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Reading comments from U.S. Rep. Jared Golden regarding upcoming elections, it struck me that while sounding commonsensical, they may prove apocryphal if we investigate further.
He said that “hundreds of millions of freedom-loving Americans who won’t let anyone take away our constitutional rights…” With a current voting age population of about 222 million, less than 138 million people voted in 2016 and around 155 million voted in 2020.
Even when more than 100 million citizens vote, simple majorities do not always carry the day as the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections were won by candidates who did not get the most citizens’ votes!
How did millions fair against five during another presidential election where the winner also got fewer popular votes than his opponent? The Supreme Court, split 5-4, basically gave the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Five people effectively chose the president!
We would like to believe Golden’s words that “no one man is strong enough to take [democracy] away from us,” but I think it’s demonstrably false. In the spring of 2016, one man, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, held up a Supreme Court nominee under the auspices of being too close — eight months — to elections. That single man then helped confirm another Supreme court nominee within three months of elections, thus confirming the third successful Supreme Court nominee by a president who got roughly 2.5 million fewer citizens’ votes than his opponent!
This decade, a handful of non-elected, lifetime members of the judiciary, with seemingly unaccountable ethical standards, eliminated decades — indeed generations — of precedent.
Folks need to know who’s really in charge of our “democracy” in 2024.
Mike Del Tergo
Falmouth
