We the People

On Election Day I woke early, drove through the dark to the Senior Center in a town not far from mine and arrived at 6:05 to help prepare a polling place.

I taped signs and poster on walls and doors, moved tables and chairs, sat down for a brief review of how to use the printed poll book.

My book for the day was A to L. Somehow A to D had been printed facing one way, with E to L facing the other.

My primary task was to look up names as people gave them, ask for ID if this was their first time voting in that precinct, show people where to sign, then write a ballot number in the poll book while someone next to me recorded the same information in a little paper ledger.  

The doors opened at seven with a line spilling out to the street and for several hours, each time I looked up the line seemed exactly the same. 

Sometime mid-morning it slowed enough for distribution of coffee and pastries delivered by a local coffee shop.

Later, someone from the gourmet chocolate shop around the corner came in to vote,, then came back minutes later with a bag of chocolates to share.

Mid-afternoon, the line dissolved long enough for me to step out into the brilliant  afternoon and exchange greetings with the two party reps sitting opposite each other, talking amiably.

At some point a poll watcher arrived, pulled up a chair not far from me and sat down to watch. In a brief break between voters he offered an explanation for his appearance: “someone called to say they were asked for ID.”

“Half the people who come through the door are new to this precinct,” I told him. “So they need to show some kind of ID.”

“Photo ID?”

“No – just something with their address.”

He sat and watched a while longer, then shrugged. “Nothing here to report,” he said as he headed toward the door.

A woman my age or a little older came in during another lull, hurrying to the table.

“My mother’s in the car,” she said, “and we’ve been driving around trying to find her polling place. She can’t remember where she’s supposed to vote and she’s adamant she has to vote in this election.”’

I looked up the name in my book and there it was.

“You’ve come to the right place.”

“Wonderful.”

Eventually they came in together, the mother moving slowly with a walker, insistent on standing in line. She stared at me with a glint in her eye while I found the right page, then signed her name with a wavering script and moved off slowly to cast her vote.

There were other mothers and daughters who came in together. One threesome, almost jubilant, pointed to the youngest in the group and announced, “This is her first election.”

They all signed their names, gleeful and proud, and moved off to collect their ballots.

At 4:30 two pizzas were delivered. They were stone cold by the time anyone had time to eat them.

At eight, the last voters finished casting their ballots, the Judge of Elections locked the front door and our little team began the complicated task of closing out the process.

We sorted out write-ins on the paper ballots, recording names (six for Bernie, three for Romney, one for John Kasich, one for Mickey Moose.)

We put tables and chairs back in their proper places so the seniors arriving in the morning would find their center undisturbed.

We pulled signs and posters off the walls, inside and out.

We posted the tally of votes in a prominent place outside the polling place and placed duplicate tallies in different envelopes to be stored in their proper places.

Sometime after ten we all signed our names attesting that we had witnessed the election carried out in a lawful manner, watched the Judge of Elections and Minority Official drive off together with the sealed bags of ballots to deliver to the county offices, then called goodnight across the darkened parking lot.

It was a long, tiring day, but it struck me as I drove through the quiet town toward home, everyone involved had been working toward the same goal: a fair election where everyone who showed up was able to vote.

I don’t know who my fellow workers voted for. 

It wouldn’t matter. 

There are inefficiencies in our election administration.

And in a polling place where many voters were new to the precinct, it was easy to see why lines are long in some places and not so long in others.

But at its core, the day reminded me of the strength of we the people, the soundness of the vision that all voices should be heard.

That vision is hard to hold.

I stayed up too late on Tuesday night, watching returns with my husband as the tide seemed to shift.

At a little after one, as the outcome became clear, we called it a night and headed off to bed.

The next morning, we carved out time to watch Hillary Clinton’s concession.

We’ve all heard of the stages of grief: denial and disbelief; anger, even rage; bargaining; sadness and depression; acceptance.

Fear is somewhere on the list.

Fear that all protection is gone.

Fear that the future will be more painful than the past.

Much has been written in the past few days.

Jubilant explanations about how Trump’s miraculous success is clearly God’s will.

Fearful narratives about mistreatment of targeted individuals.

Yvonne Heath, My Experience

Exhortations to get over it and respect the will of the people. 


Anguished introspection about who we’ve become and where we go from here.

