[EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Richard Fobes]

On 4/10/2013 10:56 PM, Michael Allan wrote:
> Kristofer Munsterhjelm said:
>> Isn't that just what a protection racket is - large-scale coercion?
>> It seems to work for the Mafia, inasmuch as they're still being
>> involved in protection rackets... and the presence of organizations
>> like Addiopizzo seems to show that they are.
>
> Usually a protection racket goes after business firms (equivalent to
> what Abd calls "power nodes").  It extorts money from those firms, not
> directly from their customers.  The customers are too numerous, too
> mobile and generally too difficult to control (too "large-scale" as
> Abd says).  For similar reasons, election racketeers wouldn't go
> chasing after individual voters.  I think this is what Abd means.

In politics the "power nodes" are the political parties.  They are much 
easier to control than the voters.

Even the members of Congress are a bit too numerous to control, so 
"special interests" (the biggest campaign contributors) make their deals 
in backroom meetings with committee members.  Then (under threat of 
withdrawal of money from election campaigns) the "majority whip" ensures 
that all Congressmen from that party vote the way the party arranged to 
vote.

Note that instead of using threats of damage to extort money (which is 
what protection rackets do), in politics the extortion consists of 
threatening to stop giving money (to election campaigns) in exchange for 
getting laws that provide beneficial tax breaks, legal monopolies, 
government contracts, etc.

Richard Fobes