Your Devalued Vote

If there's any group of voters in America who realize their votes don't count for much it's those of us in California.  Time and time we've voted in overwhelming numbers for commonsense measures designed to maintain our values and keep our people safe only to see those votes cancelled by some liberal judge somewhere.

Patterico takes a look at the reasons our votes count for less each and every election cycle:

Protection — The well-documented tools used by incumbents to protect their seats have made it increasingly difficult to vote them out. Gerrymandering creates safe districts where incumbents need not spend as much money as their opponents to protect their interests — and their seats. They use the money and privileges that come with their office to convince dullards to vote for them. In California in particular, the safety of incumbents’ seats has become a joke, that renders efforts to oust them quixotic at best — because of the protection that incumbents have from being voted out of office. In addition, in a presidential election the makeup of blue states and red states means that most votes simply don’t matter. A small handful of undecideds in a small group of swing states decides everything for the rest of us.

Dilution — Over time, as our population increases, your vote becomes worth less and less. This problem is exacerbated by factors such as voter fraud. Oh, I know: the liberals all assure us that there is no such thing. But let’s just take one likely rich vein of illegal votes: votes cast by illegal immigrants. What’s that, you say? Votes cast by illegal immigrants? Yes. Estimates say that there are anywhere from 10 million to 18 million illegal immigrants in the country. This means millions are of voting age. What’s more, many of them are experts at obtaining false documents, allowing them to work, drive, and participate in all other aspects of civic life. Do we really think that none of them vote? None? Let’s go with a conservative estimate of 10,000,000 illegal immigrants. If only one percent of them vote — just one percent! — that’s 100,000 illegal votes. That is voter fraud on a massive scale — certainly enough to tip a close election. This sort of thing dilutes your vote.

Negation — Let’s say that by some miracle, your vote negotiates the minefield of the first two obstacles discussed above. Like a lone sperm cell at the end of its improbable journey, your vote surmounts the obstacles in its way, and ends up having meaning. Let’s say, for example, that you end up successfully passing a law that says your state is finally going to do something about illegal immigration — or that your state is going to preserve the traditional view of marriage. Guess what happens now? That’s right: you may end up finding the results of your vote challenged in court. For example, on gay marriage, the vote of 7 million Americans was overturned by the overreaching of a single federal judge, who misstated the strength of the arguments advanced by the law’s defenders, and who arguably has a stake in the outcome, after hearing a trial where the nominal defendants (the Governor and Attorney General) refused to fulfill their obligation to defend the law. In Arizona, portions of an immigration law were stayed after the Mexican government filed an amicus brief — as if Mexico has more say in how Arizona should handle immigration issues than Arizona.

The increasing devaluation of your vote, due to the above three factors, is a fundamental problem that threatens the very stability of our democracy.

The question, of course, is what to do about it.

Although we find our votes less and less meaningful, elections do have consequences and the way to reduce future problems is to make sure we elect the right people today. Presidents appoint federal judges who have their positions for life. Elect liberal presidents and you get the kind of nonsense from the judiciary we've seen lately. Keep conservatives in office and eventually the liberal judges will die off or retire and be replaced by a new generation of judges who still respect our constitution.

I'm also a big fan of term limits. Elected office should not be lifetime employment as it has become for many congressmen and senators. I'd love to see a constitutional amendment restricting the number of terms an individual can serve in the Congress to ensure that we get new blood in there and special interests have less influence.

And for those elected officials who campaign one way and govern another, incumbency should not automatically mean reelection.  There's nothing like a primary challenger to help keep a congressman honest.

And, if none of that works, there's always the pitchfork and torches approach.