In my life as a white, middle class American, I’ve been failed by businesses, relationships and religious dogma.  But I never imagined that the thing I most believed in would collapse the day my Democracy failed. 

For nearly 18 months, I worked to get a minor party candidate’s name on the state ballot.  To me, it represented an opportunity to put an intelligent, energetic person in public office, to the party, it meant a chance for future ballot access and to every voter, it offered another choice on Election Day. 

For a minor candidate’s name to appear on the ballot, state law demanded the submission of an astronomical number of voter signatures.  Steadfast in my belief in Democracy, I took the challenge.  To every person of likely voting age I met I posed the same questions: “Are you registered to vote? Would you please sign my petition to get my candidate’s name on the ballot?” 

Ninety-nine percent of the people I approached listened to my request for help.  Of that group of people, ninety-nine percent were willing to do their part for Democracy. 

“Everyone should be able to run for office,” an older woman told me. 

“The more choices, the better,” a young kid said, “I’m sick of what we have now.” 

“I probably won’t vote for him,” a middle-aged guy said, “but you should be able to.” 

Every week I took my sheets of government-approved forms, filled with signatures in accordance with government-mandated standards to the government Voter Registration office. There, the sweet, steel-haired ladies dutifully checked my forms against their computers to verify if the signatures I’d wrested were legitimate.   For all my work, the government ladies certified only about half of the signatures I submitted.  Sometimes the signature failures were voters who had forgotten they had moved.  Some were women who had married and forgotten to update their records with their new last names.  Most of the time, though, the person’s name apparently just wasn’t in the government’s voting system. 

Despite Herculean efforts by people across the state, it wasn’t enough to overcome the barriers erected by the state against third parties.  Nonetheless, having properly filed all the necessary forms, the candidate was still eligible for write-in votes.  Although this made him a long-shot to win, he might still garner enough votes so party candidates could appear on the ballot in future elections without again having to gather signatures. 

On Election Day, I took my ballot to the standing carrel and carefully marked my choices.  As instructed for my candidate’s race, I darkened the bubble next to “Write-in” and slowly and deliberately printed each letter of his first and last name.  An election official stood next to the ballot scanner.  He smiled when I joked about putting my ballot into the “shredder” as I fed the sheet with my votes into the slot.  

That night and the next day, the television media and local newspaper reported only race results for the “major” party candidates.  Well, I knew he didn’t win, but it was important to know how he’d fared. 

Finally, I called the County Election Board: 

“Hello. Could you please tell me how many votes were cast for my candidate in this county?” “Let’s see. Well, the official number reported to the State Election Board was zero.” “Could you repeat that, please?” “Zero.” How could that be?   I knew all the local campaign workers planned to vote for him.  Many of my friends said they would vote for him.  I was fairly certain my boyfriend voted for him.  My mother told me she voted for him and I know I voted for him!  How in the name of Democracy did Election Officials miss my vote? 

“We don’t have the mechanism in place to count write-in votes,” they said. 

You don’t have the mechanism to count votes?  You have the mechanism for a person to file as a legitimate candidate.  You have a mechanism to certify the thousands of signatures required to get on the ballot.  Whether a candidate is a write-in or one whose name appears on the ballot,  you have the mechanism for candidates to report every penny that comes into and out of a campaign. You even had the mechanism on the ballot for voters to write-in a legitimate candidate’s name.  How does an Election Board not have a mechanism to count votes?   

Pressed on this basic premise of Democracy, a government official on the Election Board said simply: 

“I suggest you see an attorney.” 

I don’t don’t think I should have to hire an attorney to ensure my government counts my vote? 

Do you?   

 Two specific projects within the realm of ecological wisdom for which I hope to raise interest are:

1) re-introducing hydroelectric power to the St Joe river in South Bend and Mishawaka, and

2)raising awareness for bicycling as an alternative mode of transportation. 

Thank you!

A good story has a beginning that grabs your attention, a middle that holds it while filling in just the right amount of details, and an ending that leaves the listener satisfied with the exchange that took place with the storyteller.  The exhange is the gift of the listener’s time for the gift of the teller’s story.

Lightman notes that 150 years ago, Emerson suggested the idea of “One Man”.  This was viewed as a “complete person” who embodied all facets of human potential; “the farmer, the professor, the engineer, the priest, the scholar, the statesman, the soldier, the artist. 

The contemporary public intellectual, however, has a mission to “advance human freedom and knowledge”, according to Lightman who credits Edward Said with this new concept. 

