gracchusdixit

In scarcely more than 24 hours, the polls will be closing around the country, and the 2014 mid-term election will be history. By all accounts this may be one of the closest elections we have ever had.  It will certainly be one of the most dishonest.

The outcome of this election will be determined not by how people vote but, rather, by how many people are even allowed to vote.  Since the Supreme Court decided to gut the main provision of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have been scheming to make sure that those who oppose them, particularly people of color, will not get that chance.  In states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio, in one state after another, they have imposed sweeping measures designed to deny the right to vote to those who inconveniently just might vote for somebody else.  They’ve cooked up every crooked obstacle one can imagine: ridiculous voter ID laws, restricted voting hours, the elimination of early voting, the curtailment of absentee ballots, the closure of polling places on college campuses and in minority neighborhoods.

Their excuse, in every case, has been the phony specter of “voter fraud,” which they have never been able to document, let alone prove.  The real fraud, of course, is their own chicanery.

The tragedy here doesn’t lie in the outcome of the election itself, because there are only two possible outcomes, neither of which can amount to much.  Whatever else may happen tomorrow, Republicans are certain to retain control of the House of Representatives, which will mean another two years of the stalemate and dysfunction we have grown accustomed to.  If they also take control of the Senate, they will try to undo whatever the dreaded Barack Obama has accomplished in the last six years but will likely fail.  It is doubtful that a Republican majority in the Senate will be large enough to override the President if he decides to veto their mischief.

The real tragedy of tomorrow’s election, therefore, will have little to do with its dismal outcome. It will, instead, have everything to do with a far more important fact—the fact that our democracy has been stolen, bit by bit, one larcenous step at a time.

The first act of larceny took place in 2000, when Al Gore, having won the election by nearly half a million votes, was denied the Presidency, thanks to the finagling of a blatantly corrupt Florida official and a cooperative Supreme Court.  Florida’s electoral votes were thereby awarded to George Bush—enough by a whisker to turn his popular defeat into an electoral victory.  People grumbled, dimly aware that the obsolete idea of the electoral college hasn’t made sense for at least a century, but then went on with their business, accepting the verdict as if it were an inevitable act of nature.  Of course, no one knew at the time how disastrous that stolen election would turn out to be: two utterly useless wars, trillions of dollars and countless lives down the drain, and a financial collapse rivaling the Great Depression.

After pulling off such an audacious caper, the election thieves bided their time, ready to pounce again the moment their next opportunity came.  It came in 2010, with a new census, which gave Republicans in the states the chance to redraw legislative districts to their own advantage.  This they did, with a display of shamelessness that still beggars belief.

Their larceny led in turn to the perverse election of 2012.  Barack Obama was reelected—decisively.  More Americans voted for Democratic candidates—by far.  Then what happened?  We got another Republican majority in the House of Representatives and two more years of obstruction, inaction and right-wing hounds baying at the moon.

Tomorrow’s results may produce a few surprises, a “blue” victory popping up here or there, where none was expected.  But the fundamentals won’t change, because the 2014 election has already been stolen.  Like our democracy, it was stolen long ago.

Election junkie that I am, I would normally be up until the wee hours, watching until the very last vote trailed in.  Not tomorrow night.  Instead, I will crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and pop an old movie into the DVR.  I can’t quite decide, though.  Will it beThe Great Bank Robbery or George Orwell’s 1984?  I suppose that will depend on whether the mood of the night calls for a good laugh or a good cry.