veiled4allah: the politics of bloc voting

The political mobilization of the Muslim community in America is meant not simply to get American Muslims involved in the political process but to build a Muslim voting bloc.

Block voting is the natural strategy of a minority group seeking to advance its interests in the political sphere. It depends on the fact that in a close race, a small group can decide the winner.

Muslims need to get educated about bloc voting because it seems that a lot of people, including those in leadership positions in the community, are not clear on how it works.

Bloc voting is not something a community does just to show that it can. Bloc voting is intended as a strategy, as I said above, for advancing a group's interests. When politicians come courting, the group has to say "we'll vote for you, but only if you promise to do such-and-such". So the group has to have a clear and well-defined set of policy goals.

It should be beyond obvious that voting for the front-runner in a primary election because he's "electable" is not an effective bloc voting strategy. The power of the voting bloc is meaningless in that case. The bloc is invisible in the majority. And, more than that, the bloc has sold out for nothing. It is not voting for its interests and has not advanced them. It has not even made them known.

In the primaries, bloc voting requires delivering the bloc vote to the candidate who best represents the community's interests. It doesn't matter who else also votes for that candidate. In fact, the more closely the candidate is identified with the community and its interests, the better. The bloc of votes becomes a bloc of delegates to be wooed by the other candidates and then delivered to one of them once that candidate has made the necessary concessions.

Muslims, wake up! If we want American politicians and the American political process to listen to our views, we have to start standing up for those views ourselves. We have to start supporting candidates who stand up for those views and withholding our votes from candidates who ignore those views.

Forget about Howard Dean. The time to vote for him would be in the general election, against George Bush. After he's met with us and wooed our vote. Not now. A bloc vote for Howard Dean in the primaries is a one-way ticket to obscurity. It means our interests put back on the shelf for another four years before anyone even saw them. It means a collective voice silenced before it even spoke.

In the primaries, we must find a candidate who closely represents our interests and is willing to speak for us. We must give him our support and our vote so that he gets delegates (ideally, we should also be proportionally represented among his delegates, but let's keep it simple). At the convention, the candidate and his delegates will be our spokespeople. They will stand for us and our views as the leading candidates come seeking the support of the delegation.

There is one candidate who does represent our interests, pretty much across the board. There is one candidate who is willing to speak to us and who is willing to speak for us. His name is Dennis Kucinich and he's who we should be voting for.

For more information on Kucinich, see Muslims for Kucinich