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For the sake of U.S. citizens both present and future, I urge you to seriously question and evaluate the legitimacy of the presidential electors on January 6th, 2005.
Verifiable evidence of vote suppression and compelling indications of vote manipulation in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and other states have been detailed by thousands of witnesses. Given the testimony we have seen thus far and the over 50,000 voter complaints filed since November 2 in Ohio alone, you have legitimate reasons for challenging the electors.
Whether we are experiencing a concerted effort to control the outcome, isolated instances of fraud, lack of training, good faith human error, poor planning for unexpected voter turnout, a lack of funds, flawed software, vulnerable computer networks or some combination of the above, Americans deserve to know that reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that every vote is accurately counted. Our nation cannot serve as an exemplar of democracy if it cannot fulfill that responsibility to its own electorate.
The voting systems and practices used in the conduct of this past election were so flawed that the results in nearly every state were wide open to corruption by systematic vote suppression, data manipulation, human and machine error, and consequently, willful fraud. Each day, more evidence comes to light that "errors", systematic suppression of Democratic votes, and other orchestrated efforts to manipulate the outcome have thwarted the true will of the people to elect John Kerry as their 44th President.
In many states -- most widely acknowledged in Ohio, but also in Florida, New Mexico, and other states -- members of the House of Representatives, candidates, independent watchdog organizations, and grassroots citizens groups have called on election officials to take the steps necessary to assure the public that their results are accurate and lawfully obtained. Rather than welcoming and expediting such efforts in order to restore the public trust, election officials have undermined and obstructed them.
Academics and statisticians can produce estimates (and many have already begun to do so) of the effects of certain kinds of fraud -- such as the estimated 15,000 - 95,000 votes lost to Kerry due to the shortage of voting machines in Columbus. More broadly, the total impact of the various frauds can be estimated by Kerry's 3.2% victory according to the networks' exit poll.
In an honest political system, widespread fraud is grounds for nullifying an election and holding another one, regardless of the precise quantification of that fraud.
Election fraud drives a dagger directly into the heart of democracy. If the citizens of a democracy do not believe the election was fair, then the government chosen by that election has no legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens or the world.
Election fraud by the ruling party is especially poisonous, because the ruling party controls the investigative bodies that alone have the power to determine how widespread the fraud was, and how high up the chain of command it went. That is why it has been left to volunteers to conduct much of the investigation that should be made. On January 6th, 2001, every member of Congress, save the Congressional Black Caucus, failed to carry out their constitutional duty to independently judge the validity of the unlawful Florida electors. You may take issue with this statement, but had Congress carried out its duty to judge, they surely would have recognized that the Florida election had been truncated and was therefore invalid.
In his dissent to Bush v. Gore, Justice Breyer noted that the Electoral Count Act makes it the duty of Congress to ultimately resolve such a situation. In quoting the legislative history, he stated, "They can only count legal votes, and in doing so must determine, from the best evidence to be had, what are legal votes…", and further that, "The power to judge of the legality of the votes is a necessary consequent of the power to count. The existence of this power is of absolute necessity to the preservation of the Government." Bush v. Gore, J. Breyer dissent (11)
As you did in those first days of 2001, you are again faced with the grave responsibility to make a judgment, and I believe you failed us. This time, I urge you to take the action, to refute the legitimacy of the electors from states in which the most widespread abuses are known to have occurred.
Will you rubber-stamp electoral votes from states that systematically, and indisputably, underallocated resources in a way that disenfranchised countless thousands of African American, elderly, and working poor voters who were unable to stand in lines for hours in the pouring rain, or who were misdirected? Will you rubber stamp electoral votes from states that have obstructed every effort to resolve serious allegations of fraud? Will you rubber stamp electors from states that have refused to allow independent verification or audit of any voting machine or independent inspection of the thousands of disallowed provisional ballots?
For the sake of this nation, I hope not.
If you fail, once again, to object to such intolerable abuses of true democratic process, then you too must be held responsible for our descent into the Stalinist perversion of "democracy;" in which "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
I urge you to declare your intent to object to tainted electors by publicly endorsing the following declaration, or making an equivalent public statement.
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