The election: Work for the best outcome. Be prepared for the worst.

[Cyrano]

There are eighteen days left until election day. I know that many DUers are out there knocking themselves out, myself included, to ensure we win this one and shut down the criminals-in-charge once and for all.

But what if they manage to steal it again? What's our fall back plan?

There are times when I just "know" we're going to win in a landslide this year. And then I remember what they did to us in 2000, 2002 and 20004. If I wake up on November 8th to find that they've once again stolen it, I'll be bouncing off the walls going completely bugshit. But once I snap back into reality ... what then?

I don't have an answer, a plan, or a clue as to what action we could take if the worst happens. What are your plans if the unthinkable happens?

[iconoclastic cat]

1. If the worst happens, I'm going on a week-long drunken bender.

When I wake up, I'll start doing whatever I can personally do to unseat the Republicans, whatever that is.

[BonnieJW]

2. Me, too.

I want a Plan B, but maybe because I'm a woman. We always want a Plan B. But what are some good suggestions for all of us? We need to do something together.

[Cyrano]

4. I could be wrong, but I think the only way these thugs can be thrown out

and brought to justice is through a military coup.

If we take to the streets, Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld and their henchmen wouldn't hesitate for a moment before turning out the army and the police with orders to "shoot to kill." (He probably was rooting for the Chinese leadership when countless thousands of people turned out in Tienanmen Square.)

However, a military coup is a double edged sword. Once they have ousted the criminals, would they want to keep control or turn the country over to ... who? Unfortunately, I have only the questions, not the answers.

[trotsky]

3. If it happens again, I don't know how it will get any clearer...

that fraud is responsible. Democrats will have to use their remaining power to go all out on focusing Americans' attention on the integrity of the vote, make it appeal to Americans of all political persuasions so the power brokers in the GOP will have no choice but to go along. Issues, campaigns, all are meaningless until the vote can be secured.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Very good advice, Cyrano: work for the best; be prepared for the worst.

The latter is very important. We were NOT prepared for the worst in 2004. As a conseqence, Bush staying in power was very demoralizing and disempowering. Such a great grass roots effort to get these suckers out--for instance, a Democratic blowout success in new voter registration, nearly 60/40, in 2004. And it all seemed to be for nought. No matter how many people are flocking to the Democratic Party for change, Bushites still win.

But we are MUCH better prepared, psychologically, this time--due to the heroic work of election fraud and election reform activists, who have uncovered the facts about our fraudulent election SYSTEM (--now controlled by Bushite electronic voting corporations, with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code), and the electronic voting fraud and other vote stealing methods of 2004. (Upshot: it seems very clear to many of us that Kerry won--and ALSO that we have, not only an illegitmate president, but an illegitimate Congress as well; many of them (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S, and not by the voters).

I have always said--and I will say it again--that the truth is REFRESHING. If you don't know WHY Bushites keep "winning," you might get real depressed about it, thinking that OTHER Americans have gone nuts, that you are all alone. And if you don't know what's wrong, you can't fix it. If the American people continue to be kept in the dark about this fraudulent, non-transparent and extremely insider riggable voting SYSTEM, how can they, a) understand what's really going on, and b) find the solution?

Well, that is changing rapidly. 50% to 60% of the voters are now voting by Absentee Ballot in some places. There has been a huge surge in AB voting all over.

They know.

I've advocated getting behind this indigenous citizen protest against the machines. I'm aware that it can't get us accurate vote counts this time. (AB votes are not particularly "safe.") But the surge in AB voting has the POTENTIAL to put sufficient pressure on local/state election officials, to FORCE reform. How can they defend this expensive, riggable system if NO ONE WILL VOTE ON THEIR MACHINES?

American voters are ALREADY seeking a solution! They are way ahead of us activists. They are BOYCOTTING the machines!

The other day I saw the first corporate news monopoly "interpretation" of this huge voter rebellion (AB voting). Sacto Bee, Dan Walters (corporate shill). He says the big increase in AB voting is voters choosing "convenience." I don't buy it. I think that's B.S. and a corporate "talking point." People DON'T TRUST the machines. AB voting is likely to exceed 50% of the vote in Sonoma, Los Angeles and Contra Costa counties--the ones I know about in Calif. And there are many reports from all over of a big increase in AB voting--which has occurred RECENTLY. AB voting has ALWAYS been convenient. Why are people doing it in such big numbers NOW? The only reasonable answer is (and one that I've heard from AB voters as well): They DON'T TRUST the machines. They want PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED, the old-fashioned way. Seeable vote counting. And this is the closest they can come.

Many don't realize that AB votes are often scanned right into the rigged electronic system. But that does not take away from this citizen action as a PROTEST aimed at getting rid of the machines. It could work quite literally, quite straightforwardly, as a BOYCOTT. Nobody will vote on these machines? What good are they? Serious questions raised about the expense, the machine "breakdowns," the on-going servicing by private corporate personnel, the complication of it all--what the hell good is this crapass, riggable voting system? 60% of the people won't vote on these machines. Get rid of them!