And more than once I've seen the "my experience" grief graphic as many try to work their way through a complicated swirl of emotions 

For anyone paying attention, this election has made clear that our institutions are broken and “we the people” are in danger.

Our electoral system is in need of real reform. Gerrymandered districts, laws deliberately obstructing or suppressing the vote for certain populations, closed primaries where candidates are determined by just a  handful of our most partisan voters: all need to change.

While our media was busy treating the election like a reality TV show, they missed a deeper story: this was the first election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Did that affect the outcome?

Voting rights advocate Ari Berman asks:  

How many people were turned away from the polls? How many others didn’t bother to show up in the first place? These are questions we need to take far more seriously. 

The party now in control is the party most responsible for undermining the principles that safeguard democracy. Should we rejoice? Or weep?

Historically, the media has served as an alternate check and balance when government has swung out of control.

That requires a media willing to look at underlying issues and causes and a public able to discern truth from propaganda.

As journalist Pete Mecca recently lamented: 

The checks and balances that once protected our great country from a totalitarian government are no longer methods of citizen control over Washington, D.C.

Our first line of civilized defense from tyranny was a “Free Press” along with an informed citizenry. Both have disappeared, one into political favoritism, the other into low-information dummy-downed “victimized” voters.

In America, our churches have been essential, even primary guardians of democracy. The idea of “we the people” was born from the Biblical insistence that all are of value in God’s eyes, that all deserve equal treatment under the law, that all are called to work together for the common good.

Churches played a part in the forming of the nation and historically spoke out as agents of justice. Abolitionists, advocates for women’s rights, leaders in the civil rights movement: all were nurtured, encouraged, protected and resourced by local churches and networks of churches.

For me, that’s the deepest grief in this election cycle.

Instead of providing space for real dialogue about how to care for unwanted children, how to nurture families in poverty, how to wisely embrace suffering refugees, how to use resources wisely while caring for creation, too many churches and Christian institutions have become echo chambers for misinformation and breeding grounds for bigotry.

References to "religious freedom" are really rallying calls for pastors to promote Republican candidates without jeopardizing tax free status. 

As DC Pastor Thabite Anyabwile wrote on Wednesday, 

Some evangelicals offered “biblical” justification for voting Trump and minimized his character flaws. Others endorsed and vigorously campaigned for him. With last night’s election result, the GOP stranglehold on evangelical conscience and voting may have tightened to unbreakable strength.

A good number of people outside the faith look at the exit polls aghast and angry. Aghast because they themselves cannot imagine supporting a candidate with the personal moral flaws of Mr. Trump. Angry because they’ve watched evangelicals moralize in public for a long time, often shaming people for their sins and moral weaknesses. . . . For many, Christ and the gospel are now bound up—rightly or wrongly—with evangelicals choosing a man with little resemblance to either. 

We all have work to do.

If you believe I’m wrong and you're celebrating your candidate's win, your work is this: seek to understand. 

You’ve had your chance to make your point. Now give others space to grieve while you do what you can to care for those who feel defeated and unsafe. Here are two places to start: "I want to help you understand my lament"  and "Postelection Reflection: Ears to hear and the courage to respond." 

If you believe I’m right, join me in prayer about how to heal these broken institutions. Change will not come from existing leadership – not in government, media, churches.

We are in a time when it is not enough to show up every four years to vote, not enough to tune into one channel and believe whatever is said, not enough to show up to church and sit in a pew for an hour.

We need to reengage, rethink, re-envision, rebuild.

But beyond institutions, we need to ask again, more deeply, more courageously: what does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves?

How will we declare God’s compassion and justice in a world where even the term “Christian” has become linked to endorsement by the KKK? How will we ensure that all have room to thrive when religious patriarchy is now so explicitly bound to assault and defamation of women?

I have no answers, but I know the starting place.

Now, more than ever,  we need to memorize and pray and live words like these from Zechariah: 

This is what the Lord Almighty says: Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other. 

Lord let that be so.

This is the conclusion of a series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform? 

I invite your comment, but even more, if there are things you've been reading that suggest a way forward or offer analysis of the brokenness I describe, please share them. This conversation is not over.  

Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016

A Different Way July 31, 2016 

Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 

How Long Will the Land Lie Parched? August 21, 2016 

Walls, Welcome, Mercy, Law August 28, 2016

Workers and Their Wages, Sep 3, 2016 

Educating Ourselves On Education, Sep 10, 2016 

Let's Talk, Sep 17, 2016

The Language of the Unheard, Sep 24, 2016

Maintain Justice, October 9, 2016

Defending the Indefensible, October 16, 2016 

Plan Your Vote: Platforms, Parties, People, October 23, 2016

The Politics of Hate - or Love, October 30, 2016 

Political Persistence

I spent time this past weekend at the state board meeting for the League of Women Voters of

Pennsylvania. One of our goals was to revisit vision and values.

Vision draft:  informed, engaged voters; effective, responsive government. 

Values listed: non-partisan, respectful, fact-based, trusted, persistent.

We will need to be persistent indeed if we hope to realize the vision. Only informed, engaged voters will make possible an effective, responsive government. Only an effective, responsive government will create space and motivation for informed, engaged voters. It’s a chicken and egg sort of construct. And both chicken and egg are in very bad health.

This week was the 100th anniversary of a parade in Chicago asking the Republican party to include a plank supporting women’s right to vote.

In spite of a heavy storm, over 5,000 women showed up to march in the rain, while inside the convention hall, a group of anti-suffrage women testified that women did NOT want the right to vote. According to a Chicago paper:

As if timed to the instant, through the doors of the hall came the drenched and bedraggled marchers for suffrage. They pushed up to the platform, they massed down below, they scattered out over the hall and still they came pouring through the doors…as the shock of surprise yielded, several of [the delegates] on the platform smiled in understanding amusement, as if the incongruity of that outworn charge had at last been comprehended.

 The Republican Party did adopt a suffrage plank, as did the Democratic Party two weeks later. Four years after that, the 19^th Amendment, extending the right to vote to women, was finally ratified.

That change was the fruit of over a century of work led by a persistent, passionate, very brave band of women.

The gathering in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 is often listed as the start of the suffrage movement, but read the biography of Lucretia Coffin Mott and it’s clear the work began decades before. 

As a young teacher at a Quaker boarding school in New York, she learned that the fee "for the education of girls was the same as that for boys.” Yet, “when they became teachers, women received but half as much as men for their services.”

“The injustice of this was so apparent," Mott recalled in an autobiographical sketch, "that I early resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed."

Married at 18 in 1811, Mott became a Quaker minister in 1821 and spoke often and passionately about the systemic immorality of slavery. When shut out of the American Anti-Slavery Society by white Christian men, she helped found the Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, one of the first racially mixed organizations in the country.

While organizing to end slavery, the group also worked to build literacy and leadership skills in black communities, provided shelter to runaway slaves and raised funds to improve living conditions for impoverished black families.

That work was done under the constant threat of violence from white males attempting to silence them. 

Mott's persistence awes me. Her courage inspires me.

I’ve posted before about my work for redistricting reform in Pennsylvania. We had a setback this week, as the Government Reform Caucus decided not to endorse the bills we’re supporting. Pennsylvania politics as usual.

The next day I had a long conversation with an older man who wanted to make clear change is not legislatively possible: “The Republicans have had that legislature LOCKED DOWN for fifty years.” 

He repeated the phrase “locked down" with gusto multiple times: it’s locked down, it won’t change, and any Republican who votes for reform is committing political suicide.

Maybe so, but at last count the bills we endorse had 13 Republican co-sponsors.

And as I reminded him cheerfully: I’m part of the League of Women Voters. We don’t think change is easy, but we tend to be persistent.

Even so, I find myself marveling at the persistence and sacrifice of Lucretia Mott. She did not like politics, based as it inevitably is on moral compromise.  Yet she saw the connections among the issues that concerned her: freedom, literacy, peace, alleviation of need.

She was 47 when she was forced to sit – in silence - in a separate women’s section at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. 55 when she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized their own women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

She was 71 in 1864 when she helped found Swarthmore College, one of the first coeducational colleges in the country. She was 73 in 1866 when she helped organize and became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, formed “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex."

She was 87 when she died in 1880, three decades before women finally received the right to vote.

Next weekend I’ll be attending the national League of Women Voters Convention in Washington, DC. On Saturday morning I’ll be leading a caucus on building coalitions and finding allies for redistricting reform.

Reading through the history of the work is a little discouraging. Lots of names. Lots of bills. Only a few states where real change has been accomplished.

