ABC, or CNN "election headquarters" who knows about Magee, MS, and the way elections are run there? My wife Carolyn is from Magee, deep down in rural Simpson County, located halfway between Hattiesburg and the state capital Jackson to the north. Fourteen years ago, Carolyn and I went to Mendenhall, the county seat, to get our marriage license. We walked into the County Clerk's office, where marriage licenses were still accounted for in large ledgers marked "White" and "Colored."

The system of voting in Simpson County is run in a similar fashion. The last time Carolyn was back in Magee, there was a local election going on, and she and her mother went down to the local polling place to see how things were going. The polling place was in the police station. There was a voter registration table marked "Democrat" on the left and "Republican" on the right, where voters signed their names in the "Democrat" or "Republican" voting register. After signing the book, voters went to voting booths on the "Democrat" side of the room or the "Republican" side. The Simpson County sheriff was standing in the polling place, inside the local police station, observing each voter as he or she walked in and signed the books and voted.

You can imagine the effect voting in such circumstances might have on African-American voters, not to mention on Democrats in general, as the Republican sheriff oversaw their votes. In states like Mississippi, in counties like Simpson, the system works like this. The streetlight in front of your house goes out, or a gaping pothole opens up on the street next to your driveway. You pick up the phone and call the local highway office or city services, and depending on which book you signed and which side of the room you went to vote, you might hear this: "Well, Luther, that's too bad about the streetlight and the pothole. Maybe you'd better think twice next time you vote for county supervisor. We might find it in the budget to do some fixin' on your block."

The fact of the matter is, politicians of both parties like the "local control" voting system the way it is, because it provides ample opportunity to influence voters come election day. It's an old, old system. I hope the Republican lawsuit ends up being appealed up to the Supreme Court. Maybe then we'll hear from the odious Rehnquist on election manipulation, a subject about which he knows perhaps more than he would like to let on.

As a young man in Phoenix, Rehnquist was part of a voter intimidation effort in minority precincts during Arizona elections. It has been reported that the great believer in democracy challenged minority voters on the basis of residency requirements and literacy, an obvious attempt to frighten minority (read: Democratic) voters, and prevent them from casting their ballots.

I for one hope that such "reforms" as direct election for president or federal standards for elections never come to pass. The sight of Jim Baker squirming in his suit, babbling hypocritical double-talk was simply too delicious to waste on anything reformers might inflict on us. Besides, we've all seen how wonderfully the "reformed" campaign finance system works. One can only imagine the disasters ahead if the electoral system is "reformed."

I say keep the "local control" electoral system like it is, and I know my old friend David Vaught would join me in this. Why? Because if the feds start running things, we won't have any more Pud Williams stories to tell, like this one:

Years ago, I covered an election in David's hometown in White County, IL. The good Democrat Pud Williams and his campaign manager Oop Gardner beat the hell out of that known Republican hack, Fat Ziegler, for chairman of the local Board of Supervisors. When the election was over, a local man approached Pud with the news that a (Republican) doctor in town had given him $1000 to "beat that goddamned Pud Williams in the next election," and told him $9000 more was on the way. Pud grinned widely and told the man, "Chuck, you get $10,000, you just bring it around to my house and give it to me and you won't have to worry a bit. I won't run. That's the only way it's going to do you any good, anyhow." After the local man walked away, Pud said, "You know you've got 'em when their own guys are running up tellin' you what they're gonna do. Giving old Chuck $10,000 to beat me, now that's just like getting the rabbit to watch the lettuce."

Even former-Bush-campaign-chairman-who-lost-the-election-to-Bill-Clinton Big Jim Baker couldn't have summed up local electoral politics better than that, not in his wildest South Texas boot-slappin' dreams. That's what's so delicious about local control. Local yokels get to run things, and we get to watch Big Jim Baker squirm as he presides over yet another Bush defeat.

Lucian K. Truscott IV is a West Coast correspondent for New York Press, a position he describes accepting "under duress."