Some other positives of the AB voting protest:

--these voters will not be denied their right to vote on election day, because of strategic or accidental voting machine "breakdowns" (a big problem)--they will aleady have voted!

--they will not be denied their right to vote because of some minor discrepany in their voter ID--they will already have cleared that up!

--they will not be denied their right to vote by showing up at the polling place, and finding that their name has been purged from the voting rolls--they know that they are registered; they have ballot in hand, or they've mailed it already!

--they will not be denied their right to vote by being forced to vote on a "provisional" ballot (--an easily tossable vote), (--for instance, in Calif., we are supposed to have the right to request a real paper ballot on election day, but our Diebold shill Sec of State has permitted county election officials to substitute a "provisional" ballot for a real ballot, and we have quite a number of corrrupt county election officials in Calif, most of them Republicans)--AB voters will not face that problem; they will already have voted on a real paper ballot.

--if there is a recount, AB votes CAN be recounted (--as opposed to paperless e-votes, which cannot be recounted).

Touchscreens often don't have even a "paper trail" (let alone a real paper ballot backup). Optiscans have a paper ballot that's dumped into a box, THEN your vote is turned into manipulable electrons. AB votes are sometimes merely scanned right into the rigged electronics (not hand-counted), and sometimes hand-counted (then entered).

All in all, AB votes are about as safe as optiscan votes--currently--the difference being that an optiscan vote is a consumer endorsement of a rotten product, while the AB vote is a protest against the rotten product, its rotten manufactuers, and the fraudulent vote counting system they have perpetrated.

So....Cyrano...to make a long story short, GET BEHIND THE AB VOTING PROTEST, help make it big, and help election reform activists USE it to club this fraudulent system to death.

Have heart, have hope, have some faith in the American people. They're giving Bush a 28% approval rating, I hear. In the low 30s, anyway. And the Diebold Congress gets 18% approval. The American people are fed up.

And they know.

Time to get organized, and support their individual Absentee Ballot voter DEMAND for TRANSPARENT elections. That's Priority No. 1. To RESTORE their right to vote. And they will take it from there.

[Cyrano]

6. I only hope you're right, Peace Patriot. I've voted with absentee

ballots in the last two elections.

But this morning, I heard someone on National Public Radio (can't remember the name) saying that absentee ballots were as likely to be counted as not. She wasn't a wingnut, but she pointed out a few instances in which absentee ballots in past elections were "accidentally lost or missing" in some states.

It goes without saying that the gangsters who have stolen our country are ready, willing and able to thwart almost any tactic we can find to try to beat them. Although I am voting again this year with an absentee ballot, I don't have that much confidence it will be counted.

Beyond that, our military people overseas vote with absentee ballots. Knowing how disgruntled many military are with this maladministration, we can only hope that their votes will be counted. But there's an old saying: Wish in one hand, pee in the other, and see which one fills up first.

If, what is now the American Fascist Party, manages to steal it again, I fear for the unpredictable consequences that will follow. And I think it will get really ugly really fast.

[Peace Patriot]

7. I keep thinking of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which got triggered by

ONE PERSON's refusal to cooperate with segregated buses. Then all who were oppressed by this system joined her. Black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, had to get to work. They could not afford not to work. So what did they do? They WALKED!

The rest is history.

It wasn't that easy, of course. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was just one of many actions against the system of segregation (in schools, at lunch counters, in hospitals and hotels, in parks at drinking fountains, in housing). Finally, it encompassed the voting system--and all the ways that blacks were prevented from voting--from the poll tax, to requirements to recite the Constitution by heart, to beatings and lynchings.

All the protests worked together in a general movement against segregation and for full citizenship for black Americans. We need a similar movement on transparent vote counting.

And we have to do it without Federal help.

In isolation, the AB voting protest might not work. It needs PUBLICITY. It needs organizers to focus media, and to put the pressure on local/state election officials. Local/state is the best venue for reform. Different from the '60s. Now we have a hostile Fed gov't--and even a Dem Congress might not really get rid of this rigged system--too many of them are corporatists or Bushites in disguise; they'll toss the touchscreens, say, and require a paper ballot, but leave the central tabulators in place--which won't really help that much, with audits almost non-existent, and recounts very hard to get and rare. We need to keep in mind that many of the Dems were ALSO (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S. Are they going to act against those who empowered them?

But LOCAL election officials LIVE NEXT DOOR. State election officials are not that far away. Ordinary people still have influence at this level. And decisions about voting systems are still made at the local/state level. (One of the myths of the "Help America Vote Act"--Tom Delay's and Bob Ney's handiwork (abetted by Dem Sen. Christopher Dodd)--is that it requires electronic voting. It does not. See "MythBreakers" at www.votersunite.org - easy primer on electronic voting).

We can't do much to influence the Bush gov't. And all we can do to get a better Congress is to vote in massive numbers on Nov. 7 and hope for the best. (--and closely watch the polling, and analyze, and organize around it). But there is A LOT WE CAN DO at the state/local level on election reform.