There is a heirarchy of Public Intellectual, says Lightman, all important in their contributions, with varying degrees of responsibilities. Level I PI’s speak and write publicly exclusively about their discipline and Level II PI’s speak and write publicly about their discipline and how it relates to other facets of human life.  Level III PI’s transcend their discipline and are invited to speak publicly about issues beyond their original field.  He cites Einstein’s invitations to speak publicly on topics such as religion or education as an example of a Level III Public Intellectual. 

I think it would be cool to ascend to the realms of a “Level II or III” Public Intellectual.  To be so highly regarded because of your knowledge of a specific topic that your opinions are also sought on other topics has got to be pretty heady.  I think of the good a person could do in advancing human enlightenment;  a person like Karl-Henrik Robert comes to mind as a Level II, probably approaching Level III public intellectual.  Robert transcended his expertise as an oncologist to apply his knowledge of biological systems to sustainability in Sweden.  Robert is now sought by people all over the world, including South Bend, to address global sustainability.  He may very well have been invited to speak on topics outside sustainability (Level III) although when it comes to this topic, I imagine there are very few subjects that can’t somehow be related to human sustainability.

Lightman notes Einstien’s image of “gentle rationality and human nobility”, which encouraged people to invite him to give his opinions on public issues beyond physics.  These traits of gentle rationality and human nobility are a worthy goal of anyone who has been invited to speak their opinion on any topic and particularly outside their realm of expertise. 

 http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/lightman.html

I just happened to be in the middle of Tim Dunlop’s essay “If you build it they will come: Blogging and the new citizenship”.  (http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/91.html) Quoting Christopher Lasch, he notes “argument precedes understanding and is central to democratic formation.”

I pointed this out to my new blogging acquainance, but he worried that increasing traffic to sites promoting a religious argument (ID) while negating science suggests there is an “honest debate happening out there” on the subject.   Another blogger noted that an ID’s site manager could simply edit, delete or fail to post a contributor’s comment.  That must have been what The Frame Problem’s manager was referring to when he reported certain pro-science bloggers had been “banned” from contributing to ID sites.

Dunlop sees the blogosphere as a forum for the new public intellectuals, but it only works as a truly democratic forum when we “have to defend our opinions in public”.  Until then, “they remain opinions…half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions.”  If site managers “ban” or edit comments posted to their site, they are no better than when the Catholic Church banned Galileo’s writings based on his observations of an earth that orbited the sun.  Maybe there should be a site bloggers can go to where they can rate the most frequently undemocratic sites where public discourse isn’t so public after all?

Before starting this class, the “Public Intellectual Practicum”, I thought it would be fun to make my final project generating public interest in a hydro-electric generator and below-water windowed viewing chamber on the St Joe river in South Bend.  The city paid for a design for this project back in the 1980’s but lack of political commitment caused the project to stall.  A hydro-electric generator and viewing chamber would serve four significant purposes:

1)      provide emission-free energy to the city

2)      save money for the city by powering municipal facilities with our own hydro power

3)      serve as a tourist attraction as visitors could view migrating fish power up the river on one side and the hydro-electric turbines on the other

4)      bring tourists to support businesses (especially restaurants serving salmon) in downtown South Bend.

After reading our assignments for this class and watching a documentary called “American Blackout” on voter disenfranchisement and the political ‘lynching’ of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney I knew I needed to switch to a more pressing topic.

After working for over a year in a futile attempt to gain general ballot access for the Green Party in Indiana, I and three other Greens ran for public office in South Bend and Mishawaka this past year.  Our experiences with voter disenfranchisement, election irregularities, the arrogance of the mainstream media, the entrenchment of the two-party duopoly and the callous indifference by election officials has been my awakening to the systemic dissolution of democracy in America.

Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian confirmed our election experiences with the local media.  Mainstream journalism, he noted, “are the figures of authority; all these important people at the top speak to us, you can’t speak to them because you’re too little, you’re right down there and we are the conduit and we tell you what’s important.”

Newspapers, I believe, should only report where candidates stand on issues and their records; I’ve always despised when a newspaper’s editorial board printed their “endorsements” for candidates.  When the South Bend Tribune called we Green Party candidates to meet with their editors, my gut told me to refuse on principle.  We suspected the SBT would not endorse any of us because we had little name recognition and, no matter how intelligent and forward-thinking we were, they would not back someone they believed had little chance to win.  Sure enough, despite our best efforts and growing voter support for Green candidates, the only newspaper covering both cities did not endorse a single Green Party candidate.  Furthermore, the Tribune lent credence to the status quo by supporting the re-election of both incumbent mayors and all but one of the incumbents on both Common Councils.

As long as the mainstream media, in collusion with the two-party system, controls information and elected officials disregard the voice of voters, we cannot move forward.   Worse, our democratic principles may be slipping away.  

rcartwright.wordpress.com

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