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Dems: "The election system is broken" but the result can't be challenged.

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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 10:58 AM
Original message
Dems: "The election system is broken" but the result can't be challenged.
Dems: "The election system is broken" but the result (Bush II) is beyond challenge.

I kept hearing this yesterday. "The election system is broken." I certainly agree. An election system in which big populations of Democrats are deliberately prevented from voting, with no recourse, and in which BushCons own the secret source code that tabulates all our votes, and which can't even be audited (let alone recounted) is BROKEN. In fact, it's more than broken--it was deliberately, methodically SET UP for fraud, with Democrats unable or unwilling to prevent it.

And how can you get a correct result from a broken thing? --let alone from a well-planned bank heist of an election?

THIS is why many Democratic leaders are "in denial" about the Kerry victory. It's not that Kerry didn't win. It's that they have no power to enforce the true result, and so they can't even acknowledge that he won.

These are two very different things. What the truth is. And whether or not you can overcome evil clouds of illusion and get the truth acknowledged and get it acted upon.

Watching Tom Delay and David Dreier and the other BushCons yesterday, you could see almost see the noxious clouds of falsehood swirling around them, filling the House chamber, exiting the doors and windows and covering the Capitol.

The Democrats need a fumigator.

So. We have a wrong result in this election, but it CANNOT be changed. Why? Primarily because the Dems have compromised, and corrupted, and given away their power (OUR power--the majority's power) for so long now, over so many issues, that they have almost no power left.

THIS WAS ONE OF THE CHIEF VALUES OF JAN. 6. We could see it plain as day. That is one great value of open debate and even partial truths being spoken.

I've been puzzling about this for two months. How could Kerry concede? How could the Dems put up with this? How can they not SEE that we won? Being outside all that DC noxious gas, *I" can see it clearly. And I'm not just hoping or guessing. I've carefully reviewed the evidence. It is overwhelming. Bush lost.

But the Democrats cannot assert this, not because it isn't true, not because there is no evidence (there is a mountain of evidence), but because they have no power to assert it--and, because they will be trashed, ruined, jailed or even killed if they try to, by people who have total impunity from the law, because they ARE now the law. There is no check and balance against them. None.

They control the presidency, the Congress, the courts, the military, the media AND the election system. (Germany, 1934--consolidation of all state power.) And they have control of the ILLUSION, spun by the gasses they emit. The cloud. The lie, that we are a free people.

Bush lost. No, we can't produce "absolute proof," because the election system is so NON-transparent, so unaccountable, that "absolute proof" is impossible to obtain. It was quite deliberately set up that way. So that is fact #1, in the case that Bush lost. Bush partisans ("Pioneer" donors, major BushCons) manufacture and control the entire election system, not just the individual electronic voting machines, but also the central vote tabulation machines, in which all our votes are counted (or not counted)--all run on programming code that is secret proprietary information. No pubic review. Highly insecure, hackable machines.

The rest of the facts: Given the Gore/Bush base vote from 2000, the new voter registrations, which broke for Dems, 57% to 41% (great Dem voter reg campaign), and the third party 2000/2004 change (Nader voters going for Kerry), the predicted Kerry popular vote margin over Bush was 5.4 million--a landslide, that would easily garner the Electoral Vote. (Freeman, 1/6/05).

Kerry was tied in the polls (with Zogby predicting a Kerry win). Bush approval ratings were very low (for a president in a 2nd term election that means you lose). Good feeling in the Kerry campaign. Everybody thought Kerry was winning. Kerry partisans pointed out that the opinion polls were not capturing the huge new voter registration, and were weighted toward Republicans from past models. All in all, as things stood on 11/1, Kerry was going to win by a 3% to 5% margin.

And bear in mind that Kerry's steady resurgence in the final weeks of the campaign occurred in spite of a hostile BushCon corporate media, which had been trumpeting the Swiftboat Liars smear campaign against Kerry for many months. Momentum was on Kerry's side. The voters had evaluated and rejected the smear campaign; they didn't approve of Bush's job performance; and they had all along been against his war by significant margins.

Election Day. Huge turnout. The Exit Polls confirmed a Kerry win, possibly a landslide. (Exit polls are face to face with voters at the polling place--a method used worldwide to verify elections.) All day long, the Exit Polls said a big Kerry win. Then...

...somehow...late in the day, Bush won. So said the TV networks. The networks had begun altering the Exit Poll figure that everybody was watching on their TV screens. They "adjusted" the Exit Poll data to fit the "officials results" that were coming in from the BushCon controlled central electronic vote tabulators. Thus, Americans were denied the information that there were two separate, conflicting figures--the Exit Polls (Kerry won) vs. the "official results" (Bush won). In the Ukraine, recently, it was the discrepancy between the Exit Polls and the "official results" that cause riots and a re-vote. Not so here.

