Everyone's talking about election hacking these days. In the country's latest reprise of "the Russians are coming," we're all in turmoil about Putin's interference in U.S. elections.

However, don't you find it highly ironic politicians on all sides are so worried about "Russian hacking," while virtually none of them is addressing much more significant forms of election rigging? I'm talking about the criminal fixes arranged by the U.S. officials themselves?

More specifically, these include the retention of the outdated electoral college itself, outrageous gerrymandering of voting districts, super delegates at nominating conventions, voter suppression's many forms (from voter IDs to felony disenfranchisement laws), Koch brother funding of candidates' election campaigns (as in Citizens United), and the use of highly hackable computerized technology that miscounts and discounts millions of votes each election cycle. (No wonder so many of us decide on election day, "Why bother?")

The upshot of it all is that we end up with a system controlled at all levels by a minority party that doesn't want everyone to vote. That's because its members could never be elected to the presidency (and its control of the judiciary) if voters exercised their franchise in anything like the numbers in other industrially-developed countries.

And so, we end up with a crisis of political leadership with one-percenters like Donald Trump and George W. Bush running things -- and with corporate-funded Barrack Obama trailing not very far behind.

I bring all of this up because the theme of today's Liturgy of the Word is political leadership.

The liturgical image at play is shepherding. That pastoral metaphor brings to mind characteristics of presence, watchfulness, protection, and overriding concern for the sheep of the flock. I'm confident you'd agree that the political leaders I mentioned earlier in no way embody those qualities.

The first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah joins us in lamenting the absence of political leaders with the qualities just mentioned. Instead of uniting people, and drawing them together, the would-be leaders even in Jeremiah's day (all men, of course) were dividing and scattering them as effectively as our own. Through Jeremiah God promises to appoint new governance to reverse that syndrome.

Today's reading from the Gospel of Mark elaborates the theme. It focuses on Jesus' own practice of spiritual shepherding. Jesus fulfills the promise of Jeremiah by drawing his apprentice shepherds from an entirely new class of people -- not from the tribe of Levi and its inherited priesthood, not from the royal palace -- not from the one-percenters of his day -- but from the marginalized and decidedly unroyal and unpriestly in the traditional sense. Jesus chooses illiterate fishermen, day-laborers, and possibly real working shepherds. By all accounts women also prominently filled shepherding roles in Jesus' practice.

Finally, the responsorial psalm and Paul's letter to the Christian community at Ephesus remind us of the reason for shepherds at all -- not the preservation of tradition, much less of patriarchy. Rather, shepherds are there to embody compassion. They exist for the welfare of the sheep.

In Paul's words, leaders are to foster the emergence of a new kind of person. In the familiar phrasing of Psalm 23, that new version of humanity is not over-worked, but rested, and lives in pleasant surroundings, without fear, lacking nothing, with plenty to eat and drink. Shepherds are there for the sake of righteousness, justice, and compassion. (Read Psalm 23 again with that in mind.)

So, given our broken electoral system, how do we get from here to there -- to something approaching the biblical vision just described?

Well, I've just read a wonderful book that suggests the path ahead. But, get ready: it involves hard work for all of us. The book is called Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols. It's written by OpEdNews editor, Marta Steele, and is a magisterial study of the corruption of our electoral system.

To begin with, Steele suggests that we must face up to the facts that:

* The Founding Fathers rejected the notion of democracy (cf. Federalist Paper # 10).
* Their assertion that "all men are created equal" was meant to establish their right to expropriate Native Americans and African slaves of their land and resources. (This is documented in Chapter 13 of my new book, The Magic Glasses of Critical Thinking).
* Instead, the Founders believed (as John Jay said) that the country should be run by those who own it.
* Both the anti-democracy and elite-ownership traditions find their clearest contemporary expression in Paul Weyrich's statement in 1980 about Republicans not wanting everyone to vote based on their realization that if everyone did cast a ballot, a Republican president would never again darken the White House door (cf. Steele 233).
* Computerized voting machines overwhelmingly favor that minority otherwise unelectable party by invalidating or changing thousands of votes in each state and millions nation-wide (Steele passim).
* The only way to restore voter confidence is to revert to paper ballot technology (because it's better and works) with safeguards against traditional ballot box stuffing methods.
* More specifically, the answer is to:

" Eliminate the electoral college in favor of direct popular vote (Why is virtually no one even discussing this?)
" Abolish gerrymandering by making redistricting a bi-partisan process subject to the approval of an effective Federal Election Commission (see below).
" Establish uniform, nation-wide electoral standards and procedures overseen, not by the states, but by the previously- referenced and truly empowered bi-partisan Federal Commission whose goal is maximizing voter turn-out as well as increasing voter confidence in the electoral process by its transparent certification process.
" Get private money out of the electoral process in favor of public funding.
" Outlaw voting machines altogether and replace them with paper ballots.
" More specifically, implement a system of automatic and verifiable voter registration; revert to the practice of universal hand-counted paper ballots; establish a national voting holiday period (from Saturday to Tuesday), with ballots hand-counted on Wednesday by unimpeachable young people like senior Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

All of this should remind us that according to Jesus' highly political metaphor, the Kingdom of God meant "a political system as God would arrange it." Today's readings call attention to the fact that such arrangement centralizes human welfare, grassroots leadership, and ardent compassion for all. It places the welfare of "the sheep" at center and includes provision of food, drink, healthy environment, and needed rest.

Those are not the goals of our political minority. However, to attain goals like that, "shepherds" must be present, watchful, caring -- and as representative of marginalized classes as Jesus' inner circle.

To repeat, today's electoral process gives us nothing similar. And that's not Mr. Putin's fault. It's the fault of our broken system and its unbiblical discouragement of grassroots focus. To fix it will require great commitment and work by all of us.