Careless Misuse of the Electoral Process

The other morning I witnessed a careless misuse of the electoral process that probably is occurring all across the Los Angeles Basin at the moment. It could lead to the kind of disaster that struck the Illinois voters recently, when two Lyndon LaRouche candidates slipped onto the ticket in the Democratic primary mainly because of the inattention of the primary voters.

As I approached the Pasadena Post Office, two pleasant young women with clipboards came up and asked if I would sign a petition to place on the ballot a proposition that required physicians to report to the authorities all cases of AIDS, “just as is done now for other dangerous communicable diseases such as venereal diseases,” they said.

I read the fine print of the petition carefully. Not only did it require reporting, it also required involuntary quarantine of all victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. I had visions of internment camps for victims of certain unpopular communicable diseases, rather like the internment or concentration camps in Germany 40 years ago for such social undesirables as Gypsies, Jews, Eastern Europeans, and political dissenters.

Moreover, the petition contained phrases like, “. . . as provided for by section such-and-so of the law.” Since I had no idea what section such-and-so might involve, I did not like the sound of the petition, and refused to sign it.

On my way back out of the Post Office, I asked one of the women on impulse if she were connected in any way with LaRouche. “Absolutely!” she said in a triumphant tone. “Then I’m glad I didn’t sign,” I replied.

I sat in my car for five minutes, watching the two canvassers at work. Nearly everyone who walked past them into the Post Office stopped to sign the petition, but nobody paused long enough to read it!

This is the misuse of the electoral process that I mentioned at the beginning--not the petitioning, but the careless way that people signed the petition without knowing what they were signing or who it represented.

The LaRouche people did not hide their affiliation when directly challenged, but there was no indication at all of their LaRouche connections unless one asked the direct question. Just as the Hare Krishnas have abandoned their saffron robes and adopted three-piece business suits for airport fund-raising, so the LaRouche workers appear to have soft-pedaled their hate-filled placards of the “Feed Jane Fonda to the Whales” type, and are trying to blend into their political surroundings. This includes anonymous canvassing of voters, and adopting misleading party names, as in Illinois, that suggest affiliation with one of the two major political parties.

Please, do not sign petitions casually without reading the fine print of what you are signing, and without first finding out who is sponsoring the petition. If we are as sloppy with our electoral process as the Illinois voters apparently were, then we could end in the same kind of political mess.

RICHARD E. DICKERSON

Los Angeles