Voting Is a Life-and-Death Matter

Voting is a way to send our blessings to the world

This is Part Two of my Election Extra. Part One is here.

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Election Prayer --->

Divine Unruly Intelligence

alive in us like ever-sprouting seeds

relentless re-awakener of rigorous vigorous sentience

compassionately ruthless destroyer of suffering

tricky teacher of surprising reality--->


Fill us with almost more splendor than we can hold

Shake loose our deepest best choices

Swoop and swoon us into righteous amazement

Inspire the shocking victory of wild goodness

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VOTING IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

If people feel that voting is irrelevant or unimportant or a waste of time—maybe because they imagine there's no difference between the two political parties—I regard them as dangerous to our collective welfare.

I wish them well, but can't indulge their collusion with malign leaders. Here in my sanctuary, we proceed with the understanding that voting is a life-and-death matter.

Nowhere is this more dramatically evidenced than in the theft of abortion rights by America's growing theocratic fascist menace. There's no ambiguity: It happened because voters installed Republican presidents who appointed rightwing crackpots to the Supreme Court.

YES, There Are Important Differences between the Two Main Political Parties

and

YES, Voting Is a Matter of Life and Death for a Lot of People.

If a person says they didn't vote in 2000, or decided that Earth-in-the-Balance Al Gore wasn't green enough for them — then they helped elect George Bush, who then picked two conservative Supreme Court justices. John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Those two are still menacing fixtures on the court 16 and 17 years later.

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A person didn't vote in the 2010 or 2014 US midterm elections?

They helped throw the Senate to the Republicans, allowing them to steal the Supreme Court seat made vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died.

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A person didn't vote in 2016, or just didn't like corporate Hillary and her emails?

They helped elect Trump, who picked three horrendous right-wing fanatics to be Supreme Court justices.

Now the Supreme Court, fueled by Bush’s and Trump’s henchmen and henchwoman, is putting a Christian Fascist Theocracy in place — stealing basic human rights like abortion and gutting environmental protections.

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The bans on abortion that have been authorized by the Supreme Court are killing people.

The evidence is clear: Making abortion illegal leads to an increase in pregnancy-related deaths.

Clear and growing evidence that overturning Roe v Wade is harming reproductive health and freedom: https://tinyurl.com/2kz79jve

Mothers in states with abortion bans nearly 3 times more likely to die: https://archive.ph/fGLkZ

Abortion bans usher in maternal mortality crisis: https://tinyurl.com/4w9jj4md

Infant mortality got worse after Roe reversal: https://archive.ph/4N8Qx

Pregnancy-related deaths up to 3 times more likely in states with abortion bans: https://tinyurl.com/bdar3ub8

Worsening Health Outcomes for Women in States With Abortion Bans: https://tinyurl.com/yttsa7u4

Higher maternal mortality rates in states with more abortion restrictions: https://tinyurl.com/2u888y7

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PS: More than 130 pregnancies resulting from rape occur daily in the 14 states with total abortion bans.

64,565: That's the estimated number of rape-related pregnancies in the 14 states with full abortion bans from the month the ban went into place. https://tinyurl.com/9wrwec4s

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Another life-and-death issue affected by voting or not voting: People are suffering and dying from the climate crisis: https://tinyurl.com/mmk4cdny

And the Supreme Court curbed the EPA’s ability to fight the climate crisis: https://tinyurl.com/2p8epude

The legal doctrine that the conservative justices used to limit the EPA’s power is popping up in a host of new legal challenges — some of which further contribute to the climate crisis. https://tinyurl.com/37uafb96

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The evidence is overwhelming: Voting is a matter of life and death.

VOTING FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL

During his time in the Senate, former U.S. presidential candidate John McCain was a strong advocate for Native Americans.

As chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, he sponsored or co-sponsored seven bills in support of Indian rights.

And yet in 2008, Native Americans voted overwhelmingly for McCain's opponent, Barack Obama, who had no such track record.

When asked why, one Native American author said that unlike most other groups, Indians don't vote merely for their own narrow self-interest, but rather for the benefit of all. They felt Obama would be the better president for America.

VOTING IS ONE WAY TO SEND OUR BLESSINGS TO THE WORLD

You don’t think it’s important to vote?

Turn your attention to the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Let’s say that 7,212 people in New Hampshire who voted for third-party candidate Ralph Nader had instead voted for Al Gore. In that case, Gore would have become President of the United States. Gore would have received more votes than Bush in New Hampshire, and that state’s four electoral votes would have put Gore at 270 electoral votes, with Bush at 267.

Same is true if 7,212 people in New Hampshire who didn’t vote at all had instead gone to the polls and voted for Gore. Then Gore would have been president.

The environment would have had a chance of being saved. There would have been no 9-11. (Bush ignored the warnings.) There would have been no multi-trillion-dollar and millions-of-deaths invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Clinton-Gore Administration was the only administration in memory that had a surplus in budget when leaving the office. US National Debt was in decline during the Clinton-Gore era, and Gore would have continued that.

