Shortly after this great man went underground, he was interviewed by a British news team. When asked what his movement wanted he said first, “One man, one vote.”

In 1963, when Mandela stood up in court and invited hanging for his actions against apartheid, he told the world that the regime that was trying him was the guilty party because it was afraid of democracy--White South Africans would not allow one-man one-vote democracy because those of African descent would be the majority voting.

In 2008, America has allowed a new element into its political traditions: the voiding of millions of American primary votes by political committees. In 2008, primary votes in some states are weighted based on how other people voted in past elections: caucuses start the exact instant voting closes for the purpose of diluting the electoral result: party officials are given special “super” voting privileges FOR THE PURPOSE of “acting as a check” on voters.

In America, in 2008, our senior federal legislative house, the senate, is apportioned so that a single citizen in Montana has sixty nine (69) times the representation as a single citizen living in California.

Now that the British upper house has been expunged of its hereditary entitlements, and since its members serve at large on behalf of the entire British nation, the American senate is the most anachronistic legislative body in the free world--least democratic in its composition and function: comity between the members of that “most exclusive club” empower minorities to block socially progressive legislation for decades at a time.

In our international relations, America uses one-person one-vote democratic procedures as a pre-condition for considering emerging nations democratic. We send our young into harms way in invasions of other countries to “free” other peoples to enjoy the fruits of democracy.

Yet, in America, in 2008, there are elderly Americans whose presidential votes in November polls have never mattered because of the state-pooling of votes employed by most states when selecting electoral college delegates.

Yet, in America in 2008, we allow gormless, self-interested and self-aggrandizing party operatives to void votes on the selection of candidates to the highest public elective office in the land--to manipulate the process to ensure their own special importance and to serve their preferences as to who should matter and who should prevail.

Yet, in America, in 2008, we observed the spectacle of candidates discussing which voters should be allowed to count, rather than voters deciding which candidate should be elected.

On Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Americans should pray that we might some day live up to his standards.

Happy birthday Nelson Mandela, may you live to be 101 years old , and get even with your tormentors of, “JESTER----YEARS.”