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Unasked Questions about Election Reform
from the Wyden-Smith Joint Town Hall meeting, January 10, 2005.
By Marc Baber
Trying to establish a dialog with our Oregon Senators about election reform has been a rather fruitless endeavor so far. After my fellow TruthInVoting.org members tried petitions with thousands of local names, faxes, letters, e-mail campaigns, phone campaigns, Senatorial office vigils and even a hunger strike, we were still unable to confirm that the most basic facts about election problems had reached Senator Wyden or to get any sort of authoritative response. So, on Monday, we decided to attend Smith & Wyden's joint Town Hall forum in Springfield. About two hundred people showed up at the Sports Center on south 32nd.
The experience reminded me of the animated ant named "Z" (voice of Woody Allen) and his opening scene in "Antz". When "Z" confesses to his shrink, "The whole system makes me feel insignificant,'' his psychologist replies, "You've made a real breakthrough.You are insignificant.'' But, then, maybe that's the whole point of the Smith Wyden road show psych op-go back to the old stomping grounds, hobnob with the hoi polloi, pretend to listen to them, bend their questions into segues for your own agenda and leave before you have to take any questions from people your handlers don't recognize as friendly softball- pitchers or ingratiating politico- wannabes climbing their way up through local government. All in a day's work, right? Well, not quite.
Everything was going very smoothly as S&W explained that they generally schedule these joint meetings at times of great controversy, like during Clinton's impeachment or after the 2000 election fiasco. They told us how they're the only Senators who do joint town hall meetings and that they're not even from the same party! Really! Believe it or don't! But before they could launch into a few verses of "Ebony and Ivory" or start quoting Rodney King, their handlers were opening up the meeting to questions from the crowd (mostly shills, I gathered).
The first question came from a farmer who lives near a dike that needs about $40 million of repairs and the Army Corps of Engineers wasn't sticking to any of their previously announced construction schedules which made it hard for farmers to plan their crops because just when they'd get set to plant one thing, the Corps would come up with a new schedule of when irrigation water would be available and when it wouldn't be and then they'd have to revise their whole crop rotation all over again and everybody in the whole valley has just about had it up to their kiesters with the Army Corps of Engineers and. this went on for some time. I watched the faces of the two Senators and their handlers looking for any trace of non-verbal signals that the gentleman should sum up or make this stream of consciousness gel into a question, but they were all listening politely or holding the microphone steadily in front of his yammering jaw. Somehow, the intermittent cut-in and cut-out of the microphone didn't happen during this question as it later would during a question about election reform.
No, no hurry to get this dike repair question over with. We all imagined the serene countryside with irrigation water gurgling down between rows of beets or spinach beds or perhaps medical marijuana-it was very bucolic and pastoral. Definitely worth the price of admission all by itself.
From the get-go, I raised my hand during each pause between questions and established eye contact with the microphone handler no fewer than four times. Each time he returned eye contact, smiled and made hand gestures like "I'm gonna do this guy and then that feller and then what's-her-face and then it'll be your turn, m'kay?"
"M'Kay!," I thought as each of the intervening questions about Lane county's rampant methamphetamine problem and Smith's controversial bill against teen suicide were posed and responses were given, "pretty soon it'll be my turn to finally. at long last. after nearly two months of attempted contacts and thousands of e-mails, calls and faxes. I'll get to pose these important questions about election reform to BOTH Senators at the same time-kill two birds with one stone and all that rot.
The suspense continued for about 45 minutes.
Then, noticing that some people seemed to be getting a shot at the microphone by standing in the back of the room near the microphone handler, I decided to give that a try. Jovially explaining to the handler that I'd misunderstood his hand signals and just now realized they meant I was supposed to walk around back to where he was, I asked if I could go next. He said that the commissioner was next. When I asked if I could go after the commissioner, he was noncommittal and handed the microphone off to a second handler, a woman this time, who had no knowledge of the exchange of nods, eye contact and reassuring smiles that had preceded between me and the gentleman microphone handler. She asked me to remain comfortably seated because if I stood back there with her then other people might get the idea that they too would get a shot at the microphone if they just came back and stood near her, y'know, like, oh-my-God-- total mass hysteria, right?
So, politely, I sat for another fifteen minutes or so while she continued to pass me over.
Then I decided I wasn't going to take this sitting down anymore. I knew for a fact that there were at least a couple dozen people in the audience who'd also been attending TruthInVoting.org meetings, and many of them had also been holding their hands up, but none of them had yet been among the lucky winners of an all-expenses paid opportunity to ask the Senators a question. So I stood.
The lady microphone handler went past again and I asked if I could have the next turn. She then said that there were already four people ahead of me and it looked like that was all they were going to have time for tonight. Oh, well. Guess I'll just wait another 2-4 years for the Senators to hold another one of these soirees and hope I'm one of the lucky ones then. not!