Experts, smart techies, and crazy Leftist bloggers got hold of the pure Exit Poll data (screen shots, and later on, leaks), and began establishing the astronomical odds against the Exit Polls being so wrong--and always wrong in Bush's favor. They later studied other stats--for instance, paper ballot vs. electronic, top of the ticket vs. lower ticket, 2000 vs. 2004--and found huge, impossible discrepancies, always favoring Bush. Top experts: U. of Penn/MIT. U. of Chicago. UC Berkeley.

The biggest anomalies were in the battleground states, the states Bush needed to win. Then the stories from Ohio began to emerge, of intense vote suppression in black, poor and student precincts. Republican election officials had begun suppressing Democratic voter registraton prior to the election in several states; in Ohio, with ludicrous and bizarre new rules (you have to register on 80 lb. paper); in the west, an RNC-paid operative was shredding Democratic voter registration forms, and Hispanics and Native Americans were having problems registering to vote; in Florida, Bush's brother Jeb was using voter purge lists on black voters.

On Election Day, in Ohio, black districts were shorted on voting machines and precincts, resulting in 10 hour voting lines in the cold Ohio rain--and numerous other repressive measures, including unfair disqualification of Democratic voters, intimidation, disinformation. Voting difficulties and weird numbers were showing up all over the place, mostly connected to electronic voting--including many reports of touchscreen machines changing Kerry votes to Bush votes all day long without repair; machines reaching a pre-set limit of votes and then counting backwards (thousands of votes lost); and many instances of too many votes--more votes than voters.

And virtually all weird, anomalous numbers, all glitches and machine failures, and all vote suppression incidents favored Bush and hurt Kerry.

Quote obviously, the plan was to steal the battleground states (and the Electoral Vote) with severe overt vote suppression and hard to detect electronic theft, and create and pad a popular majority by stealing percentages of votes electronically, here and there, all over the country, while counting on the TV networks to nullify the Exit Polls (the hard evidence of a Kerry win), creating the ILLUSION of a Bush win.

Why did the BushCons risk the disrepute of the overt vote suppression, when they had electronic means? Possibly because of Kerry's late surge. They had to go all out to overcome it. And possibly as a distraction (get everyone focused on one state, Ohio, and on racial issues, and maybe no one will notice the larger, nationwide theft.)

The Green and Libertarian parties have put up a mighty battle to get a recount in Ohio and New Mexico--against unbelievable, and, in several instances, criminal obstruction. They sued to protect evidence that was being destroyed (a suit Kerry joined, his only assistance to these heroic citizens). The Alliance for Democracy and Common Cause sued in Ohio, on the whole election. Republican officials did everything they could to delay and obstruct--so that the BushCon Congress could get past the Jan. 6 date (Electoral Vote certification) without exposure. The BushCon news media did everything it could to belittle and marginalize these efforts to expose the truth.

During the campaign, Kerry and Edwards garnered huge, spontaneous and wildly enthusiastic crowds everywhere they went. Quick stop, tiny town--10,000 people would show up. Their crowds were always dotted with a few Bush signs and T-shirts, because their rallies were free and open. Bush campaign events were tightly controlled, managed events with severely vetted, ticketed crowds who actually had to sign a pledge to vote for Bush, to get in. Kerry T-shirts were expelled; a few people arrested even.

The contrast is telling: The people wanted Kerry. Nobody really wanted Bush. Reality--Kerry. Illusion--Bush. Illusion "won."

Today, only two months after the election, Bush's approval rating is 48%--the worst approval rating of any recently "elected" 2nd term president since WWII. Almost 60% of those polled STILL oppose the Iraq war.

Yet every Democratic leader in the country either believes, or says they believe, that "Bush won," and avows that "we do not want to overturn the result."

I had great pity in my heart for the Democrats as I watched them on TV January 6, despite all their compromises and failures. We were seeing the best of them that day, the heroes. John Conyers. Barbara Boxer. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. All those who spoke up for voter rights--in the face of BushCon insults, lies and noxious gas.

We need to give them all the support we can, those who stood with us to the degree that they were able to. And we need to solve this critical problem of BushCon control of our voting system. If we don't, our democracy is over.

If Democrats cannot assert that they won, and cannot even assert that the election was invalid due to non-transparency and illegal vote suppression (the winner cannot be determined), with all of the above evidence to argue from; if it's too dangerous even for them to assert these things, let alone to get a fair hearing and resolution, then they are not going to be able to retrieve our right to vote.

