Political Parties and Unfair Elections Essay

This party system was the first truly national system, consisting of the Democrats (followers of Jackson) and Whigs (opp iodinnts of Jackson) fairly balanced in most regions (Wilson and DiIulio, Jr. 196). The Civil fight split the political parties in several ship canal. There was a sibylline difference in opinion between the parties over the issue of thraldom and sectionalism. Both parties tried to straddle the issues to avoid dividing their followers and losing the pick to their rivalry (Wilson and DiIulio, Jr. 196).But the old parties divided and new ones emerged. As a result of the Civil War the modern republican Party began as a third party. The Republican Partys strength do in the North Abraham Lincoln did not receive a wholeness electoral take from a Southern state in 1860. The Democrats in the North divided into War Democrats, who supported the war effort and claimed the Republicans were doing a poor job of leading the totality, and the Peace Democrats, or Copperhe ads, who unlike the war and were suspected of disloyalty to the Union.To derive the preference of 1864, the Republicans reorganized themselves as the Union party to attract votes from the War Democrats and nominated War Democrat Andrew Johnson for frailty president. When Lincoln was assassinated, Democrat Johnson became president. Following the Civil War, Republicans moved quickly to merge their control of the United provinces government. They quickly added a series of Western states to the Union, states that they evaluate would remain firm in their support for Republicans.The Republican Partys pro-business positions played well in the industrial North and Midwest, while the Democrats held the unscathed South. The large number of immigrants who came to the United States, together with the growing industrial workforce, set(p) the basis for strong, largely parliamentary political machines in New York, Chicago, and another(prenominal) large cities (CliffsNotes. com). So at t his point there were basically cardinal political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats dominated national politics for the next 20 geezerhood.Democratic dominance collapsed in the 1960s in response to the Vietnam War. There was extraordinary rioting against the principles of the war and Democrats blamed their party for the riots and the rise in out faithfulnessed behavior and protests. Due to that fact, support of the Democratic Party sharply declined. From the 1968 alternative of Richard Nixon to Bill Clintons 1992 victory, only one Democrat attained the color House Jimmy Carter, whose term spanned 1976 to 1980. The Electoral College is a major component part in sustaining a majority dickens-party system, that does not inescapably keep elections fair.If the frequent vote in a state is really close, the winner gets all of the states electoral votes. This key outs it extremely fractious for a third party to win, i. e. the two-party system is reinforc ed. In galore(postnominal) a(prenominal) another(prenominal) cases the Electoral College system has failed so far as keeping elections fair. twain instances in particular reveal the inadequacy of the Electoral College procedure. An example of a usual third party candidate that was denied any serious trial impression as a Presidential candidate would be Ross Perot in the 1992 election.Perot garnered nearly 20 percent of the popular vote across the country but did not receive a single electoral vote out-of-pocket to the Electoral College rules. This discrepancy between electoral and popular votes has led to many wanting to put an end to the Electoral College system and replace it with popular voting. Another example of the failure of the Electoral College system was exemplified in the 2000 election, when Al bloodbath was not chosen to be president although he had the popular vote of the country.A systematic conspiracy to heavily manipulate the vote in the critical state of Fl orida to favor chaparral in the 2000 bush- bloodletting presidential election ultimately resulted in a crotch hair victory. The blatant employment modes used were enough to swing the election to crotch hair and away from thrust. The unvarnished fraud in the voting process and the failure of the motor hotels to intervene in a proper and non-partisan manner cost panel the Presidency. When it became apparent on November 8, 2000 that neither Gore nor Bush had the majority of the electoral votes required to win the Presidency, the state of Florida became the focus of attention.Both candidates needed a majority in Florida to win the White House, but voting irregularities prevented the final tally from macrocosm reached for over five weeks. What electors didnt realize was that the voting procedure wasnt the only problem in Florida, but that the process to insure George W. Bushs victory had been in place for over two years before the election. Florida Governor Jeb Bush, George W. Bushs associate, was elected in 1998. He immediately put a plan into action that would help his brother gain the Florida electoral votes in the 2000 election. Gov.Bush let peculiar(prenominal) invade groups know that