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Absentee voting officials wait in an empty polling place during early voting at the Oklahoma County Board of Elections in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Writing Contest Finalist

We’re delighted to announce the winners of The Nation’s eighth annual Student Writing Contest. This year we asked students to answer this question in 800 words: It’s clear that the political system in the US isn’t working for many. If you had to pick one root cause underlying our broken politics, what would it be and why? We received close to 700 submissions from high school and college students in forty-two states. We chose one college and one high school winner and ten finalists total. The winners are Jim Nichols (no relation to The Nation’s John Nichols), an undergraduate at Georgia State University; and Julia Di, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Darnestown, Maryland, and Bryn Grunwald, a recent graduate of the Peak to Peak Charter in Boulder, Colorado, who were co-winners in the high school category. The three winners receive cash awards of $1,000 and the finalists $200 each. All receive Nation subscriptions. Read all the winning essays here.   —The Editor

When you flip your channel to CNN every four years on the first Tuesday of November, do you wonder what color will fill Texas’s borders on the election map? If you are a Republican in Vermont, do you go to the poll booth with any belief that your vote will matter? If you answered “no” to both of these questions, you have probably realized that our winner-take-all electoral system is at the root of American politics’ biggest problem: voter apathy.

As a Democrat growing up in Nebraska, I grew accustomed to walking on eggshells around my conservative neighbors. I prepared myself for whispers and judgmental glances any time I expressed my political views. As a child of the Bush era, I spent my formative years believing that the United States government could not have cared less what I thought. Despite my constant efforts to be politically engaged, have convincing factual arguments, and to participate in the political system, it was simply not enough. I felt like a blue speck of algae in a red Nebraskan ocean.

Then the 2008 election year arrived. I was in Seattle for a domestic high school exchange program where I somehow found myself defending a Republican freshman. Attacked from all sides by her very liberal classmates, she defended her beliefs with poise and intellectual rigor. Despite the fact that I fully supported then-Senator Obama, I could not help but sympathize and identify with this girl. Like me, she was living in a state where her vote would not count and her opinions would not be seriously considered.

2008 was important for another reason: Nebraska split its electoral votes for the first time in forty years. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states in which electoral votes are awarded in a per-district basis, rather than winner-take-all. That historic year, the vote of the Omaha district, where I live, went for Obama while the state’s other four votes went for McCain. (The state government gerrymandered my district soon after so that this would not happen again in 2012, but that is another story.) Although the effect of Omaha’s electoral vote was small on the national scale, our blue dot on the overwhelmingly red state map was an enormous sign of hope for me. It signaled that I was not alone after all and that my voice did, in fact, matter.

But that blue dot was not enough to fix American politics. Our democracy cannot function if large swaths of people feel hopeless and apathetic about political participation. About 40 percent of American citizens, over 90 million people, do not bother to vote in a typical election year. In terms of voter turnout, our nation ranks 120th out of 169 nations that hold democratic elections. This means we have just a slightly higher percentage of voters than Benin. These numbers look dismal, but can we blame Americans for being apathetic when two-thirds of electoral votes are often decided even before Election Day? If you live in Ohio or Florida, the whole country watches your ballot. But for the Democrats in Austin, Texas, for the Republicans in rural Vermont, and for this Nebraskan Democrat, it often feels like no one would notice if we skipped the ballot box altogether.

We cannot continue to place undue influence on the swing states. Although the distribution of electoral votes might seem like nothing more than a political technicality, it is at the very core of our national morale and feelings of self-worth. When our vote is worthless, we feel that our deepest-seated beliefs, and even our very selves, are worthless as well. If Thomas Jefferson meant what he said when he wrote that “all men are created equal,” then none of us are worthless. Every single voice – even those with which we disagree most – ought to be heard. For a healthy nation, a healthy political system, and an engaged group of citizens, every vote needs to actually matter.

If every state split its electoral votes according to districts like Nebraska does, we would have a much fairer system that accurately represented what Americans want. Although most of Texas would still vote Republican, the huge Latino population there would have a larger voice. Conservative farmers in largely liberal, urban states would not be totally forgotten. Speaking from experience, seeing your blue (or red) dot on the election map can be enough to restore your faith in the American political system. You might still be unhappy with who becomes the next president, but at least you know that it was a fair fight.

