what could democracy look like?

A short guide to how Tom Delay laundered money and what we can do to change the system:

House Majority Leader Tom Delay (aka "the hammer") realized in 2001 that the new census information was going to be used by the Democratic-run state legislature to redraw districts. He couldn't let that happen because it would threaten the gerrymandering Republican and white dominance currently enshrined in Texas district maps (thereby threatening the job security of him and his friends.) So he created Texans for Republican Majority (a local version of Armpac -- Americans for a Republican Majority).

Now state elections are prohibited in Texas from accepting corporate money. And corporations really don't have that much of an interest in state congressmen from Waco -- but they do have an interest in the House and they certainly have one in Mr. Delay (and by extension Mr. Bush). So companies like Sears Roebuck forked over dollars to trmpac, who then laundered that money through the Republican party (who was given a list of names and told who to give how much). Thus Mr. Delay not only participated in, but orchestrated a felony conspiracy.

My interest is not only in the ways in which this incident highlights the corruption inherent in a neoconservative agenda (read:greed. see also: jack abramoff, karl rove, and Scooter Libby. "Crony capitalism" and "Stench of Corruption" are headlines I have been awaiting for a long time.)

One solution to these dilemmas that I am most interested in is the re-democratization of the american voting system. One of the most interesting proposals came from the woman who Clinton nominated for Asst. Attorney General on Civil Rights and then left for the wolves, Lani Guinier. In her book Tyranny of the Majority, Guinier argues for various forms of voting and change that would end the "winner-take-all" model of American democracy. The most bold is cumulative voting in which a person has a certain number of votes and can distribute them amongst candidates according to preference (three for the lady you really want, one for the guy you'd settle for).

The one I am interested in and that might put an end to so much of the gerrymandering (see: Delay) that currently keeps the U.S. from having anything resembling a representative democracy. Guinier proposed a non-geographical based voting systems, or multi-member "superdistricts." This allows minority communities to pool their votes over larger spaces, to avoid ghettoization of votes, and better reflects the shifting location and shared loyalties that a border -- an arbitrary line -- cannot.

In this system one might have five votes for Congressman. Say there are three seats in your state. You have lived in the rural, Republican southern end of the state for your entire life. Your vote (as a bleeding heart) has never mattered. It has fallen into the well of the 12% that always vote Dem or Independent. Under this new system you could send your votes to the West to the strong Dem challenger who you really want to see in office. Or all the way up North to the urban center, where you could support the radical left candidate who can only get elected when their supporters are not split into conveniently divided districts. Hence you give three of your votes West, two North, and let the incumbent in your district stand. Suddenly all of those isolated "minority" votes have elected two members of Congress. Rather than three conservative votes for a state that is split 55/45 -- there is a moderate, a leftie, and a Republican -- something that actually reflects the mixed hues that the blue/red single-member districts refuse to entertain.

How a Tested Campaign Tool Led to Conspiracy Charges - nyt