In his farewell speech in 1989, Ronald Reagan said that “high on his agenda” would be “talking up the need to do something about political gerrymandering. This is the practice of rigging the boundaries of congressional districts. It is the greatest single blot on the integrity of our nation’s electoral system, and it’s high time we did something about it.”

The League of Women Voters, in states across the country, has been working on this since at least 1990. That’s three rounds of redistricting ago.  If the practice was a blot on the integrity of the electoral system back in 1989, it’s now a spreading, smothering stain.  

With the constant improvement of mapping systems, the fine-tuning of data mining and the millions of dollars invested by both parties in capturing state legislatures, gerrymandering has made competitive elections almost impossible and has eliminated real choice at almost every level.

Reform coalitions have come and gone as invisible funding sources co-opt good intentions and inevitable discouragement saps energy and interest. 

Even so, there are redistricting reform coalitions in more than a dozen states. I’m hoping to meet the leaders during my time in DC.

We’ll be voting at the convention on a new redistricting position, created by a national task force that has studied the problem, researched solutions and drafted recommendations.

The position recommends an end to the conflict of interest that allows politicians to draw their own maps. It endorses adoption of independent commissions with strong standards for transparency, public input, fairly drawn lines.

I’m sure it will pass with strong support.

At the same time, I don’t envision anyone marching in the streets. Redistricting reform is a complicated issue and most Americans have trouble focusing past the first bullet point.

Somehow Lucretia Mott was able to make the connections clear: faith in God, confidence in the equality of all, reverence for life, sacrificial hospitality, literacy, voting rights, a longing for peace.

We are fractured, distracted, easily swayed by sound bites and simplistic answers.

Captive to an entrenched system that offers us little choice and pays little attention to the real needs, hopes and dreams of the average citizen.

In Pennsylvania, we have crowded jails, crumbling roads, immigrant families held in substandard detention facilities. We have the two most underfunded school systems and the most inequitable school funding structure in the country, outrageous property taxes, overlapping jurisdictions, a bloated, expensive government that accomplishes little and captures national attention for its incompetence and corruption.

Not long after the convention in Seneca Falls, Mott wrote: "Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."

We are in a time of great change, and it’s hard to say where that change will lead.

As I worked on this post, I heard the sad news: fifty dead in Orlando.

The sixteenth time our current President has addressed the press to speak of a mass shooting.

Our electoral systems themselves make it less and less possible to come to agreement on issues like guns, immigration, taxes, war.

Anger feeds anger; hate breeds hate.

Violence encourages greater violence.

Will the foundations of privilege be shaken, as Lucretia Mott prayed, or will the foundations of democracy be fractured instead?

From where I sit today, it’s hard to say.

Primaries, Parties, Power, Please . . .

I won’t be voting in our Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. I’ve been promoting voter registration for months now, inviting attention to the League of Women Voters’ Vote411, which offers sample ballots and voter information, and posting winning videos from our League of Women Voters 2016 video contest: Your Voice, Your Vote, Be Heard!

But I won’t be voting myself, because I’m registered as unaffiliated, and PA’s primaries are closed to unaffiliated voters.

In January, Gallup reported that forty-two percent of Americans identify as political independents. That percent is much lower in PA, due to our closed primaries, but still more than 1.1 million choose not to identify with one of the two major parties.

I consider our closed primaries a form of taxation without representation.

Yes, I could register with a party to exercise my right to vote in the primary Tuesday.

Except, honestly, I can’t.

There are parts of both parties’ platforms I agree with. (Here are both: Republican, Democrat)

There are major parts in both I think are wrong-headed, counterproductive, unsustainable.

I could compromise on those. Maybe.

But my concern goes past platform and policy to practice and power.

I read an essay recently by Os Guinness (an excerpt from his 2002 book, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype and Spin, published in the Veritas Forum's A Place for Truth):

If there's no truth and everything is only power, ours is a world of brutal manipulation in which the strong will win and the weak will always go to the wall – and that's a horrendous world. 

I fear the horrendous world he describes is hurrying toward us.

And I fear our political parties have lost sight of core values like truth, justice, the common good, and instead depend on manipulation to maintain power and justify control.

Not everyone: there are good people in both parties. I've met some. I know of others.

But the parties themselves, the power structures within them, the games they play: I am appalled by much I see and hear.