Students march through Milwaukee. (Credit: Michael Macloone, Journal Sentinel)

E-mail questions, tips or proposals to studentmovement@thenation.com. For earlier dispatches on student and youth organizing, check out the previous post. Edited by James Cersonsky (@cersonsky).

1. Amid Rising Protest, Napolitano Agrees to Meet With Opponents

On September 8, California’s Statewide Multicultural Student Coalition released a set of demands for Janet Napolitano, the new president of the University of California. The coalition calls for Napolitano to make the University of California campuses sanctuary sites for all undocumented communities, pressure Jerry Brown to sign the Trust Act and prohibit the use of riot police on campuses. Napolitano, who entered office with no background in education, oversaw record deportations as Secretary of Homeland Security and has already received students’ votes of no confidence, has answered our request to meet. On October 1, at her office in Oakland, coalition representatives will present our demands and make it clear that undocumented students and students of color in California do not support Napolitano’s presidency. This meeting is just the first step in ensuring our most vulnerable student populations are top priorities.

—Statewide Multicultural Student Coalition

2. Post-Occupation, Florida’s Dream Defenders Return to the Capitol

September 23 marked the first day of legislative committee in the Florida legislature. After sitting-in at Governor Rick Scott’s office for thirty-one days this summer, the Dream Defenders, a group of youth organizing for racial justice and community power, returned to the capitol to train Tallahassee residents and students from throughout the state on Trayvon’s Law. Prior to the training, ten Dream Defenders met with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to discuss the FDLE’s policies on bias-based—that is, racial—profiling. Come October, the group’s legal and policy director will travel to Geneva to present a report on Stand Your Ground to the UN Human Rights Council, which will be reviewing whether the statute violates promises the United States has made as a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

—Dream Defenders

3. Resisting TFA in Minnesota

On September 18, the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development officially announced that it will partner with Teach for America to create an alternative pathway to licensure for corps members. This announcement came despite significant opposition from CEHD graduate students, faculty and the wider Twin Cities’ education communities who argue that TFA will contribute to the casualization of teaching labor across all levels of education in Minnesota while it profits off the perpetuation of education inequity. Soon after CEHD’s May announcement of the proposed partnership, a group of students drafted a letter of opposition, which garnered more than 300 signatures from students, faculty, local educators and alumni. Despite TFA’s and the administration’s attempts to repress critical dialogue and dissent, CEHD students are continuing to oppose the decision and connect to broader resistance efforts locally and nationally.

—CEHD Graduate Students Against TFA

4. Resisting TFA Everywhere

On October 1, Students United for Public Education will be launching its first national campaign, Students Resisting Teach for America. The goal is to raise awareness in prospective TFA corps members about the problems surrounding TFA; elevate the voices of students and TFA alumni whose stories are often overshadowed by TFA’s message; put pressure on TFA as an organization to change its ways; and, through this, resist the broader neoliberal movement in education. What started as a nonprofit dedicated to solving teacher shortages has become a highly political organization that threatens to perpetuate inequalities in low-income communities both through its teaching model and its connection to the corporate education reform movement. SUPE chapters and other college students across the country will be leafletting, holding teach-ins and panels and raising critical questions and consciousness about TFA to college students and campus communities.

—Students United for Public Education

5. In Bridgeport, Students Trump Machine Democrats

In the September 10 Democratic primary, challengers Howard Gardner, Dave Hennessey and Andre Baker, Jr., overwhelmingly defeated the slate of party-endorsed candidates for the Board of Education. The challengers’ message was simple: they will answer to the community, not the Democratic machine run by the mayor and corporate-friendly superintendent Paul Vallas; support policies that encourage parent and student involvement; and spend Bridgeport tax dollars on children and public schools. As a high school senior, I worked with teachers, parents and community leaders throughout the city and state to build neighborhood power by talking with people about why a change on the board would strengthen local control. As those most affected by the board’s decisions, students will continue organizing for an accountable board come November’s general election.

