The Shoe Is On The Other Foot...and Other Cliches That Apply To Government...
The one-person, three-vote rule...In early 2004, after spending $1 million-plus of the state party's coffers, the GOP finally argued a position that stuck in the minds of the three-judge federal panel charged with making a decision: the new multi-member districts drawn by the Democratic majority and defended by the state Attorney General's office for the previous two years were found to be in violation of the "one-person, one-vote" principle. As a result of this decision, state representative maps were ordered redrawn, and money was required to be reimbursed by the state to the state GOP for their expenditure in achieving this result.
So, it troubles us greatly to learn that Speaker Richardson, along with a majority of the House, has pushed forward a new precept for our New Day in Georgia:
the one-person, three-vote principle. This is the effect of having a rule that allows three "floater representatives" act as "hawks" to have the power to swoop-in and cast a vote in any committee to which they are not an assigned, sitting member.
Robert Highsmith, the Governor's former deputy counsel, had this answer for the unusualness of the rule: "This way, everybody will know it happened," Highsmith said, in his explanation that stuffing a committee with extra votes in the open was much better than the methods employed by Speaker Murphy when he did it by threatening legislators behind closed doors. Right, Mr. Highsmith. Cheating in the open is far more acceptable a behavior than cheating behind closed doors.
Highsmith went on to say that "If the majority will is about to be thwarted, this is a very clever way to prevent this from happening." Say what? If you don't have a majority vote (i.e., 50% plus 1 vote) on a motion on the committee floor, then there can be no "will of the majority," right?
Stuffing a committee vote with three extra votes is akin to stuffing a ballot box. Isn't this what Republicans have been fighting against in this state in every election? It's certainly been one of our concerns, owing to the numerous hours we and lots of other folks have put in as poll-watchers. And, now we have legalized ballot-stuffing in the House. What a thing to be proud of.
To his credit, Speaker Richardson said, "I promise I'm not going to abuse this." However, if it is used only once, it is an abuse of power. It is akin to a dictatorship if Richardson sends in the hawks to overrule the committee majority if the majority isn't winning by at least a four-vote margin.
If SEC football rules were changed so that the home team's coach had at his disposal the ability to throw-in up to three extra players on the field, whether or not the ball was snapped, while the opposing team had to stick with their 11 players, would that be considered fair? Well, maybe for the SEC, it would, but we digress...
A more applicable example would be if the U.S. tells Iraq that they have the right to choose their leaders by casting ballots, BUT, the U.S. reserves the right to add 3 or 3,000 or 300,000 votes of their own choosing to get their desired result if the Iraqis are choosing wrongly, that would be fair, wouldn't it? After all, the U.S. has expended all of this money and blood to bring freedom to the Iraqis, and we need to make sure that the "will of the majority" is maintained, right?
The
theory (Note to Cobb County creationists: don't go printing stickers yet) of the U.S. Constitution and the Rule of Law is that the law must be applied fairly up-and-down this representative democracy in order for it to work to ensure liberty and justice for all. This hawk rule deliberately
violates that theory.
The real issue here is that the committee system is set-up to act only as a filter of people who are charged with focusing all of their attention on learning about specific subjects that affect our state government. They are charged with deciding if a proposed bill properly improves a condition and/or does not have a detrimental effect on the people of Georgia. If a bill passes out of committee, it is not a blanket approval that a majority of the House must then vote their acceptance. New pairs of eyes are allowed to examine the bill before they cast a vote. New opinions may decide the bill differently.
The full House should be able to judge the validity of the bill. That is where the true "will of the majority" should be given a chance to be exercised, not in a committee governed by the "king-of-the-hill" mentality.
Of Mice and SpammersWe have performed the proper due diligence on this particular issue. And, we have been unable to find anywhere in the history of conservatism the edict that if something is merely "annoying," a law should be passed to prohibit it. However, it seems more and more that the Republicans who are elected as leaders of this state have decided to write their own rules on what constitutes conservative thinking.