they expected political donations of $2 for every $1 donated to Democrats or defaulters would lose access to the governor and the legislative leadership, and their businesses would tank. The Governor in any case began regenerate Democrats throughout Florida state government, his first purge of Democratic voters. Governor Jeb Bushs next step to eliminate Democratic power in Florida was to appoint staunch Republicans to control Floridas educational system, including state senator Jim Horne as Floridas first Secretary of Education and most of the individual university presidents.He accomplished this feat by eliminating the Florida Board of Regents. The board was replaced by fragment boards of trustees at all ten of the state universities According to Lance deHaven- Smith, in his book entitled The Battle for Florida, the governor was given the power to make all the trustee appointments. This created an enormous source of new patronage and also undermined the political neutrality of the state universities. With the Board of Regents out of the way, Republicans quickly replaced many of the university presidents with political insiders. (deHaven-Smith, 2005) The Florida Republican Party then began a drive to disfranchise Democratic voters. They paid a private company to purge the voter registry of all ex-felons, even though Florida courts twice ruled that ex-felons whose well-mannered rights had been restored before they came to Florida were entitled to vote. This would benefit the Republicans because blacks made up more than 50% of the ex-felon list and 90% of the black Florida population voted Democratic. In 1999, newly-elected Secretary of State Katherine Harris paid Data Base Technologies (DBT) $4. million to compile the most pro yearned scru b list possible. Race was a big factor in compiling matches for the list. After the election, DBT testified before a congressional committee that Florida authoriseds had legitimate them to eliminate voters by making incorrect matches. The information was gathered from the meshing and no verifying telephone calls were made. Five months before the election, Harris (who coincidentally was co-chairing the Bush presidential campaign) sent the list of 57,700 names to all the precincts with instructions to extirpate those voters from the rolls.Greg Palast revealed the story of the scrub list in The Observer, London, November 26, 2000. The story was ignored by American mainstream press. Palast has since provided irrefutable, hard evidence of fraud. His most recent estimate of certifiable Florida voters barred from casting a ballotinging in alternative 2000 stands at 90,000. On January 10, 2001, NAACP lawyers sued and won their case against DBT, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, an d Bush loyalist Clay Roberts, Director of the Division of Elections. (Palast, 2003) On Election Day 2000 in the state of Florida, however Republican voters stood in short ines and used with-it equipment. The machinations of the Republican Party paid off in black districts. avenue patrol officers flagged down voters at roadblocks and checked their drivers licenses while others waited in long lines to vote on ancient machines. Innocent citizens were turned away and assured that their names appeared on the ex-felons list when they showed up to vote. Republicans found other ways to disenfranchise opposition voters. Two-page ballots with misleading directions were printed in Austin, Texas (the center of the George W.Bush presidential campaign), returned to Florida, and distributed in black districts. Some votes were simply later trashed by ballot handlers. In Duval County, 27,000 ballots were discarded, over half of them from black precincts in Jacksonville. No official challenges wer e filed within the 72-hour time limit, so thousands of mostly Democratic votes were lost. Sixteen-thousand votes for Gore disappeared overnight from the ongoing Volusia County tally and were reinstated only when an election supervisor questioned the subtraction of already registered votes.No voting machine company representative or election official was able to explain what happened. (Dover, 2002) Around 8 p. m. on Election Day exit polls from Voter News Service project a Gore victory, but Bev Harris uncovered an CBS news report show that the erroneous subtraction of Gores votes in Volusia caused the election to be called for Bush. For several hours the race was too close to call, but shortly afterward midnight, Bushs numbers plunged rapidly and Gore gained the lead. Despite Gores numbers, at 216 a. m. shed News inform that Texas Governor George W. Bush had won Florida and the other television networks repeated Foxs false information. (Harris, 2004) Gore heard the fake news of h is defeat, phoned his congratulations to Bush and was prepared to deliver his concession speech to the nation. At that point, Gores chief advisors in Florida told him it was much too early to give way formally and advised him to hold off since there were still 360,000 multitudinous votes. Out of 6 million votes cast in Florida, Bushs lead was reported to be a mere 537 votes.The Florida shaping had no provisions for a statewide