How to rig an election
MIAMI – With Amendment 1, the people at Florida Power & Light and other giants of the electric industry thought they had a sure-fire formula for rigging the election: play with words to fool voters into thinking they are voting in favor of one thing, in this case solar power, when they are in fact voting for the opposite thing, limits on the expansion of solar power and monopoly control by the industry.
Forget the false charges of electoral fraud leveled by the likes of Donald Trump. This is how you rig an election today. There are too many controls put in place since the 2000 election debacle to steal a national election the old-fashioned way. What you need is plenty of corporate money, clever public relations, and an utter contempt for the truth and the public’s interest.
Tricking voters into voting for Darth Vader while thinking they are casting a ballot for the light side of the force is a clever if dastardly ploy. It works far too often. And, it might work again for the electric monopolies on November 8.
Then again, this time it might not work. Something funny happened on the way to the electric industry’s having a good laugh at the expense of Floridians, who overwhelmingly favor accessible and affordable solar power. Sal Nuzzo, policy director for something called the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee, an ally of the electric industry, speaking before a closed-door industry conference at which cameras and audio recorders were banned, felt comfortable enough to boastfully lay out the entire con behind Amendment 1.
But someone was recording, and that person leaked the bombshell audio tape to the Miami Herald. Among the things Nuzzo was heard saying on the tape was that Amendment 1 is “an incredibly savvy maneuver [by industry] that would completely negate anything they [pro-solar forces] would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road.”
Translation: Amendment one is a clever maneuver to lock the industry’s solar monopoly and profits into the constitution. That would make it very difficult in the future for voters and legislators to free solar power from the grip of the industry that would allow citizens and businesses to buy solar equipment from third party providers and sell excess power in a free market.
In his talk, Nuzzo also called Amendment 1 “political jiu jitsu.” It’s a telling analogy. Jiu Jitsu is a martial art based on turning the opponent’s attacks and power to one’s advantage. That amounts to an admission that solar power is incredibly popular. Political jiu jitsu is an attempt to turn that popularity against itself.
Yet, Nuzzo’s incredibly stupid admissions may negate the industry’s “incredibly savvy maneuver.” The duplicity at the core of Amendment 1 unwittingly exposed by Nuzzo was not lost on the media.
Mary Ann Klass of the Miami Herald pointed it out when she broke the story. There followed blistering editorial columns by Herald columnists Carl Hiaasen and Fred Grimm. Hiaasen cited Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, one of three dissenters in the 4-3 decision that allowed Amendment 1 to be placed on the ballot, who described the measure as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Finally, on October 22, Mary Ann Klass reported that the political committee behind Amending 1 cleansed from its website and other materials all references to the James Madison Institute. As for Nuzzo, they threw him under the bus.
Opponents of Amendment 1 now have all the evidence in the world to discredit the proposal, but lack the money to mount a strong media campaign. In contrast, the industry has all the money in the world and already has spent $21 million to feed the wolf. And counting, because the deceptive media campaign continues unabated.
Which side will prevail? The vote in Florida will test the ability of voters to see through the industry’s propaganda blitz versus the capacity of corporate giants to assert virtual ownership of the force of nature that make our very lives on Earth possible.