Governor Perdue has proposed a new law, the
Georgia Slam Spam Act, and
Senator David Shafer has eagerly agreed to carry it. The Act calls for the felony prosecution of anyone sending e-mail that meets any one of these criteria: a) Sending a high volume of e-mail, such as more than 10,000 messages in a 24-hour period, or b) Generating more than $1000 in revenue from a single spam message, or c) Using a minor to assist in the transmission of spam.
A few years back, the Georgia Legislature decided it was a "felony" if someone imported alcoholic beverages from another state, apparently under the impression that if one were to obtain alcohol without paying the requisite liquor taxes to the state, the state would implode because it wouldn't get that revenue.
What is a "felony" in our minds? When people commit acts like..oh, gee...ummm...murdering someone? Or, robbing someone at gunpoint. Or, molesting a child. Or, a person claiming to be a religious person who scams a church out of their bank account balance.
Sure, spam is annoying. But, is it life threatening? Is signing-on to your computer and having to wade through spam about Cialis, or the latest hot stock scam, going to put such a burden on your life that you need a law passed that locks someone up for 5 years for engaging in it? If so, then it is
possible that you may not have enough of a challenging life away from your computer life.
Pete Wellborn, the outside counsel for Atlanta-based
Earthlink, proudly declared that this law would require that
"Any spammer who sends deceptive e-mail that accesses a Georgia computer will be held accountable in Georgia."From what we recall reading somewhere recently, most spammed e-mail actually originates from places outside of the United States. So, while they may have an ISP account with Earthlink, the computer used to compose and send the message may not actually reside in this state to be accessible to our state law enforcement arm.
Then, of course, there is the constant problem of e-mail viruses that, upon the e-mail landing in an in-box, it looks at the recipient's address book, and promptly sends a new message out to the folks in the address book with the recipient's name on the header. The message may be some minor blather, or it may be a subject heading that screams "ANNA KOURNIKOVA PHOTOS!"
There are three reasons why this type of legislation troubles us: 1) Truly, it is a law designed to reduce an annoyance. An annoyance that could be equated to the annoyance of people driving in a negligent manner (which, is to say, a manner that could have been avoided merely by not engaging in the behavior, similar to a decision to send spam), causing an accident, and tying-up traffic for hours on the freeway.
Number Two, it is
unequally applied to one type of spam that is annoying in our daily lives. Spam could be considered to be anything that fits the category of "junk mail." Well, our snail mailbox gets LOTS of paper junk mail, and there's no law proposed against that, is there? In fact, not only do we get unsolicited commercial mail in the USPS mailbox, but we also get countless solicitations for contributions from this, that, and the other Republican candidate and/or organization. Where was the "opt-out" choice on the contributions?
For that matter, perhaps the State Board of Elections should put forward an "opt-out" choice on the papers we sign when we go vote.
"Are you interested in receiving pleas from candidates begging for your vote? Yes or No." If "No", it becomes a felony if any candidate sends us mail of their claims that they are the "true conservative...blah-blah-blah..."
The most important issue we have with this law is that we can predict
precisely what will happen as a result of it: Once it is known by the state's populace that spamming is now a felony, 911-call centers will be flooded every time someone receives what they think is a spammed e-mail. The GBI and the rest of the law enforcement community will have to devote resources away from, dare we say, REAL crimes against society to contend with this law's passage. Innocent people whose e-mail addresses have been spoofed will be accused of breaking this law and will have to devote resources, personal time and, perhaps legal costs, to defend themselves.
Tort reform of our legal system is a real buzzword in our country these days. Talks in state legislatures and in Congress are filled with elected people telling lobbyists who have just stuffed their pockets full of cash that "Yes, we are going after these people who file frivolous lawsuits..."
Well, if you're sick of seeing frivolous lawsuits filed in the past, you ain't seen nothing yet. If this law goes into effect, you will have lawsuit after lawsuit filed against people all over the map, clogging our state's courthouses with all kinds of claims related to "spamming my in-box."
If legislators are interested in reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits that jam our court systems, they should START by not passing frivolous laws. Ooh. What a novel idea.
