Do We Need A Constitutional Right To Vote?

May 15th, 2013 | Posted by jclifford in Legislation | Politics - (9 Comments)

The Constitution prohibits the government from preventing people from voting on the basis of race or gender. Poll taxes that prevent poor people from voting are also unconstitutional. A constitutional amendment has established that the age at which people may vote is 18. However, there is no place in the Constitution that states that “all citizens have the right to vote”.

Of course, the Constitution does issue a blanket ban on discrimination against any group in legal matters, and voting is a legal matter. That would seem to settle the issue.

Nonetheless, yesterday U.S. Representatives Mark Pocan and Keith Ellison introduced H.J. Res. 44, a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the USA, that would explicitly create a right to vote. Why?

The proposed amendment reads: “SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.

SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.”

The second section reveals the real change that would be created by this proposed amendment. It would shift authority for making the rules about how voting takes place from state governments to the federal government. With the passage of this amendment, Congress could pass laws establishing a single, nationwide system to ensure that voting is conducted in the same way everywhere in the United States.

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My Vote On The Lays Potato Chip Promotion On Facebook

April 14th, 2013 | Posted by jclifford in Media - (1 Comments)

The Facebook business model is built on the presumption that advertisers will pay a premium click-through rate because the Facebook corporation, through the super genius of social media marketing algorithms, is able to provide the ability to create advertising campaigns that precisely target the very people who will be most receptive to the advertised message. That’s the theory of Facebook’s business. The reality of Facebook’s business model is that it profits by targeting dim-witted advertisers who are willing to pay exorbitant rates because they actually believe the hype about the state of social media marketing.

A case in point is Lay’s, the potato chip company.

When I was a child, I liked potato chips. In my adult years, however, my rate of potato chip consumption has dwindled. I don’t like getting my fingers greasy. I don’t like the rattle of the bags. I don’t really like the taste of potato chips anymore either – regardless of the flavorings that are sprayed on. I may not even buy one bag of potato chips per year. I don’t spend my time online talking about potato chips, either. Snacks in general are not a topic of conversation for me, either, and if I do talk about a snack, it will likely be ice cream that excites my attention – a food that is not generally thought to combine well with potato chips.

My point is that I am not in the market for potato chips. There’s no Facebook activity on my part to suggest that I’m a potato chips fan.

Nonetheless, Facebook has convinced the Lay’s potato chip company to spend money to insert an advertisement for potato chips into my Facebook timeline. The advertisement is below:

stupid social media marketing

This ad is supposed to be an example of savvy social media marketing because it encourages Facebook users to become engaged with the lays brand of potato chips, rather than just passively seeing a message. This advertisement can’t truly be called savvy, however, because it’s been sent to people who couldn’t care less about potato chips.

I can tell from this ad that Lays wants people to vote on which of its new potato chip flavors should be kept. But what are those new flavors? I can’t tell from the graphic that’s included in this ad. All I can see is that there are three potato chip bags in three different colors – and so I’m left to imagine what kind of weird potato chip flavor Lay’s had decided to add onto the already overstuffed potato chip market. Pickles and peanut butter? Chocolate espresso bean? Vinegar cotton candy? All I can imagine are desperate attempts at ingenuity that were tested through that junk food of research techniques: Focus groups.

I don’t dispute that there is a lot of information out there with which Facebook could effectively design targeted advertising campaigns for its clients. The evidence suggests, however, that this information is not being intelligently used – either by Facebook, or by the dense corporate marketing committees that use Facebook’s services.

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Fantasy Congressional Legislation

February 13th, 2013 | Posted by Rowan in Legislation | Politics - (0 Comments)

So, they’re holding a vote in the Senate about whether to confirm former senator Charles Hagel as the new Secretary of Defense. That’s an important vote, but how should we write about it?

I personally don’t like the idea of “Chuck” Hagel as Secretary of the Department of Defense – but my reason for opposition isn’t the same as that which is motivating Republican senators to vote no on the Hagel nomination. I think that Hagel is an inappropriate choice to lead the military because he was part of the group of D.C. insiders that helped George W. Bush rush the nation into war against Iraq. Hardly anyone in Washington D.C. is discussing that concern, however.

dark us capitolWhen we finally look at the roll call of the vote on Hagel’s nomination, we’ll see who in the Senate voted yes, who voted no, and who just didn’t show up. What we won’t see is a record of WHY each senator voted the way they did. Vote tallies matter, but understanding the reasons that legislative votes tally the way they do is also important for citizens who care about what their government does.

That’s why my fantasy congressional legislation would be to require that, along every roll call vote in the House and Senate, each member submit be required to a statement explaining why they voted the way they did. The legislation would also require that this explanation, which could be the length of a single sentence or the length of a book, be made easily available both online and physically in the Library of Congress.

