The only priority now should be to transform the election system.

[athena]

It's useless to try to win in 2006 or 2008 if the election system is as messed up as it is. Here is what liberals should work on in the next two or four years is (in order of decreasing priority):

1. federalize the presidential election process -- so that everybody will be voting on the same ballots everywhere, and the ballots will all be counted on the same type of machine everywhere.
   
2. get rid of the registration process: all citizens should automatically be on the voting lists. The list can be computerized, so that people can vote in any precinct they want.
   
3. abolish all the laws that make convicts ineligible to vote. All citizens should have the right to vote: committing a crime does not make a person non-human or sub-human.
   
4. ensure that all ballots are counted by the end of election day, including absentee ballots and early ballots. This will require an earlier deadline for absentee ballots, but I'm sure people would rather mail their ballots earlier and have them counted than have them completely ignored.
   

There should be a huge grassroots movement to transform the election system. If such a system had been in place, Bush could not have "won" in 2000, and the country would not have moved this far to the right.

[eleonora]

1. get rid of the Diebold machines

[athena]

3. Yes. If the election process is the same across the country,

it'll be much harder for the repugs to get away with BBV.

[Oak2004]

7. Or it would make it much easier for them to turn all the blue states red

What would yesterday have looked like if Bush had controlled every state's voting? Think about that.

Federalizing means further reducing our checks and balances.

[athena]

8. I don't think so.

It's much harder to mess up the system across the board and get away with it.

Also, if all the things I suggested are achieved, then there will be no registration cards to tear up, no non-ex-convicts to disinfranchise, and no misleading ballots where the democratic candidate was "accidentally" left out.

[Oak2004]

10. How would it do that?

Things like that can be done on the ground whether or not national standards permitted them. It still takes people, locally, to implement the regulations, and they can implement them any way they want.

[Cleita]

2. Your post addresses the need to change the

election system. I couldn't agree more. But first we legally need to get rid of the guys who will obstruct any meaningful change, every inch of the way by making them answer to their criminal activities first.

[Chili]

4. that's the problem...

...we need the votes to initiate election reform, and the Republicans will never allow it to leave the committees in the House. We have to regain some kind of control before anything can change... is an overwhelming demand from the people enough to force it? I don't know...

[Leilani]

5. How do you plan to make these reforms?

In the House?

The Senate?

White House?

Supreme Court?

With the results of the election, you have no power...nada...zilch!

[athena]

6. I think that improving the election progress is something

that's difficult to disagree with, even for the right wing. What if the 48% of the voters who are disgusted with Bush stood up and made a lot of noise? Wouldn't that have any impact?

I mean, what's the alternative? To give up? Clearly, no progress will even be possible until the election system is reformed; so that's what should be the priority.

[glitch]

9. state and county level - state by state. nt

[Maiden England]

11. remember half the reason the repukes are so powerful right now

is because they already own half the state and local positions of power, and they have had a concerted effort over the past 30 years to gain as much as this basic power as possible with a view to it helping at a national level. Gee it looks like really worked out for them.
We are in a terrible position right now if we think we are going to magically be able to get BBV eliminated by winning over the argument state by state.
Where's the outcry against it going to come from, the media? the liberal media? Oh I forgot, thats a fallacy.

[glitch]

12. I am not forgetting, and I don't believe in magic. But this is where the

decisions to implement bbv are made and that is where we start to get them changed. Courts haven't been taken over entirely, and fraud is still illegal.
Or are you suggesting we just throw up our hands?