They made quite a point yesterday that that's what they are going to do: pass laws to protect our vote. Only one Senator voted to investigate Ohio (Boxer). Of the 267 House members present, 31 voted to investigate. Not to overturn the election. Just to investigate. There will be no investigation, and no new laws. The BushCons will never allow it.

We have to do that ourselves, locally, state by state, while we still can. Paper ballots, hand counts (the old fashioned way--ballots you can SEE). Or at least, a "first count" paper receipt for every vote (in a recount, it takes priority over electronic results), and open source code (no secrets). Also, undoctored Exit Polls as a check on fraud.

Locally, state by state, county by county.

Lesson: Democracy is us. Always has been. It's up to us to save it. We have many heroes, but we have no leaders who can do this for us.




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Al-CIAda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:10 AM
Response to Original message
1. 4 choices
1. Dems are ignorant and don't know
2. Dems are cowards and are afraid to stand up for whats right
3. Dems are complicit
4. Dems are just fine with what happened
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Cocoa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:15 AM
Response to Original message
2. pretty simple
it was broken, but not enough to affect the outcome.

(This time, that is. In 2000, the election flaws, esp. with punchcards, caused the wrong guy to win.)
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truckin Donating Member (500 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:22 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. You said it yourself - it can't be proven. Even if it could there is no
guarantee that the outcome would change with the current power structure. The best we can do at this time is push as hard as we can for a legitimate election process.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:31 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. Please don't ever quote me as saying, "It can't be proven" without...
...adding "because of the non-transparency that the BushCons deliberately set up."

And please don't ever quote me as saying "It can't be proven." I said that we can't produce "ABSOLUTE proof" of a Kerry win.

I think the inferential case for a Kerry win is very strong, and proof enough for me when combined with the non-transparency (BushCons behind the curtain with secret source code), not to mention all over indicators (pre-election polls, Dem voter reg, etc.)
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. Data?
" it was broken, but not enough to affect the outcome.'

How do you know?
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mattclearing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:20 AM
Response to Original message
3. Great post. I said something similar about Democracy being us yesterday.
The main problem is that there is no popular support for reform and the dominant opinion is of the Bush "story," which the media has supported.

This is why we need to continue creating our own institutions and media arms to combat the crazies.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:43 AM
Response to Reply #3
7. Yes, I agree. We need to create our own media, and are doing so...
...right now to some extent. The Internet. Some commercial left programming is having success (Air America, the Daily Show). And some public media, such as "Democracy Now." There needs to be much more.

I think we should also do a big, focused divestiture and boycott campaign against corporate news. One could argue that they are THE problem, in the political sphere at least (although the existence of corporations, especially global corporations, and the inordinate power they have, is probably more the heart of the problem).

But we have to start somewhere, and, boy, are these media corps guilty.

The last straw for me was their fiddling of the Exit Polls, to make it look like Bush won. Jeez.
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Branjor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:21 AM
Response to Original message
4. Fantastic post....
Thank you - I am going to save it. There is only one thing I take possible exception to - a friend of mine who is a registered Democrat and voted for Kerry got a ticket and attended a Bush rally in Minnesota. She said she did not have to sign a pledge of support to Bush to get in.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:49 AM
Response to Reply #4
10. Good point.
I know this occurred at some B/C events, but I don't know that it occurred at all of them. It does give you an idea of the tone of the events, though: repression, control. They did severely vet crowds. No spontaneity. No free questioning.

Was your friend white, middle class, nicely dressed, no Kerry T-shirt?
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John Q. Citizen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:45 AM
Response to Original message
9. I agree with your rant. :) We are the only ones who can repair our
broken and splintered election apparatus. Yesterday was a major event in peoples history in that we forced a debate on fair and transparent elections in the house and senate on the record and on TV.

The Repos view universal sufferage as a personal threat, judging from thier reponse to the objection. What's up with that?





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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-05 11:57 AM
Response to Reply #9
11. Yeah, I noticed that, too--I found it remarkable.
They seemed so fearful, so paranoid, so defensive--full of insults, and totally off the wall statements (some Repo ranting about accusations that Bush was the techie running the whole scam from the White House--things not even remotely close to what the Dems were saying). And jumping all over Michael Moore's letter? Doesn't he have a right to an opinion (it was so mild, too). And accusing Barbara Boxer of ATTENDING "F 9/11". Attending it!

Actually, I was quite amazed at the threat they feel. (They know we are the majority.)

Also--and this, too, really surprised me--not even lip service to voter rights, not a word of sympathy for black voters. Nothing. They apparently don't feel the need even to be hypocrites any more.



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