Tuesday's Outcome May Depend On The Power Of The Election Protection
November 5, 2006
On Election Day 2006, the American people will almost certainly vote to give the Democratic Party one or both houses of
Congress.
We will vote to restore at least some of the checks and balances written into the Constitution of the United States. We
will vote to end the reign of terror and error imposed on the nation and world since the stolen election of 2000. State
by state, governorships and legislatures should return to the opposition party.
All the polls, and all the instincts of credible students of American politics, indicate this will happen. Anyone
familiar with the history of the American electorate can be reasonably certain that the issues of war, deficits,
economy, environment, scandal, sexual imposition and more will overwhelmingly favor a traditional rejection of the party
in power.
But in 2006, the party in power has installed a nationwide system of election theft. And the outcome of Tuesday's
election may depend on the ability of the grassroots American citizenry to overcome this infernal machine.
The GOP engine of vote theft is built primarily on two pillars:
First is the massive disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democrats, including millions of people of color. Second is the
simultaneous inflation of mostly rural and suburban Republican votes, including the mythological influx of "last-minute
evangelicals" who may well exist primarily in the memory cards of rigged electronic machines.
Throughout the country, a concerted effort by the Republican Party has crippled voter registration drives. In Ohio some
500,000 citizens who were already registered --some ten percent of the electorate---have been deleted (many without
notification) in the Democratic strongholds of Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton and Lucas Counties. With easily manipulated
electronic registration books now in place, or private partisan vendors controlling registration rolls, throughout the
US, millions more may have been deleted or flagged in other largely Democratic urban areas.
Based on what we know from Florida 2000, stolen Senatorial races in 2002, and Ohio 2004, here are some of the things we
can expect from the GOP on Tuesday:
Disenfranchisement of alleged "ex-felons," even in states where it is not illegal for ex-felons to vote, or their
intimidation through anonymous phone calls; denial, misprinting and failure to send absentee ballots; denial of voting
rights at polling stations through unreasonable or illegal demands for identification; insufficient numbers of voting
machines and/or paper ballots at inner city and college town precincts; malfunctioning of those machines and misprinting
of those ballots, rendering them erroneous or deliberately confusing; misrepresentation of requirements to obtain
regular or provisional ballots; outright trashing of ballots at the voting stations; declaration of phony Homeland
Security alerts to remove ballot counting from public scrutiny; outright refusal to count ballots (as in Ohio, where
more than 100,000 cast in 2004 have yet to be tallied); termination of the traditional posting of outcomes at precincts;
subversion of the recount process.
All this and more was used to steal the elections of 2000 and 2004, and has been documented and broadcast through the
internet, at sites such as blackboxvoting.com, freepress.org, bradblog.com and many more. Despite a mainstream media
blackout and the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to face this issue, there is no reason to be surprised on
Tuesday.
It will not be enough to rely on polls indicating victory, or to call voters to turn out, or to merely vote on Election
Day.
No citizen should be turned away without an election protection monitor documenting it. No monitor should be turned away
without full documentation and a call to the police. No ballot should be trashed without sworn affidavits as to why. No
recount should be conducted without total public scrutiny.
In all cases, we ask anyone involved to send a report to democracy@freepress.org, with at least your e-mail address
attached.
We further urge that throughout the states, public post-election hearings be convened in the presence of a court
stenographer, so that sworn testimony and affidavits can be available for later litigation.
Such documentation has proven crucial in the lawsuits that have preserved the Ohio 2004 ballots and other voting rights
here. It will be at the core of continued efforts to restore American democracy.
Electronic voting machines remain problematic. There is no magic bullet except for absolute scrutiny, persistence, and a
willingness to fight it out over every electron. Even with high tech thievery, if the People are vigilant, the Truth can
eventually win out. The higher the voter turnout, and the greater the vigilence by voters, the more difficult for Bush
and Rove to steal the election, and the more likely we are to catch them if they try.
We expect more tricks we've not yet seen. Even as we write this, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth
Blackwell, is imposing new regulations for obtaining a ballot.
But there is no excuse for throwing up one's hands in despair. Or for doing nothing in the face of the obvious.
As with the recent rise of the movements for civil rights, peace, social justice and ecological survival, the public
campaign for election protection has exploded from the handful to the many to the multitudes.
The power of pro-active grassroots democracy will be sorely tested on Tuesday. The stakes could not be higher.
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-- Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by
the New Press. They are of counsel and plaintiff in the King Lincoln voter protection lawsuit in Ohio. Bob is an
independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH,
A.D. 2030, is available at www.solartopia.org.