Today is zero hour
I didn't sleep well last night. I was also nervous today. I even called my lecture off a little early, since my students seemed to be distracted.
I cast my vote in the battleground state of Michigan today, in the UM student union, instead of Maryland, where I was living in August.
Political participation among the faculty and grad students was as strong as I've ever seen anywhere. Several professors and grad students were volunteering their time at polling stations in Michigan and even in Ohio for GOTV efforts.
I ran into a peer this week who has a same sex partner and an adopted daughter, and she was terrified at the prospects of Michigan's Proposal 2 passing -- she had heard it was likely to pass. It really brought home to me how dark and cruel the current political climate is.
By the way, if you think you have a constituional right to vote in presidential elections, you didn't learn your lesson from Election 2000:
Indeed, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court wrote, "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote" in presidential elections (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104) Moreover, in Bush v. Gore, the court was emphatic that state legislatures have the power to bypass the popular vote and select presidential electors. "The State legislature's power to select the manner of appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself." (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104)
That's the nightmare scenario of 2004. As millions of Americans join the new democracy movement, the Supreme Court has given this opening to the Republican Party: if Tuesday's vote is disruptive enough -- polls not closing on time, allegations of voter fraud, lawsuits, perhaps violence by frustrated voters -- then legislatures in the disputed states can come in and appoint its own electors. The popular vote would not matter.
That's not a crazy paranoid theory. Conservative legal scholars, including this Supreme Court, have repeatedly pointed out the Constitution has no specific clause giving individuals the right to vote. All the "one person, one vote" doctrine comes from Supreme Court rulings, mostly in the mid-20th century, when the court was seen as liberal. But that's not today's court.
So consider the possibility that the more the GOP does to disrupt the vote, the more likely Karl Rove can be confident that there is a legal basis to push the selection of electoral college electors to legislatures in those states. What swing states have Republican majority legislatures? Colorado. Florida. Iowa. Michigan. Minnesota. New Hampshire. Ohio. Oregon. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin.
Let's just hope it won't come to that.
[Via Cursor]
5:21:54 PM 
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