Worse than the 'worst form of government'

As the fiasco surrounding the Associated Students of Madison’s botched election continues to make waves around campus and a new student government threatens a veritable coup, I am both awe struck by the horror of the situation and uncharacteristically reserved in my thoughts. This is no occasion for hyperbole and surely a time when we would all be best served to reserve our broad strokes of black and white in favor of the grayscale tones necessary to properly address a complex situation with serious ramifications.

As per ASM’s failure to hold a successful election, I am reminded of a column I wrote in September 2003 for The Badger Herald after the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had temporarily enjoined California voters from proceeding with a recall election. Back then, I wrote:

At the heart of both California and America as a whole is the notion of democracy. We sound our voices by voting, and that is the greatest check we have on our elected officials. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has enjoined Californians from voting for at least five months. And that means that until March of 2004, the largest state in the union will be something other than a democracy.

The situation afflicting California in the autumn of 2003 was, of course, resolved in a fair and just manner – history has provided a more appropriate solution than the gloom I found myself facing as I scribed that column. But the principle I sought to convey then is one I think worthy of resurrection now: a genuine democracy may never tamper with an election except for under those most dire of circumstances.

History has rarely realized those circumstances. In my life time, the only such postponement of a democratic process that I can remember as appreciating as being just was when, on September 11, 2001, New York City delayed its primary voting for gut-wrenchingly obvious reasons.

What ASM realized on Wednesday did not nearly approach the proper criteria for the destruction of a democratic process. The bottom line is that properly-cast votes were discarded because a democratic process had not been adequately thought through. Much like California in 2003, we must realize that with such being the case, this means that ASM is now – and will continue to be until the conclusion of voting – something other than a democracy.

And so the question shifts to one of blame and consequence. A group of campus leaders have formed a new organization – simply titled “Student Government” – to replace ASM on this campus. What they propose is nothing short of an absolute coup d'état.

In many senses, this is a welcome move. Coincidentally, I actually wrote a column in Wednesday’s Badger Herald (published before the voting fiasco) calling for the abandonment of ASM. For me to editorialize otherwise at this juncture – with ASM’s incompetence having only become more apparent – would be outright hypocritical.

However, I am also led to note that the grass is always greener on the other side. And while I reject ASM at every juncture possible as an entangled bureaucracy capable only of thinning students’ wallets and promoting a general culture of corruption, I am disinclined to throw my support to a government that has yet to even scribe its constitution.

Just what should this constitution contain if it is to earn our support? I will look to extrapolate upon that question in the coming days.

For now, I am simply reminded of Winston Churchill’s famous proclamation: “Democracy is the worst form of government; except for all the others.”

What truly horrifies me, is that at the moment, ASM is one of those “others.”