...utterly dumbfounded." Maybe some will laugh--but with bitterness and disbelief, I'm afraid. That's why I'm working on election reform. We're down to that--our fundamental sovereignty as a people, which we exercise through the mechanism of voting. We have lost that right. We have lost our sovereignty. Our votes are now 'counted' by rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--using "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--with virtually no audit/recount controls.
Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny. And, in order to overcome this tyranny, we MUST recover our right to vote. I want to be able to pass at least that along to future generations--or, at the very least, to pass along the legacy that we FOUGHT to get it back. Sometimes struggles for fundamental rights like this take time. It may be decades before it's recovered. But it must be, and will be.
I have great faith in the American people, partly because I've studied numerous polls over the last several years, and it is very, very clear that the American people utterly reject the Bush junta, and that there is a great American progressive majority that has been cut out of the "news," and is not represented in Washington DC in anything like appropriate numbers. Issue polls show 60% to 70% disagreement with every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic. The American people opposed Bush's slaughter in Iraq by 58%, way back before the invasion in Feb. 2003. 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May 2004). You name it--the Iraq war, torture, Social Security, the deficit, women's rights--most Americans oppose every Bush policy, as well as giving Bush massive disapproval in job performance polls, in the 38% range all this year. And his poll numbers were so low leading up to the 2004 election that Zogby said he could not win. Further, the Democrats had a blowout success, 60/40, in new voter registration in 2004. And all election evidence--and there are volumes of it--points to a stolen election in 2004.
So I believe that what's happening with Americans is disempowerment, bewilderment, and, above all, DISENFRANCHISEMENT. I think our fellow Americans are a lot savvier and better informed than anyone gives them credit for. They stubbornly cling to progressive values, despite all the fearmongering and warmongering. But it's difficult for them to communicate, or to find out what's really going on in a timely fashion, given the corporate monopolies of the "news." We are literally back in a "word of mouth" culture, where it takes considerable time for the real news to circulate. The internet, of course, is a great help. That reaches (or is available to) maybe 20% to 30% of the population. And we help inform others. But two things that Americans, for the most part, don't know yet, are: 1) The overwhelming evidence of a stolen election in 2004; and 2) The corporate news monopolies' complicity in that election theft (they FALSIFIED their exit polls, on election night, to match the results of Diebold and ES&S's secret vote tabulation software--thus denying the American people major evidence of election fraud), and their entirely propagandist nature--they've become mere lapdogs for the Bush war/theft machine.
And our Democratic Party leaders have been no help. In fact, they've been so completely silent about rightwing Bushites controlling the vote tabulation with secret programming code that one can only conclude that most our Party leaders are corrupt, fearful or brain dead.
Restoring our right to vote is still doable--although I don't know how much of a window of opportunity we have. The power over election systems still resides at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. It's a difficult fight, in many different jurisdictions. But it is going forward, and has had some successes. In California, we now have a really good Democrat--Debra Bowen (a state senator)--running for Secretary of State, who understands the fundamental issues very well. In addition, Russ Holt has an excellent bill, HR 550, in Congress, that would solve much of the problem, and if we get even a War Democrat as president, we might be able to push it through and achieve nationwide reform quickly.
One thing the Bush junta is doing is causing a lot of people to re-discover their belief in democracy, to analyze what's wrong that led to this junta, and to look for remedies. And that re-discovery is quite passionate and committed.
It certainly has focused me in that way. I've always taken our right to vote for granted. Now that it's gone, I don't take it for granted any more, I'll tell you that. Nor do I take ANY of the "blessings of liberties" for granted any more. I see that we have to fight for them all--for the basics of democracy--all over again.
I've gone way past being shocked or depressed about it. I am committed to DOING something about, and to NEVER GIVING UP. People died for these rights. They died for US--so that we would have the right to vote, and so that we could, as a people, control our government, and prevent it from becoming what it is today, a thieving, murdering fascist junta. I've come to a new sense of honor and respect for all those who have gone before us, and who struggled to preserve democracy and to pass a better democracy along to the future.
That's all we can do: VALUE our democracy, and FIGHT FOR IT. And never give up.
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Some resources:
www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.UScountvotes.org (monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors).
http://www.rushholt.com/petition.htmlwww.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
Also of interest: (Bob Koehler--very bad machines in Ohio, recent)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk
Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340
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