(Read:  Open Letter #1  Open Letter #2  Open Letter #3)

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Honorable Rep Nancy:

Thank you for responding to the occasional letters I send up there to your attention in Lansing, and the civil and polite language of your responses, as well.  You exhibit impeccable manners, a quality that is in short supply these days.  To my knowledge, you have also never been found with your hand in the cookie jar of state booty, and have conducted your personal life with high standards.

Slightly more than one in four

In fact, you represent the district where my mom resides, but I am in Michigan enough on business that you have become my corresponding representative (rep) of choice for state-level political matters.  We do have to use representative loosely, however:  As we both know in the American two-party duopoly, winner-take-all system, a political victory normally means "slightly more than one in four," i.e. you are the choice of approximately 25% of the people who can vote in your district.

Please don't take such an embarrassing calculation personally, for two main reasons:

1. You cannot be faulted, at least directly, for 50% eligible-voter participation
2. Your mandate is similar to your other Republican and Democratic peers in the capitol

Personally, I see (a) largely as a consequence of the two-party monopoly referenced by (b).  But that's getting ahead of myself.  Obviously, a reason 50% of the people do not vote-the number is closer to 70% in non-Presidential election years-is they perceive the cost (primarily time) of voting stands little chance of providing them with a commensurate benefit.

"Don't vote, it only encourages them!" 

I am reminded of a punch line from an "Arlo and Janis" comic strip, where Arlo, subversively opines to their son, Gene, "Someone once said, if voting really changed anything, it would be illegal."

In this case, Arlo is referring to the type of elections in which the elected exercise considerable power over the citizen.

Not the PTA, not the condominium association, not the zoning board, these are closer to being private associations where the public interest lies in administering certain rules in accordance with a democratic process.  In these areas, people generally participate as they are moved to do good, or for whatever reason, and generally if they do or don't participate, the associations function in reasonable accord with everyone's long-term benefit.

Contrast these public associations with city government proper, especially as it becomes manifest in its franchise by the state and federal governments.  Nancy, your people have real power, because you have real money, that has been extracted from people in the form of compulsory taxation.  In the era of big government, this amount of money is no small potatoes.  Further, you dispense this money to your various economic buddies, who partial function it is to see your system remains solidly entrenched.

What I'm talking about is the so-called two-party system, and the modern industrial state.  Anyone, like the Libertarians, who would suggest to the potential voting public that the system can be radically changed-primarily by making the whole racket smaller-is pushed aside and excluded from legitimacy via strenuous ballot access laws, elimination from public debate, and nonobjective media blockades.

For example, in Massachusetts this election, 45% of the people voted to repeal the 5.2% state income tax.  45%!  In the face of hostility and ignorance from all major media, public employee groups, and state-fed businesses.  It's probable in 2004, the issue will carry.  What do you bet the supreme court of that taxaholic state will then declare the measure unconstitutional?!  And the decision will be upheld in the US Supreme Court with assertion the income tax "serves a compelling state interest."

In the face of that completely believable scenario, the suggestion, "If voting really changed anything it would be illegal," rings true.  And that is why a significant percentage of the nonvoting percentage does not vote.  The perception of immutability of a rotten system, which promotes the ongoing decline of American democracy.  It's too big.  The government is involved in areas the founders never intended, chiefly education, welfare, altruistic militarism, and holy wars on elective biochemistry.

The latter is the subject of my next open letter.

Read:  Open Letter #1  Open Letter #2  Open Letter #3