NADER, OR DISENFRAN-

character; the second convention, where the election funders are wined and dined, deals are struck, and real agendas are formed. This means that ordinary citizens are disenfranchised, given that a critically important part of the electoral process is outside of their orbit of influence. This feature of the political system also makes the dominant parties unable to address the needs of the lower 60 percent of income recipients. This may help us understand why the household incomes of this 60 percent majority declined over the past 20 years, whereas the real incomes of the top 1 percent, who directly and indirectly through their businesses fund the two parties, increased by 63.2 percent over the same period.

Less well known is the fact that members of the lower classes, and especially blacks, are often legally disenfranchised. This results from the workings of the prison system and law. In nine states, if you commit a felony, you are banned from voting for a lifetime. A recent study by criminologists Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza indicates that this removes democratic political rights from 4.2 million voters, a disproportionate number of them black. (The Uggen-Manza study is summarized in Somini Sengupta, "Felony Costs Voting Rights for a Lifetime in 9 States," NYT, Nov. 3, 2000.) About 7 percent of otherwise eligible blacks are barred from voting in the United States because of felony convictions. Interestingly, Florida is among the most important of the disenfranchising states in excluding blacks, with 13.8 percent barred for felony convictions. Maybe if the Clinton-Gore administration had fought hard against this travesty it would have made a difference in the 2000 presidential election.

Our ally Israel not only allows prisoners and ex-felons to vote, it allows murderers who kill politicians for political reasons to vote, thereby in a sense doubling the murderer's voting power. Thus Yigal Amir, who murdered Prime Minister Rabin in 1995, voted for Rabin's opponent Benjamin Netanyahu while in prison. Mrs. Rabin pointed out the irony of this double vote for the murderer, but it was not featured in the mainstream U.S. media.

It is also of interest that in the United States a corporation that commits a criminal act is not denied the right to form a political action committee to push its political aims, nor are its officers prevented from voting although they are responsible for its criminal behavior. Certainly one tactic that progressives interested in electoral reform should pursue is to call for abolition of disenfranchisement or its extension to all criminals-- either abolish disenfranchisement of people in jail and ex-felons or extend it to business firms, denying corporations found guilty of criminal acts any right to form PACs and denying their top officers voting rights for their lifetimes in the same manner as other criminals are treated.

What follows from the above considerations, also, is that the idea that Ralph Nader cost Gore this election is badly off the mark. A disproportionate number of the disenfranchised felons and ex-felons would have voted for Gore, and would very likely have carried him over the top in Florida. A much larger number, of those disenfranchised by the "second convention"--where the interests of the disenfranchised were bargained away to the fat cats--would also have voted for him, if he wasn't the Gore of Clinton-Gore, the Democratic National Committee, and the New Democrats. These politicians and party hacks have not only put the government up for sale to the highest bidders, they have internalized the beliefs of those wined and dined at the second convention and view their service to these fat cats in pushing for "free trade," "ending welfare as we know it," etc., as in the "national interest." This is sensed by many who don't vote, based on observable hypocrisy and experience in New Democrat performance. "New Democrats, know your- selves and take responsibility for your own actions."