—Diamond Allen

6. In Milwaukee, Thousands March for Public Education

On September 21, forty students from Wisconsin’s Youth Empowered in the Struggle, the youth arm of immigrant rights organization Voces de la Frontera, joined a 2,000-strong, three-mile march across Milwaukee under the banner, “Public Education is a Civil Right.” YES spoke on the importance of bilingual education, free and public education and teachers’ right to bargain collectively. This action built on increasing grassroots momentum against the attacks on public education. On September 12, students, teachers and allies gathered at the Milwaukee school board to fight the attempts of St. Marcus, a local pro-voucher institution, to purchase Malcolm X, a Milwaukee public school. On September 17, a crowd gathered outside the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce to speak out against the company’s push for a state law that would restructure dozens of public schools and put them in the hands of a privatized district. At the Milwaukee Student Power Summit on November 2, students will plan further organizing for educational justice.

—Valeria Cerda

7. At Occidental, the Fight Against Sexual Assault Rages On

Despite the silencing of survivors who filed suit this summer, the Occidental Sexual Assault Coalition continues its fight to promote just and equitable policies for survivors of sexual assault at Occidental College. During the 2013 spring semester, OSAC organized protests and sleep-ins to raise awareness and demonstrate student and faculty commitment to a safer campus. In light of the administration’s continued mishandling of sexual assault cases under President Jonathan Veitch, OSAC filed Clery Act and Title IX complaints in April; the school is currently under investigation by the federal government. To date, the administration has made only superficial progress on OSAC’s 12 Demands for a safer campus. OSAC maintains that rape and sexual assault cases continue to be handled illegally. With strong faculty support, OSAC and other student groups will continue to push for an improved campus climate on all fronts this school year.

—Occidental Sexual Assault Coalition

8. Insomnia Cookies Hit the Light

On August 18, workers at the Insomnia Cookies in Harvard Square went on strike—and four were fired. They were responding to poor working conditions: drivers delivering cookies on their bikes often made less than minimum wage, and bakers in the store weren’t always allowed their legally mandated break time. As college students are Insomnia’s target market, Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement is marching on picket lines and coordinating a student boycott of Insomnia until the company agrees to higher wages, healthcare, better job stability and the freedom to build a union. SLAM is also reaching out to students at other colleges near Insomnia stores to organize solidarity actions.

—Student Labor Action Movement

9. Deferred Action Double Jeopardy

The Arizona Dream Act Coalition has been helping DREAMers apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, so education becomes more accessible. As we continue to educate the community by reaching out to high schools and public officials, the Maricopa County Community College District has received backlash for granting DACA recipients in-state tuition. In June, in an effort to overturn the district’s decision, Maricopa County Attorney General Tom Horne went as far as filing a lawsuit against the community colleges. Meanwhile, this semester is the first for many DREAMers since receiving DACA. On September 24, ADAC gathered at the MCCCD board meeting to thank board members for their support. Following the meeting, we are working to strengthen awareness in support of tuition equality.

—Jhannyn Rivera

10. When Will the CUNY 6 Be Freed?

(Video: RT America)

—Ad-Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY

Demonstrators rallied at the Boston courthouse in protest of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Writing Contest Finalist

We’re delighted to announce the winners of The Nation’s eighth annual Student Writing Contest. This year we asked students to answer this question in 800 words: It’s clear that the political system in the US isn’t working for many. If you had to pick one root cause underlying our broken politics, what would it be and why? We received close to 700 submissions from high school and college students in forty-two states. We chose one college and one high school winner and ten finalists total. The winners are Jim Nichols (no relation to The Nation’s John Nichols), an undergraduate at Georgia State University; and Julia Di, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Darnestown, Maryland, and Bryn Grunwald, a recent graduate of the Peak to Peak Charter in Boulder, Colorado, who were co-winners in the high school category. The three winners receive cash awards of $1,000 and the finalists $200 each. All receive Nation subscriptions. Read all the winning essays here.   —The Editor

For decades, corporations have wreaked havoc on our democracy from impoverishing the working class, profiting off military conflicts, poisoning the environment and food supply and taking over public schools. Perhaps, their most destructive target is America’s broken political system. Corporations have played a role in elections since the early part of the twentieth century. It was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan that we saw an increase in their hegemony in politics. But it wasn’t until the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, which gave corporations the same free speech rights as individuals, that the corporate sector comprehensively put its stamp of influence on America’s elections.