recount, so Gore asked for a partial(p) recount in four southern counties where glaring irregularities had shown up. The last amour the Bush team wanted was a fair recount. They complained to the press that Gore was a sore loser, and the press largely agreed. (Posner, 2001) On celestial latitude 8, the Florida absolute judicial system overturned a circuit court decision and say a manual(a) recount. Based on findings in the circuit court trial, Gore was awarded 393 votes, reducing Bushs lead to only 154 votes.Thats when the Bush camp went ballistic. ( Simon, 2001) The National Party sent out-of-state operatives to intimidate Republican county clerks to amend over votes in Republican counties, to amend incomplete absentee ballot applications, and to accept late-arriving military ballots lacking signatures. When the recount actually began they became more radical, supercharged into the county administration building, threatening county canvassers, and halted the recount of Miami-Dade ballots. Despite court orders, eightereen counties neer attempted a recount.The Bush campaign team and lawyers circulated misinformation nigh Floridas election laws, about the reliability of manual recounts (both Jeb and George W. claimed that only machines could count accurately), and about the likelihood of a organic crisis. (Zelden, 2010) The Florida Constitution specifies that the intent of the voter be paramount during ballot recounting. Because electronic machines had repeatedly failed to read, discern intent, and count ballots accurately, ma nual recounting was mandated. The law was actually quite clear and no constitutional crisis was imminent.That did not stop the Bush team from pressing the issue, for they wanted the U. S. unequivocal Court to intervene and prevent the recount. Republican leadership called the legislature into special session while the judiciary branch still addressed election issues, an extraordinary move. Speaker of the House Tom Feeney, Jebs bosom political buddy, took the podium and criticized the Florida arbitrary Court decisions. He warned that if the dispute continued to December 12, Floridas electoral slate would be excluded from the Electoral College vote.Florida had submitted its election results as they were certified, so the electoral slate was never really in danger. The Bush legal team, determined to delay or stop the recount, appealed to the U. S. District Court of Appeals, the Florida Supreme Court, and the U. S. Supreme Court. The justices had no business interfering in the electio n. The U. S. Constitution authorizes Congress to settle election disputes, not the Supreme Court. The first two courts denied the appeal. Then the U. S. Supreme Court gave them the nod. From that moment, the fix was in. Zelden, 2010) Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas had close relatives running(a) for Republican organizations and should have recused themselves. Antonin Scalias son Eugene is a Washington law partner of Theodore B. Olson, the attorney who twice argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of George W. Bush. Scalias son John is an attorney with the Miami law firm that delineate Bush in Florida. Clarence Thomass wife, Virginia, worked for the Heritage Foundation, a right think tank, and had been helping to collect applications from people seeking employment in the Bush administration.But they, along with the three other right-wing adjudicate on the court, issued a ruling instructing the Florida courts to find a recount method that would apply equal standards. The decision came down at 10 p. m. on December 12, 2000, two hours before the deadline to submit voting results. In short, the U. S. Supreme Court ran the clock out on American voters and handed Floridas electoral votes and the presidency to George W. Bush. (Thoreau, 2007) Reviewing the actual results of the statewide examination of 175,010 disputed ballots, on November 12, 2001 Robert Parry, www. consortiumnews. om, cleared away the media fog So Al Gore was the option of Floridas voters whether one counts hanging chads or dimpled chads. That was the core finding of the eight news organizations that conducted a review of disputed Florida ballots. By any chad measure, Gore won. Gore won even if one doesnt count the 15,000-25,000 votes that the States Today estimated Gore lost because of illegally designed butterfly ballots, or the hundreds of predominantly African-American voters who were falsely identified by the state as felons and turned away from the polls. Gore won even if th eres no adjustment for George W.Bushs windfall of about 290 votes from improperly counted military absentee ballots where lax standards were applied to Republican counties and strict standards to Democratic ones, a violation of fairness reported earlier by the Washington office staff and the New York Times. Put differently, George W. Bush was not the choice of Floridas voters any longer than he was the choice of the American people who cast a half million more ballots for Gore than Bush nationwide. Although the 2000 election was a travesty, one positive outcome was the renewal in the nations kindle in The National Popular Vote bill.