Listen to the discussion surrounding primaries, delegates, conventions, dark money, donors: anything approaching real democracy died a long time ago.

Yes, I know: anyone attempting to accomplish anything at all faces the challenge of balancing the desire to forward reasonable ends with the need to influence in appropriate ways.

This is true at the most elemental level: caring for my favorite toddler, I want to move us toward hands washed, lunch on the table, food delivered to open mouths.

There’s a point where the end may justify a small application of both force and reward (picking him up and setting him in his seat; withholding more juice until cheese and fruit are eaten). But even in the smallest drama, there’s a dangerous desire to have things go my way just because: because I’m in charge. Because I don’t like aggravation. Because I said so. Because.

On the political level, yes, it makes sense for parties to work toward agreed on goals, applying appropriate influence in reasonable ways.

Unfortunately, the more I see of our two major parties, the clearer it is that desire for power long superseded any interest in reasonable goals or appropriate methods.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been working on redistricting reform. Every ten years, the federal census paves the way for reapportionment of congressional seats: states that grow get more seats in the House of Representatives; those that lose population may have less. That necessitates changes in congressional electoral districts, but most states also adjust state legislative districts at the same time to keep districts relatively even in size.

Most democratic countries do something similar, and in most, the redistricting process is handled by independent redistricting commissions composed of impartial demographers, mapmakers, retired judges or other citizens, with strict rules for how lines are to be drawn and clear standards of evaluation.

In Pennsylvania, as in most American states, the legislators draw and approve the maps that determine their elections, an obvious conflict of interest.

The result has been, since early in our democracy, lines drawn to favor the party in power. Another word for it: gerrymandering.

I described this in much more detail back in 2014.

But here’s what I’ve learned since:

Our two major parties have spent millions trying to capture legislatures in redistricting years in order to control the redistricting process in order to control Congress and state legislatures.

Yes, of course, I get it: parties exist to help their candidates win elections, in hopes of controlling the processes, in hopes of getting their own bills enacted.

What I’m describing goes way beyond that. Essentially, it’s legal voter fraud. Manipulation of processes to guarantee that voters’ voices are discounted.

In North Carolina, that meant corralling minority candidates into two strangely drawn districts to restrict their influence across a wider area.  

In Virginia, a similar move is under Supreme Court review.

In Pennsylvania, partisan redistricting divided post-industrial cities into surrounding suburbs or farmland to ensure the voices of poor, urban communities have little influence in policy or funding.

Both parties play the game, but the Republicans have been more organized and better funded. They’ve already announced plans for the 2020 redistricting process: RedMap 2020. 

Manipulation of maps is a cynical, insidious form of voter fraud. It deprives voters of choice, pushes parties toward extremes, ensures legislative gridlock and undermines voter engagement.

I put together a simple graphic to help explain the dynamic I’m describing. I’ve been using it to promote a petition in support of redistricting reform.

  

I hear people complain about candidates who lie, stretch the truth, manipulate, take dark money, promise things they can’t possibly provide.

It’s always the other candidate: the one they don’t support.

And I hear people explain their vote because any other vote would allow the opposition to win. Or would put party control in jeopardy.

I go back to that quote I’ve been carrying with me: 

If there's no truth and everything is only power, ours is a world of brutal manipulation... 

I posted last week about this time of unraveling we’re living in.

The idea of truth itself is unraveling, has been unraveling, is now as thin as a gossamer strand of spider web, floating on the unsettled air.

 

If truth no longer matters, what we have left is manipulation.

And a brutal game of chess in which we are all, only, pawns. 

I have been praying about my own role in this unfolding story.

For now, I feel called to work on redistricting reform, to look for other ways to strengthen the voice of those shut out of our political process. And I feel called to say, as clearly and often as I can, I believe truth matters. 

This post is my vote for real democracy. The vote I’m not able to cast on Tuesday.

I admire others I know whose callings lead them in other ways: living and working in tough urban neighborhoods. Protesting and praying on capital steps in DC and Harrisburg. Writing, teaching, volunteering. Working the polls. Walking with the poor. Running for office. Writing policy.

Here’s my please:

Please don’t fall for manipulation. Don’t look past the lies. Don’t excuse the game.

Don’t just pray that the best person win.

Pray for your own role in that. Your own vote. Your own voice.

Please don’t watch in silence as the best manipulator wins.