(MintPress) — A new report by the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security cites the United States as a specific example in a report for having increasingly corrupt elections that have a growing reliance on outside political financing.
The report indirectly hits at the oft-debated Citizens United ruling, which gives private corporations, unions and entities the freedom to provide unlimited funds to a political campaign. It also highlights a democratic deficit within the election process, undermining the tenants of a democracy.
The report, authored by a commission lead by former United Nations (U.N.) chief Kofi Annan, argues that many of the world’s democracies face a form of corruption that is detrimental to the execution of a free election. The publication, “Deepening Democracy: a Strategy for Improving the Integrity of Elections Worldwide,” focuses its criticisms at Citizens United and the U.S., saying that the ruling has “undermined political equality, weakened transparency of the electoral process and shaken citizen confidence in America’s political institutions and elections.”
One of the most outspoken critics of Citizens United has been President Barack Obama, who took time during his 2010 State of the Union address to denounce the Supreme Court of the United States ruling, saying it would “open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” Obama has called for a repeal of the decision and argued that the initial ruling was an automatic hindrance to democracy.
Ironically, Obama’s campaign has seen dramatic financial gain from the ruling, with some of the largest contributions coming from Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc. On the other side of the political aisle, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s top campaign contributors include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.
“Elections are the indispensable root of democracy. When elections have been free and fair, they can be a powerful catalyst for better governance, greater security and human development,” Annan said. “But in the absence of credible elections, citizens have no recourse to peaceful political change. The risk of conflict increases, while corruption, intimidation, and fraud go unchecked, rotting the entire political system slowly from within.”
The politics of money
How much money is enough to run for president in the U.S.? According to democratic strategist Carter Eskew, who worked with Al Gore in 2000, $500 million should be a target for cash on hand. The answer speaks to what society has criticized in that only a wealthy person has the capability to run a serious campaign in today’s two-party dominant system. New York Times political analyst Matt Bai said the capital requirement to win office nowadays is a glaring flaw of our political system.
“In other words, there’s a threshold below which a presidential candidate can’t really compete effectively, and that number — whether it’s $500 million or something less — is outlandish enough that it should give us pause,” Bai wrote. “But beyond that number, it’s not clear that spending an extra $200 million or $500 million will really make all that much of a difference on Election Day.”
Earlier in the week, former President Jimmy Carter echoed the rhetoric of Annan and critics of Citizens United, saying that corruption is rampant within U.S. politics and that neither Democrats nor Republicans are immune to it. Carter drew a parallel to America’s neighbor, Mexico, where limitations have been set on donations from foreign organizations and Mexican businesses and corporations.
Carter’s political organization, the Carter Center, has been monitoring the Mexican election process for years and called for the U.S. to once again fully adopt publicly financed elections. He noted that the foundation of the system is still in place and that Obama and Romney have the option of declining donations from private corporations but have not exercised that option.
“We have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America, and it’s almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money,” Carter said.
Democratic deficit in US
With the U.S. political system failing to reach all the tenets of democracy, the rising concerns of a democratic deficit has entered America’s conscience. The term “democratic deficit” was coined in the late 1970s to describe facets of the European political system and eventually the European Union (EU). It referred to the lack of political access and power citizens had over the government as the EU became a supranational entity.
Transparency became an issue between the government’s actions and its citizens, and continues to be a popular criticism today. John Bolton of the Washington Times says the crisis of the Euro created a disconnect as the EU largely operated as a private entity while citizens felt left out of the process. Bolton says decisions were, and are, made by commissions or EU member governments.
Democratic deficit has become a staple of the Occupy movement, which has called for the removal of corporate influence in politics. But democratic deficit has also manifested itself is multiple ways, says the Harvard Law and Policy Review.
On top of corporate financial influence, the publication says the gerrymandering of political districts, the failure to count votes during Election Day chaos and voter ID laws that have been shown to suppress minority voters.
Low voter turnout is also an indicator of an ill democracy, and the U.S. has not seen a presidential election voter turnout above 60 percent since 1968. In 1996, less than half of eligible voters went to the polls during the presidential election, with 49 percent casting a vote. The Harvard publication argues that in order for democracy to work in America, its citizens need to be politically cognoscente and actively seek change to the rules.
“The kind of change that the United States needs will come only if the public mobilizes itself behind the possibility of a new convention and, in effect, forces Congress to call one even in the absence of state petitions,” the Law and Police Review wrote. “Only if serious discussion begins now and the long, hard work of political mobilization begins soon will it be thinkable, as the country faces ever further fundamental crises, to rise to the example of our courageous and visionary Founders and craft a Constitution that is suitable for the 21st century.”