Members of Congress seem to have plenty of time to have meetings with lobbyists behind closed doors. They should spend that time explaining their actions to voters instead.

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Like Nothing

November 23rd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Activism | Media - (2 Comments)

Facebook is proposing to do away with all democracy in its privacy system, eliminating the right for users to vote on changes in its policies. This change may be the last vote ever for Facebook users. Thanks to the online activism of Our Policy, there are over 11,000 comments on Facebook’s proposed vote elimination, well over the 7,000 comment threshold that triggers a vote.

social media privacy policyAlmost all the comments are in opposition to the proposed vote elimination.

Now comes the hard part… getting 300 million users to participate in the vote. Even if 99 percent of voting Facebook users oppose the policy, their votes will be ignored if fewer than 300 million users participate in the voting process.

Ironically, Facebook cites this high threshold of voter participation as a reason to change its policies. Of course, Facebook could reform the voting system, but its corporate officers prefer to democratic processes almost completely.

There is one democratic option left to Facebook users: They are free to change their own social media behavior. They could choose to stop clicking like on corporate advertisements in exchange for small discounts in retail stores. They could choose merely to “like” their friends’ personal postings, or to stop clicking “like” altogether, leaving only comments.

People upset with Facebook could transition to other social media sites. They could engage in efforts to confuse the Big Data system, engaging in massive campaigns of “likes” of things they dislike.

Or, current Facebook users could innovate off-line social media – completely off-computer, where information can’t be tracked.

Many options are available to current Facebook users who are fed up with the social media corporation’s intrusions into users’ private lives.

What option do you choose to take?

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ID Needed? Investigation finds just 10 cases of Voter Impersonation in USA over 12 years

August 17th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Politics | Republicans - (2 Comments)

Across the country, Republican politicians have passed or are trying to pass laws requiring Americans to show photo id when voting.

Repeated studies have demonstrated that millions of people — 10 to 15 percent of people eligible to vote — don’t have a photo id. People without a photo identification card are disproportionately very old, very young, poor or without white skin.

Why would Republicans want to pass laws that keep eligible voters from actually voting? Cynics note that while the very old do tend to vote Republican, there aren’t that many of them. There are many more people in America who are on the very young side of voting age, who are poor, and who don’t have white skin — and those just happen to be the sorts of people who tend to vote against Republicans.

The Republicans pushing for photo id laws insist this pattern is just a coincidence, and that their real motivation is to stop people from showing up to the polls, impersonating someone else, and stealing the vote. That’s a scary story. But how common is this nefarious voter impersonation? News21 contacted elections officials in all 50 states, collecting reports on all the cases of voter impersonation since 2000. They found that in the past 12 years, there have been exactly 10 people nabbed for voter impersonation in the entire country. That’s 0.83 cases of impersonation per year, in a nation of over 300 million people.

Here’s where those mere ten instances of voter impersonation occurred:

United States Map of Voter Impersonation cases from 2000 to 2011: 1 in California, 3 in Colorado, 1 in Kansas, 3 in Texas and 1 in Alabama. That's it.

States like Wisconsin, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Carolina have highly strict new laws requiring presentation of a photo ID in order to vote — but not a single documented case of the voter impersonation that those laws are supposedly intended to prevent.

What do states like Wisconsin, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina have? A lot of very young people. A lot of poor people. A lot of not-white people.

What’s worse: 10 cases of voter impersonation, or millions of people being denied the right to vote? The answer depends on one’s perspective one’s interests.

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The 72 Post-Cancellation Tweets about Americans Elect

May 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Media | Politics - (3 Comments)

Since the morning of May 1, when Americans Elect was forced to cancel its first primary vote due to a very low participation rate, there have been just 72 posts on Twitter (“tweets”) using the hashtag #AmericansElect. Here’s a breakdown of the tweets by subject matter:

37 tweets: The cancellation of Americans Elect’s first primary vote
11 tweets: The declared presidential campaign of Buddy Roemer
9 tweets: Automatic “I signed up” notices of new members of Americans Elect
6 tweets: The declared presidential campaign Ronald Grey
2 tweets: The draft presidential campaign of David Walker
2 tweets: The draft presidential campaign of Jon Huntsman
2 tweets: Links to an essay by Walter Russell Mead lamenting the fact that Americans don’t like Americans Elect
1 tweet: Link to the effort by Richard Grayson to take over the Americans Elect Party in Arizona
1 tweet: French commentary on Americans Elect
1 tweet: German commentary on Americans Elect

Just as most of the action by people is to walk away from Americans Elect, most of the talk by people is about the shut-down of Americans Elect votes.