Shortly after the decision, Super PACs were created and a tsunami of money poured into subsequent election cycles. While donors can’t contribute directly to candidates, they are permitted to bankroll unlimited sums of cash to these federally registered political action committees, which can then endorse specific candidates. By law, no one can force Super PACs to disclose the names of donors, thus creating a trail of dark money. It’s a win-win for the rich who can write million-dollar fat checks without any public scrutiny.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig found that just 196 Americans gave more than 80 percent of the individual Super PAC money in the 2012 presidential election. In the entire 2012 election, “ten times what was spent a generation ago, even allowing for inflation,” a cringe-worthy $10 billion was burned through, according to Nation writer John Nichols’s new book, Dollarocracy.

With the need to raise more money to win elections, members of Congress spend nearly all their waking hours on the phone cajoling potential donors. Subsequently, there is a ballooning lobbying industry. In 2009, lobbyists spent $3.5 billion, or roughly $6.5 million per each elected member in Congress. There is also a revolving door between K Street and Capitol Hill. In the past decade, a study found that almost 5,400 former congressional staffers later became federal lobbyists.

Contrary to prevailing sentiment, most of the practices lobbyists are engaging in aren’t illegal. Almost no one is forking over money in return for votes, but rather they take an indirect approach through what Lessig calls the “gift economy.” In his book Republic, Lost, he defines the gift economy as “grounded upon relationships, not quid pro quo.” Lobbyists do a series of favors—fundraising dinners and galas—and slowly build an intimate relationship with the politician. Eventually, they make the person “lose his sense of mission to the public and comes to feel that his first loyalties are to his private benefactors and patrons,” as the late Senator Paul Douglas aptly explained. The politician is successfully in the pocket of the lobbyist.

Corporations will attempt to preserve the status quo at any cost. If they are somehow unable to persuade politicians in voting for a piece of legislation they don’t like, they spend inordinate amounts of money to try to have the bill watered down to the point of ineffectuality or push litigation to stonewall the implementation.

We need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. That would require, first, a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate and, second, three-fourths of state legislatures. As of June 2013, fifteen states have already passed state resolutions and ballot initiatives calling on Congress to begin the process. We could also take a leaf out of President Theodore Roosevelt’s playbook. In an annual message to Congress in 1905, he stated, “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders’ money for such purposes.” Congress, in response, passed the Tillman Act of 1907, banning political contributions by corporations.

Our country has been hijacked by corporations and sugar daddies—“old, white, rich men,” as New York magazine’s Frank Rich puts it. We no longer live in a democracy but instead a plutocracy. Affecting both the left and the right, big money crowds out the voices of the oppressed, the poor, and minorities. Elections are being sold to the highest bidder. We are living in a time that resembles the epochs of nineteenth-century robber baron politics and the presidency of Richard Nixon than ever before. In Nixon’s time, it was illegal to solicit secret campaign donations from corporations, and the resignation of the presidency was the price he paid.

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It is up to the American people to insist that corporations are not people, money is not speech and elections are not up for sale. Without extraordinary changes to the campaign finance system, politics will remain broken, lobbyists will continue to run amok on Capitol Hill, and we will be indentured by a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.

An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator holds a sign challenging the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. (Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

Writing Contest Finalist

We’re delighted to announce the winners of The Nation’s eighth annual Student Writing Contest. This year we asked students to answer this question in 800 words: It’s clear that the political system in the US isn’t working for many. If you had to pick one root cause underlying our broken politics, what would it be and why? We received close to 700 submissions from high school and college students in forty-two states. We chose one college and one high school winner and ten finalists total. The winners are Jim Nichols (no relation to The Nation’s John Nichols), an undergraduate at Georgia State University; and Julia Di, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Darnestown, Maryland, and Bryn Grunwald, a recent graduate of the Peak to Peak Charter in Boulder, Colorado, who were co-winners in the high school category. The three winners receive cash awards of $1,000 and the finalists $200 each. All receive Nation subscriptions. Read all the winning essays here.   —The Editor