The Supreme Court, with a liberal majority appointed by President Gore, would have issued a clear ruling on the unconstitutionality of gerrymandering, which would have forced the GOP to adopt more moderate positions on a host of issues.

Turn your attention to the 2016 presidential election. If 53,667 people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan had voted differently, Hillary Clinton would have been in the White House instead of the demented tyrant.

Breaking it down: If some voters for Jill Stein had voted for Clinton instead, Clinton could have won Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and the presidency. Stein voters delivered the presidency to Trump.

PS: Jill Stein is a hypocrite. She is a multi-millionaire who owns stock in weapons manufacturers, big banks, pharmaceutical mega-corporations, and fossil fuel companies.

WHY DO THE LOSERS WIN?

In 2000, Al Gore got 500,000+ more votes than did George Bush, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton got 2.9 million more votes than Trump. In every other Western democracy and republic, Gore and Clinton would have been elected because of the fact that they were more popular.

And why did the top vote getters in 2000 and 2016 not become Presidents? Because of the Electoral College, a racist, antiquated system of selecting the chief executive of the federal government. Out of the 191 countries in the world, only a few other countries use this perverse system to elect their top political leader: Botswana, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, South Africa, and Suriname.

If the United States elected its leader by a method that ALL other Western democracies and republics use, Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees would never have come into power. The Roe v. Wade law would not have been overturned. Abortion would still be fully legal in the United States.

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Wilfred U. Codrington III writes: Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history.

Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost. https://tinyurl.com/RacistElectoralCollege

Another article about how slavery played a major role in creating the Electoral College: https://www.hnn.us/article/strange-political-bedfellows

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Here's one way we can work toward abolishing the Electoral College: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com

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EXCELLENCE DOES NOT REQUIRE PERFECTION

The American political system is flawed in fundamental ways. Among the maddening, crazy-making, ridiculous aspects of this system are:

• The two-party system

• The Electoral College

• Gerrymandering

• The lack of ranked choice voting

• The undemocratic allocation of power in the Senate, which gives states with tiny populations, like Wyoming, as much power as highly populous states, like California.

• The Citizen’s United ruling, which ensures that every election is deeply tainted by the financial power of wealthy people. It gives special interests and their lobbyists obscene amounts of power in Washington.

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But here’s our choice:

to be so addicted to our longing for perfection that we do nothing at all to shape the political culture.

or else:

to work within the deep imperfections in the American political system so as to create justice, fairness, and bounty for as many people as possible.

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Here's another key point to keep in mind as we evaluate how government is working for us, with words borrowed from Jim Wright:

Government shouldn't be sexy, or splashy, or in the headline every day.

Good government is BORING. And it should be. In a democracy, in a republic, you want leaders who do their jobs quietly without fanfare, glory, self-promotion, or any expectation of gratitude beyond basic courtesy.

Government isn't Reality TV, isn't some spectacle for your entertainment. I's a DUTY. It holds civilization together. You shouldn't have to constantly worry it'll come apart.

And the fact is: The Joe Biden administration has carried out HUNDREDS of progressive actions that have gone mostly unreported on by the media and totally missed by most voters. That’s why progressive Senator Bernie Sanders has said, “Biden has been the most effective president in modern history.”

Here's a list of the Biden Administrations many, many progressive accomplishments: https://tinyurl.com/BidenProgressive

THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES

In all of American history, no third party candidate has ever come close to winning a presidential election.

Here's a main reason why: It's mathematically impossible for a third-party candidate to win the presidential election. https://tinyurl.com/ThirdPartyFail

The most successful third-party candidate in history was Teddy Roosevelt, who had already served as president for 8 years and was one of the most famous people in the world.

When he ran as a third party candidate in 1912, he only got 27% of the vote and a mere 88 electoral votes, not even close to the winner, who got 435 electoral votes.

The next most successful third-party candidate was billionaire Ross Perot. He won 19% of the popular in 1992, but got ZERO electoral votes.

Third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West have zero chance of being elected president in 2024. The most significant accomplishment they can perpetrate is to help get Donald Trump elected, thereby ensuring a full-blown autocratic fascist theocracy.

The "best" any third party candidate can ever do is throw the election to one of the main two parties' candidate.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 helped Democrat Wilson win.

Progressive third-party candidate Robert La Follette might have hurt Democrat John W. Davis in 1924, but Davis would have lost anyway.

Third party rightwing candidate Strom Thurmond pulled votes from Truman in 1948. Third-party progressive candidate Henry Wallace pulled votes from Truman, too. But Truman won.

Third-party candidate George Wallace helped Hubert Humphrey in 1968, though it wasn't enough to give Humphrey the presidency.

Ralph Nader definitely hurt Gore in 2000, and Jill Stein was instrumental in getting Trump elected in 2016.