THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Chicanery

I have complained publicly about the Democratic Party’s
establishment chicanery this year in some caucus states
where they have seemed to thwart the popular vote for
Bernie Sanders in favor of Mrs. Clinton. Now the Republican
Party in Colorado has topped this tomfoolery by awarding
all that state’s GOP delegates to the national convention
without a primary or a caucus.

The beneficiary of this move has been Ted Cruz; both Donald
Trump and John Kasich are rightfully complaining. Mr. Cruz’s
partisans apparently engineered this move; Mr. Cruz has
embraced it. Coupled with Mr. Cruz’s call to use a technicality
to prevent John Kasich from even being placed in nomination
in Cleveland, this does not reflect well on the senator from
Texas who is trying to catch up to Mr. Trump’s lead in first
ballot committed delegates.

The U.S. constitution is quite clear that election procedures,
including the electoral college selection of the president and
vice president, are the responsibility of each individual state.
Approximately one million Colorado GOP voters have now
been denied the right to have a voice in the choice of a
Republican presidential nominee. They and public opinion
now are the only true recourse to this egregious action.

This incident is further evidence of how undemocratic the U.S.
presidential nomination process has become. Only a nationwide
mutiny of the voters has illuminated this circumstance in both
national parties --- which has been festering invisibly for decades.

I have many time quoted Ortega y Gasset’s timeless warning
that, no matter whatever else is good in a republic, if the process
of elections is corrupted, matters will ultimately go badly.

We live in a time when the democratic process is under attack,
both from without and within. The worst course to take in such
an environment is to give fuel to democracy’s critics.

Is it any wonder that voters across the ideological spectrum
are so upset?

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.