27.10.2004

Preparing the ground

With less than a week to go before election day, voting has already begun in several states. And, as one might expect (if one has come to expect it), incidents of fraud, disenfranchisement and intimidation of voters have already been reported.

In Florida - the ‘scene of the crime’ four years ago - thousands have already registered complaints over being denied the right to vote, being forced to travel excessively long distances to cast their ballot and being challenged by Republican ‘monitors’ over whether or not they have the right to do so.

But Florida is not the only place where such acts of disenfranchisement have been taking place. In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state has thrown out thousands of voter registration cards because they were not printed on heavy card-stock paper. In Colorado, where 165,000 new voters have registered this year, the Republican-led government has forwarded hundreds of voter registration cards to the state attorney general for investigation. In New Mexico, the Republicans sued the state government to require voters to show identification in order to vote.

In Michigan, the regime of George W Bush intervened directly to help enforce the Republican secretary of state’s decision not to count ballots from registered voters if they are cast at the wrong polling place (a similar rule in Ohio was thrown out by a federal judge). As well, the absentee ballot sent to voters beginning last month has a confusing layout: many absentee voters who think they will be voting for Democratic candidate John Kerry will, in fact, unwittingly be adding to Bush’s tally.

In a fundraising letter, the Bush-Cheney campaign’s general counsel warned that ‘Florida-style’ lawsuits over the outcome of the election may take place in several of the so-called ‘battleground states’ (states where neither Bush nor Kerry has a certain majority), including Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Mexico.

Much of this campaign of massive disenfranchisement began in direct response to ‘get out the vote’ campaigns, many of them led by Democratic Party organisations, in key states. In light of the failure of much of the radical left to lead a real challenge to the abridging of democratic rights since 2000, the Democrats have been moderately successful in channelling much of the discontent and anger working people felt over the Bush-Cheney theft of the last election into voting for their candidates.

The Republicans, seeing how the Democrats were looking to use the anger and outrage workers feel as a battering ram against them, began to mobilise its forces to meet them. Lawsuits, threats and even outright physical attacks have become the weapons of choice for the Republican Party against Democratic (and even ‘third party’) events.

In Michigan, Republican officials went on the record to declare that if they cannot “suppress the Detroit vote” (ie, the vote of close to one million African American and working class voters, about 90% of whom traditionally vote Democratic), they will lose this state. Party officials have been holding membership rallies, calling on rank-and-file Republicans to serve as ‘poll watchers’ on election day in Detroit precincts, with the goal of challenging every possible vote they think will not be cast for Bush.

All of these attacks began at a time when millions of working people in the United States were being bombarded almost daily with media reports about the possibility of a ‘terrorist attack’. While the contrived hysteria has died down considerably, every so often a ‘senior administration official’ raises this spectre and the possibility that the elections themselves may be postponed or cancelled.

It goes without saying that all of these efforts by the Republican Party and the Bush regime are meant to make sure that as few people as possible turn out to vote on November 2. Traditionally, Republicans have benefited from having low voter turnout; this is because their membership base is generally drawn from the minority classes (the capitalists and ‘middle class’ professionals) in American society. The more that participation in an election is effectively restricted to these classes, the greater likelihood that their candidates take office.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have traditionally been forced to rely on the mobilisation of working people to secure their positions. The rise of the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council - now the leading faction in the party - was a response to this uncomfortable pairing. In this election, however, even the neoliberals have to rely on the masses of workers and oppressed people in order to win. However, unlike in past elections, the Democrats are not offering any kind of ‘democratic’ sop meant to pacify a section of working people; they hope that defeating Bush is in itself enough reward.

Many working people who are voting against Bush (for Kerry) next week will not be doing so with any illusions. They may believe that Kerry will be ‘better’ than Bush, but they do so with no genuine belief that there will be a reversal of the course that has been followed for the last four years. This means that the sparking of a new constitutional crisis, resulting from massive disenfranchisement, legal challenges and extralegal attacks will not necessarily lead to working people pleading at the doorstep of the Democrats to defend democracy. This will be especially true if the Democrats once again capitulate to the capitalists who want Bush in power, as they did in 2000.

In this respect, what revolutionary socialists and communists do on November 3 is as important as, if not possibly more important than, what we do up until election day. Unless we can come together to fight for a revolutionary democratic solution to the crisis - that is, unless we seek to embark on the road to the third American revolution and the third (workers’) republic - the stark choice offered to us by Rosa Luxemburg almost a century ago - socialism or barbarism - may very well be made for us.