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Formal Petition for Reversal of Americans Elect Bylaw 5.6

March 17th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect - (12 Comments)

The following is the full text of a formal petition for reversal of Americans Elect Bylaw 5.6. Rule 12.2 requires me to send the petition to the Board of Directors of Americans Elect, but Americans Elect has not published any e-mail address for the Board of Directors, so I have sent it to as many individual members of the Americans Elect Board of Directors as have leaked out, plus as many members of the Americans Elect senior staff as is possible (again given the spotty publication of their e-mail addresses). I have, as completely as is possible, complied with the letter and spirit of Rule 12.2 in submitting the motion.

[Full Text of 474-Word Reversal Petition Begins Here]

My name is James Cook. I am User #385, a fully verified Americans Elect Delegate. In this statement, I formally invoke my rights under Rule 12.2 to call for the reversal of the decision by the Americans Elect Board of Directors to amend Bylaw 5.6 on March 5. Notice of this amendment was first formally posted by the Board of Directors on March 16 2012 at http://www.americanselect.org/official-documents. This call for reversal is therefore made within the required 72-hour period after the decision is posted.

The previous version of Bylaw 5.6 had this to say about the power of the corporate-appointed Candidate Certification Committee and the power of delegates to overturn its decisions:

Section 5.6. Committee Override by Delegate Vote. Any decision of the Platform of Questions Committee or the Candidate Certification Committee shall be nullified by a majority vote of all registered Delegates, except that a maximum of three candidates for President and three candidates for Vice President may be placed on the ballot by Delegate nullification.

The new version of the Bylaw 5.6 posted March 16 updates 5.6 by adding this clause to its end:

, and except that only a non-unanimous vote of the Candidate Certification Committee regarding contingently qualified candidates may be subject to reversal vote by the Delegates.

I call for the specific reversal of the decision to add this clause. I am aggrieved by the clause because it takes away my ability as a delegate to choose who will be on the Americans Elect ballot, and instead places power in the hands of the Candidate Certification Committee, whose members are selected non-democratically by the Americans Elect Board of Directors, whose members in turn appointed themselves.

I am also aggrieved because, if Americans Elect follows the course of the last delegate vote as described at http://wp.me/pdWLh-8qW, it will suppress the vote by:

1. Publishing the reversal petition as a file buried under three layers of links;

2. Giving delegates only 48 hours to discover and vote on the petition;

3. Refusing to send delegates an e-mail, to allow the petitioner to send his own e-mail to delegates, or to post an item in its “news” section revealing the existence of the petition vote;

4. Refusing when asked (and I’m asking again now) for a means on the website a delegate so I could send a direct message to other delegates informing them of the vote. No such means exists.

5. Publishing the petition in a special .pdf format that cannot be copied and pasted by a reader or indexed by a search engine… a format that Americans Elect does not use for its other .pdf files.

Unless Americans Elect alters its response to reversal petitions, delegates will never know the petition votes exist and the votes will be guaranteed to fail. This is not what democracy looks like.

[Full Text of 474-Word Reversal Petition Ends Here]

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More Americans Elect Vogon Democracy: to Reverse our Policies, Just Contact and Convince 10,000 Delegates We’ve Hidden From You and Who May Not Exist. You Have 48 Hours.

March 8th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Mail | Politics - (19 Comments)

Is this what Democracy looks like?

Here’s an e-mail Americans Elect Policy Director Brian Findlay sent me late last night after I followed AE rules and formally moved to reverse its decision to allow as few as 5 people to fully fund Americans Elect:

From: Brian Findlay
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 10:18 PM
To: retorts@irregulartimes.com
Subject: Statement of petition

Dear Mr. Cook,

Thank you for initiating a request for Delegate reversal of a Board decision pursuant to Americans Elect Pre-election Convention Rule 12.2. Your request for reversal of the Board’s decision submitted on Friday, 2 March 2012 regarding the proportion of supporter funding is timely and in order for consideration. Accordingly, the Website has posted your statement along with instructions that any Delegate who wishes to initiate a reversal vote should support your statement. You will have 48 hours to obtain the required support from Delegates upon the posting. [The 48-hour window started at 9pm EST today, after I verified that the Board decision was posted in its entirety and your statement of petition was available for Delegates to view.] If enough Delegates support your request, we will proceed with a reversal vote as required by the Rules.

Sincerely,

Brian Findlay
Policy Director
Americans Elect

That all sounds nice, and finally — after a period of non-compliance — Americans Elect is following its own rules for such reversals.

But is it democracy?

Notice the language:

Accordingly, the Website has posted your statement along with instructions that any Delegate who wishes to initiate a reversal vote should support your statement. You will have 48 hours to obtain the required support from Delegates upon the posting.

Two features jump out.

