I think in the last couple of days, America has woken up, staggered to the bathroom, swallowed a liter of coffee, taken some ibuprofen and are just now getting over the election hangover.
Now that it’s completely in the past, I am coming to grips with what a gigantic fiasco the whole thing was. Especially in Wisconsin and Minnesota, the 2004 presidential election was an ugly battle that forced all of us to weed through a smorgasbord of nonsense from both sides. However, out of all of it, there was one bit of nasty politicking that needs to be remembered, evaluated and never repeated.
| After an election as tumultuous as this one, our generation needs to respond by celebrating and promoting our democratic system. |
About four weeks ago, a story surfaced about a small number of Republicans circulating a petition to put Ralph Nader on Wisconsin’s presidential ballot, organized by Matt Holsen, a member of UW-Madison College Republicans.
The Spectator reported two weeks ago, a small number of UW-Eau Claire students, hoping to secure tickets to an Aug. 18 Bush-Cheney rally in Chippewa Falls, contacted the local Republican Party office to offer their volunteer service in exchange for tickets to the event.ÿ The chairman of that office referred the students to Holsen without giving any specific indication of his planned activities.ÿ Holsen then elicited the help of several Eau Claire students in soliciting signatures from local Republicans in exchange for tickets to the rally.
These students and others secured more than 3,000 signatures to put Ralph Nader on the Wisconsin state ballot.
According to the Associated Press, those who circulate such a petition are required by law to sign an oath saying they intend to support the candidate, and “anyone submitting false information on the petition could be guilty of a felony.”
Bill Linville, who was in charge of Nader’s Wisconsin campaign, did our democracy a great service by recognizing the deception and rejecting these signatures. He himself suspected a “coordinated Republican Party effort.”
As it turns out, enough legitimate signatures were amassed without Holsen’s help, and Ralph Nader’s impact in Wisconsin was negligible.
Still, we cannot allow supporters of a major party candidate to deceitfully represent the interests of a third party candidate in order to sabotage the opposition. The role of the local Republican official who quietly referred Eau Claire students to Holsen also should be carefully examined.
I admit that I am a staunch Democrat, and that my anger regarding this issue is particularly strong because of the negative implications it potentially could have had on John Kerry. But this does not devalue the importance of the issue.
I submit that there is an important distinction in all this that needs to be made. Rush Limbaugh, Bob Dole, Matt Holsen or any other Republican should be free to encourage Democrats to rethink their stances. Likewise, Democrats should feel free to do the same. However, deceitful misrepresentation of one’s own ideology and political interest in order to further the campaign of someone completely outside of his or her support to damage mainstream opposition is unethical and rightfully illegal. Furthermore, if the Republican Party truly applauded such efforts with the reward of tickets to a campaign rally, that is corruption.
Now more than ever, I believe third party candidates hold an important role in America – to keep mainstream Democrat and Republican candidates honest.
Nader, an ideological mastermind worthy of elected office, has done a good job of pushing his platform from the far left. In past years, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan have served similar purposes from their respective political vantage points.
Supporters of these candidates should do everything in their power to see that they are included on state ballots. Major parties, however, cannot be allowed to conduct dirty campaign tactics that would serve only to injure major competition.
Western Wisconsin, including Eau Claire, is full of voters more interested in individual issues than in abstract ideals and party lines; so we especially should educate ourselves about third party candidates.
In fact, with the election over, now more than ever it might be a good time to find third party, grassroots interests that are often overlooked by major candidates and help their causes by pushing those issues into mainstream politics.
We all have various party affiliations or issues of particular interest and pertinence to our individual lives. But after an election as tumultuous as this one, our generation needs to respond by celebrating and promoting our democratic system.
We have an obligation to our democracy that extends far beyond our political allies. I hope we don’t make a habit of responding to our cynicism over a sometimes failing democracy with more cynicism. We are a vibrant, opinionated university campus. The open forum begins here. Let’s not ruin it.