In classrooms across the country, high school students learn a version of US history that celebrates American democracy precisely because each citizen’s vote carries equal weight.Yet in an era where corporations are people and dollars, not ballots, are the currency for political voice, this historical narrative is played out. Increasingly—and dangerously—money is shaping the interests and institutions that our government caters to, diminishing the power of individual votes and, in the process, discouraging the next generation of citizens from participating in politics. The resulting political landscape more closely resembles a plutocracy than the populism of eleventh grade civics.

Electoral politics has an ever-increasing price tag—$2 billion for the 2012 presidential election—but the story of that money doesn’t simply end with inauguration. Rather, large donations distort the responsibility politicians have to faithfully and equally represent their constituents, concentrating political power in the hands of a few and gridlocking action on pressing policy issues. Moreover, in a nation where economic inequality continues to grow, this diminished attention to democratic governance further marginalizes the most vulnerable.

The sheer cost of congressional races (Senate seats cost an average of nearly $10.5 million in 2012) means that elected officials spend a substantial portion of their time in the business of fundraising, not governing. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker made headlines recently for live tweeting while a freshman Congress member solicited reelection funds (“They told me I have to raise $3 million. It’s ugly.”), and freshman senators received instructions from the Democratic Party to spend at least four hours a day raising money—twice the amount of time allotted for committee hearings and votes. Time spent on actual governance, then, is severely limited. And while gains in seniority are generally accompanied by a reduced need to hunt for funds, more entrenched members of Congress and the executive branch have an equally entrenched loyalty to big-ticket donors.

Worse, when elected officials do turn their attention from fundraising to floor votes, their loyalty to campaign donors leads to highly distorted policy outcomes—either stifled reform efforts or a complete inability to pass legislation on critical national issues. Obamacare achieved legislative success in part because it carried concessions for big business, while similar proposals for environmental reform have failed largely because of Congress members’ ties to big-spending fossil fuel industries. When Wall Street firms knowingly violated federal securities law, irresponsibly—and avoidably—plunging the country into financial decline, key figures in the collapse largely escaped prosecution. Despite what Timothy Geithner termed the “very deep public desire for Old Testament justice,” it’s not too difficult to discern why politicians eager to fund their re-election campaigns have been slow to push for accountability from a banking lobby that spent more than $251 million in 2010. More recently, massive financial support from the NRA has privileged a minority opposed to meaningful gun control legislation over a staggering 98 percent of Americans in favor of reform.

Money’s grip on Washington clearly violates our notions of democratic representation—so why does it persist? In large part, campaign finance reform faces an inherent and well-funded conundrum: the highly competitive nature of contemporary electoral politics, and the corresponding cost, serves wealthy interests well—a problem exacerbated by the Citizens United ruling. On both sides of the aisle, those seeking office (or hoping to stay in it) are forced to reckon with the influence of dollars in political races. Accordingly, special interest funding has become so ingrained in Washington politics that elected officials are no longer serving those of their constituents without millions to pledge.

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Money in politics not only corrodes policy; it has a pernicious impact on how citizens view and participate in their government. In 2012, over 63 percent of Millennials agreed that “people like me don’t have any say in what government does,” with 82 percent articulating concern over the role of business in politics. Despite this disaffection, the infusion of money into politics often doesn’t look like the most urgent cause, especially for young activists passionate about the Keystone XL pipeline or the minimum wage. Crucially, however, the sway of deep-pocketed corporate donors and lobbyists bars progress on pressing social, environmental and economic problems; the very ones Millennials care most about.

Unlike some other issues that contribute to political gridlock, the ability of wealth to distort equality at the ballot box is a problem we can work to solve. Public funding for elections, stricter corporate giving regulations, and greater lobbying oversight have proven effective on the state level in creating a more transparent and equitable American politics. For now, though, while high school civics might have taught us that each vote counts, having a voice in politics comes with a very high price tag.