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Pakistani president Musharraf’s most recent raspberry at democracy is just one more example of the fatal flaw in the “one-person-one-vote” system, Steve Glickman, founder of the Democratic Empowerment Party said today.

“This is just the latest meltdown in the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and it’s pretty much what we can expect when the gap between the vote’s symbolic value and actual value is large enough to swallow up whole planets,” said Glickman. “Whether it’s the Dear Ruler in N. Korea, the General-slash-President in Pakistan, or the ‘leaders’ of Cuba, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, China, Russia, or the USA, the constants are the same - a small group of strongmen siphoning off gazillions of tax-payer dollars (much of it deferred onto future generations), waging wars, trashing justice, poisoning the environment, bending over for corporations, disregarding basic human rights, and amassing insane weaponry,” he explained.

Glickman’s unique solution to the problem is what he calls vote sizing. Said Glickman, “These crises-of-the-week are all symptoms of corruption, which actually is very easily remedied. Although our leaders claim to promote ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, they really only represent corporations and elites.” Glickman’s answer is to bring back rule of the people by giving citizens a vote that’s weighted according to their needs; ie. inversely to their income.

Glickman continued, “Everyone wants democracy and freedom - which simply means rule-of-the-people and an accountable rule of law. But we working and middle-class people aren’t stupid; we know there’s an inverted of system for the corporations and elites, and the more dominant this inversion becomes the more the leaders will ignore the pressing issues and the less well we’ll fare. When corruption is allowed to flourish under the pretext of one-person-one-vote tyranny, criminals gain a foothold, people become frustrated and willing to harbor violent extremists, elites demand tougher measures, the middle class becomes suspicious and conspiratorial... and everything fuels the gridlock.”

President Bush called for Pakistan to get back on the path to democracy. If he means what he says, then his foreign policy should be to encourage them to adopt a weighted vote system; because people with a real voice in their government - and not just a symbolic one that can be used against them - will show extremists the door and elect leaders who act on behalf of all their constituents. The people want freedom, security, and opportunity; not war, war, war. A weighted vote is the way to invoke this change non-violently, to step back from the abyss we’re all edging towards.