I stood at the exact back of the room. Between me and the Senators was a long black basketball court line on the gymnasium floor stretching from my feet, up the central aisle between the folding chairs to their lecterns-the most tangible connection between me and the Senators that I'd been able to establish to date. I felt the energy shifting to the back of the room. At the next pause before a question, I announced in a voice barely loud enough to be heard by everyone present, but probably loud enough to be characterized as a scream by Howard Dean press pool reporters (since I had no amplification), "WOULD EVERYONE WHO CAME HERE TONIGHT TO TALK ABOUT ELECTION REFORM PLEASE STAND UP NOW!?" Some of the other members told me later they thought about a third of everyone there stood up at that point. The Senators did not sit down (I mean, I mean, I mean, if election reform wasn't the elephant-sized donkey-in-the-room controversy that precipitated this whole Town Hall meeting, what the hell was?). I asked how many of those standing had been waiting the whole time to ask questions and hadn't been selected. Most of the people standing held up their hands. I guess we sort of made our point. We got suckered into yet another process designed to give every appearance of even-handedness and fairness only to realize it was a carefully-controlled rigged game.
As it turned out, the very next person they gave the microphone to happened to have a question about election reform-the first and only such question of the evening. He was a UO student and did a right decent job of going over an abbreviated, introductory litany of the various and sordid problems of the 2004 election from a huge wad of folded paper in his hands, much like I probably would have done in college if I'd been that courageous back then. He knew he had to squeeze everything into that one question or it would never get addressed at this meeting and he was right.
Unfortunately, the long list of problems gave S&W very wide latitude for choosing which parts of his question they wanted to respond to. Smith offered a few platitudes about democracy. Wyden expounded on the virtues of Oregon's vote-by-mail system (which, by the way, makes exit polls impossible). Basically, they said, "Yep, there were some really bad things that happened this time and bad things have been going on for a long time, but this is the best system of government in the world yet and we can all work together to make it better in the future. Sometimes your guy wins and sometimes he loses, but hey! That's Democracy!" Then the questions shifted on to campaign finance reform and other topics and pretty soon it was time to go.
I left copies of the three questions I would like to have asked in the hands of each Senator along with my e-mail address. I thanked Senator Wyden for standing with Senator Boxer to speak for election reform, even though I thought he should have gone a step further and joined her in voting to uphold the challenge of Ohio's electoral college votes on January 6th. I thanked Senator Smith for some work he did to reduce waste at the Pentagon in the eighties. He smiled and shook my hand as the TV cameras rolled (yes, his hair really does look that good in person!) If I get relevant responses from either Senator, I will sponsor a third world child in their name for at least two years.
So, what were the burning questions that I so wanted to ask? Here they are:
Question 1: According to exit polling from CNN, Senator Kerry won the popular vote by over 3 million votes nationwide and the electoral vote by 40.
The chance of such a discrepancy between exit polls and official results occurring randomly is less than 1 in 250 million. We've been told these differences occurred because exit polls are no longer reliable. If that's true, then:
(1) Why would exit polls first start becoming unreliable in 2000 and
2002-at the same time that new paperless, electronic voting technology is first being introduced? and
(2) Why would exit polls be unreliable in states with electronic voting
but still be reliable in states with paper ballots?
Question 2: Probably everyone who loves democracy was glad to see the people of the Ukraine rise up and demand a re-vote because differences between their exit polls and official results indicated that election was rigged to favor the incumbent. It was also heartwarming to see the re-vote confirm their suspicions and result in the candidate who reflected the will of their people finally being installed in office. Do you agree that the American people deserve to have fair elections just as much as Ukranians? And, if so, why shouldn't Americans rise up and demand a re-vote when the same, or worse, conditions occur in the U.S.?
Question 3: Many people have raised serious questions about the validity of the 2004 presidential election. Though today, as a nation, we are deeply divided along party lines, we are all steadfastly loyal to the ideals of democracy and the principle of one person, one vote. It has well been said that "United we stand; Divided we fall". In order to prove to everyone that the election was fair, and that the result should be honored by everyone who values democracy wouldn't it be worth investigating the vote sooner, rather than later, and making sure that recounts are done according to law and that public records are made public and public officials honor subpoenas to provide testimony? Why isn't our government doing everything it can to answer questions fully to help convince everyone there is nothing to hide instead of resisting questions at every turn and, instead, convincing more and more people that there is a great deal that the government wants to hide about this election?
There, that's all I want to know. I think these are questions that every American deserves to have taken seriously by elected officials. I think we deserve some real answers.
TruthInVoting.org will give a presentation on voting irregularities of the 2004 election at Cozmic Pizza (aka "The Strand" at 8th and Charnelton, Eugene OR), Thursday, January 13 at 7:00pm.
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