First, the Americans Elect website has indeed posted my statement along with instructions for delegates. But that’s all it’s done. It hasn’t sent out any messages to delegates letting them know about the motion, even though it has their e-mail addresses. And even though Americans Elect has a “News” section of its website, it hasn’t posted the news about a motion to be voted on there either. Americans Elect hasn’t sent a message to its delegates in any way.

Because Americans Elect hasn’t sent out any message to delegates, the delegates will have to somehow stumble across the motion. In order to find the motion, discover that it exists, and then take action, ten thousand delegates will all need to:

1) for some reason or other, decide all on their own that they want to visit the Americans Elect website within the next 48 hours;
2) further decide that they’d like to click on the “About” tab, even though if they’ve signed up and been verified as delegates they’ve kind of already passed the “About” stage;
3) beyond that, further decide that they’d like to click on the new “Board Decisions” tab for some reason;
4) then scroll down to the second decision, where they’ll read the needed text.

How likely is that, not just for one but for ten thousand delegates, all within the next 48 hours? Not likely at all. If Americans Elect is sincerely interested in giving delegates a chance to weigh in on the motion, it will have to affirmatively let delegates know that the motion exists. But Americans Elect hasn’t done that.

This is where we get to the second point. Instead of letting delegates know there’s a motion under consideration for them to vote on, it’s sent me an e-mail after starting the 48-hour period telling me that it’s my responsibility “to obtain the required support from Delegates.”

OK, I can handle responsibility. I’ve had a cat and a dog before. So let me get started here… by… um…

… contacting the delegates and obtaining their support. Wait a second. How do I do that?

There isn’t any e-mailing list for delegates that Americans Elect has shared with me. There isn’t a form on Americans Elect’s website for me to use to send out a message to delegates either. And even if I wanted to go try to find the delegates so I could somehow send them a message, I couldn’t even do that — because Americans Elect has hidden delegates’ contact information and refrained from creating a means for delegates to contact one another.

First of all, Americans Elect delegates’ profile settings are set to “Private” by default, so unless delegates choose otherwise there’s no way to me find their profile information at all:

Americans Elect sets its delegates profiles to Private by Default, meaning that other delegates can't find them.

That’s nice from a privacy point of view, actually, but if it’s my responsibility to get in touch with 10,000 delegates and rally support for my motion over the next 48 hours, then by golly it’ll be hard to find them when even their profiles are kept secret.

And what if a delegate happens to choose to make their profile “public”? Do I have a better chance of getting in touch with them then?

Nope. Go ahead: check out my profile page. I’ve made it public. Here’s what you’ll see today (click on the image for a full-screen view):

Americans Elect Profile Page for a Delegate, as of March 8 2012

There’s no way to contact a fellow delegate. None. Not even if they’ve made their profile public. Oh, there’s a very interesting looking graphic called “Caucus” on the upper-right, but it’s a grayed-out link. It doesn’t work. It’s “coming soon” (and remember, the candidate voting system was “coming soon” for months). “Coming soon” doesn’t do me any good. I’ve filed a motion already (which I had to do when I did because Americans Elect requires objection motions to be filed within 72 hours of any notice of an Americans Elect decision) and I need to be able to contact delegates today. Now.

It can’t be done.

For the second time in two days, I’m find myself feeling as though I’m speaking to a Vogon, the fictional species that blows up the Earth in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, explaining indignantly to protesting Earthlings that:

“There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

More Vogon Democracy. I'm supposed to rally 10,000 Americans Elect delegates to vote down a. But Number 1, there's no evidence that 10,000 Americans Elect verified delegates actually exist, and Number 2, there's no way for me to get their contact information to let them know that my motion exists so they can join in the vote. Americans Elect hasn't sent delegates a message about this vote, that's for sure.

Americans Elect has a nominally democratic process. I can, nominally, file a motion. Nominally, delegates can click a button on a website stuck away in the third level of a menu system to vote for my motion. But practically speaking, Americans Elect has hidden away the elements that are needed for people to assert their full, actual democratic role in this process. That’s Vogon.

P.S. I’m not even sure Americans Elect has 10,000 voter-registration-verified delegates. So I’ve written back to Brian Findlay to ask him for the information I need to play my part in this “democratic” process:

Brian,

Thanks for writing. In order to do what you’ve asked me to do, I’ll need:

1) A verification by you that there are actually 10,000 verified delegates. Are there actually 10,000 verified delegates?

2) A way to reach those delegates to let them know about this motion. Can you provide that, please?

Kind Regards,

Jim Cook

I haven’t heard back from Brian Findlay, but I’ll let you know if I do. I’ll also let you know at what hour in the process I hear back, whether that’s during the 48 hour period for me to contact the delegates and win their votes, or after the process is done and it’s too late.

If you don’t see any update here, you’ll know I haven’t heard back from Americans Elect at all.

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