American voters go to the polls in less than three weeks to participate in an exercise that is referred to as an “election.” But the better term for what will play out on November 4 is “auction.” American democracy has been replaced with American Dollarocracy. On a per-voter basis, the United States spends around ten times more for election campaigns than any other democratic nation. Can anyone claim American elections are ten times better than those of other democracies? Indeed, nearly two out of three American adults will not vote on November 4; when it comes to voter participation the USA has a lower voter turnout rate than that of any nation with which we would care to compare ourselves.
The great abandonment is a reaction to the narrowing of our political process. The excessive campaign spending – especially unaccountable “dark money” spending that is generally provided by a small handful of secretive billionaires and large corporations – does not offer more choices. And it certainly does not add fresh ideas to the mix. The flood of spending pays for an avalanche of largely asinine TV ads at a time when actual news media coverage of elections is shrinking in amount and quality. The same media corporations that are raking in billions selling TV political ads have downsized and even discontinued their coverage of all but the most high-profile election races. In contests for essential positions of public trust, voters know no more than what the negative ads tell them.
Our multiple award-winning new book, Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America, provides a detailed examination of the decline and corruption of American electoral democracy. It chronicles the four decade legal and political initiative by corporate interests that culminated in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. It details what has been lost, and what we are losing, as regards democracy, providing groundbreaking research and insight. It also provides a hopeful sense of how the system can be reformed and chronicles the emerging movement to make that happen. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote the foreword, hailing the proposed agenda as a way out of the current crisis and into a new period of democratic renewal.
