Rewriting Our Rotten History of Elections

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Depending whom you ask, the state of the union's elections are either peachy-keen or in dire straits. With voting irregularities fast becoming the norm, election officials moonlighting as campaign leaders and highly suspicious differences in polling places from region to region, there is an ill-disguised sense that perhaps our democracy is not quite as strong as politicians and their mouthpieces would have you believe.

As of now, with Republicans in control of every branch of the federal government, much of the finger-pointing is aimed at the GOP. After all, if election reform has stalled in Congress since the 2000 election, it's likely that Republicans have built and maintained the roadblocks holding it up.

But it hasn't always been that way; in fact, as recently as 12 years ago, Democrats were the ruling party, riding out the tail end of a political dominance that stretched through much of the century. And Americans voted to give Congress to the GOP partly in response to widespread Democratic corruption. Now that cycle has turned again, and the Republican Party is staring down the barrel of voter wrath.

These kinds of cycles, the regular booms and busts of American politics, are at the heart of Andrew Gumbel's book "Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America," published last year by Nation Books. Gumbel, a reporter for the British newspaper the Independent, wrote extensively about the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. But in Steal This Vote, he looks at elections throughout this country's history, and although the picture he paints is not pretty, it offers solid hope for solutions. Gumbel spoke with AlterNet recently on the phone from Los Angeles.

More: http://www.alternet.org/story/32262/