We have to think longer term--at least 2 years into the future--and GET RID OF THIS RIGGED ELECTRONIC SYSTEM, while we still can. It is a fraudulent system EVEN IF it seems to elect Democrats. And an ineffective Dem majority in the House--say, a win that creates a pro-Bush majority on critical issues (one that, say, combines Bushite Democrats--like those who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus the other week--with outright Bushites), but that LOOKS LIKE a Dem win, MIGHT BE used to dampen the election reform movement. Those of us who object to Bushite corporations "counting" all the votes with secret programming will hear, "What's your beef--the Democrats won, didn't they?

We have a bigger problem here than just civilization hanging in the balance on this one election. I mean, I know how you feel. But just imagine how it felt to be black in America, say in 1955, or even 1960. The Voting Rights Act was five years away. The Civil Rights Act, four years. You still couldn't vote. You still couldn't eat at a "white" establishment. And if you went out in public, you still had to drink water from a "colored" drinking fountain. (They actually put the signs on the drinking fountains: "White," "Colored.") How hopeless might you have felt?

Then it all changed.

It wasn't easy. But it was very fast. It was the result of years and decades of work and suffering. But when it finally changed, it had the feeling of a big ocean wave. Its time had come.

I would place the current election reform movement somewhere in the early 1960s--'62, '63--on the civil rights timeline. On the cusp of the wave. It's coming. It's big. And if we all pull together, it cannot be stopped. I think the big Absentee Ballot vote in this election is the beginning of it.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Note on the Montgomery Bus Boycott: What we had going for us in the

civil rights movement was the support of much of the Democratic leadership (beginning with Harry Truman, and the desegregation of the armed services, and including JFK, RFK and LBJ, on the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts), and also Eisenhower's belief in law and order and fairness (he enforced the Supreme Court school desegregation order).

What the election reform movement has going for it is very widespread support--indicated by a recent Zogby poll (92% want transparent vote counting), and the big AB voting protest (indicating 50% to 60% awareness of what the problem is, possibly all over).

One downside is that NY still has the old reliable and unriggable lever voting machines. Election reform activists are putting up a mighty fight against the Bushite pressure to throw that system out in favor of Bushite controlled electronics--and I think we will win that one, but it may mean complacence on the part of one group of cultural leaders, New Yorkers. Most states have lost the fight--and have the great handicap of trying to overturn an entrenched Bushite-controlled system. New Yorkers may not be that much help, since the problem will not likely be right in their faces, as it is for the rest of us. And New Yorkers greatly influence the news, what gets talked about, what reporters investigate, what the nation focuses attention on.

But aside from that, this movement is huge. And we have not yet seen the joining of its two major forces--the voters who are voting AB and the many election reform groups that have formed. The election reform groups need to get out front on the AB voting protest. I think it's crazy that they haven't already. I hear a lot of excuses--like, AB voting isn't 'safe' either. But they, a) miss the great import of this movement--that the citizens are rebelling; and b) often get diffused into the many vote suppression issues, none of which can be solved without transparent vote counting. You think the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could have been passed if there hadn't been transparent vote counting in most states? No way! The politicians who passed it were responding to VOTER SENTIMENT! They knew they could be thrown out of office if they DIDN'T heed the voters. There were leaders among them, sure. But the people were looking at peaceful civil rights protesters in the south getting hosed and bitten with dogs, and, in 1964, killed. And the majority wanted this SOLVED.

And in those days, the majority counted.

18% think Congress is doing a good job. And we're still talking about whether or not the Democrats can squeeze out a slim majority!

THAT's the problem. And all these AB voters know it. And they are pointing the way to fixing it. BOYCOTT the machines!

I guess I have to repeat this until I'm blue in the face: AB voting will NOT insure accurate vote counts this fall. Nothing can. It is a PROTEST aimed at accurate vote counts in the FUTURE.

For one thing, if 50%, 60%, 70% are voting AB, this is going to bring greatly increased scrutiny on how AB votes are handled and counted. And AB votes are REAL. They are on PAPER. They are EVIDENCE of the vote. You can RECOUNT them.

Hell, if it gets big enough, we WILL HAVE ACHIEVED a PAPER BALLOT VOTE BY DEFAULT. Then we just have to worry about the central tabulators, and what the AB vote really is (vs. what the scanners might be telling the central tabulators).

Many AB voters have it wrong. They think their votes are "safe." Well, they ARE safER in some respects. I listed them above. AB voting guarantees that you will not be deprived of your right to vote on election day, due to strategic or accidental "machine breakdowns." Etc.

But in terms of current counting processes (and some perils in mail delivery, etc.), they are about as "safe" as optiscan votes. But that isn't the point. The point is NOT USING, NOT ENDORSING, NOT COOPERATING WITH, NOT VALIDATING this rigged system by our sheepish ACCEPTANCE of machine voting.

And by BOYCOTTING it, bringing its downfall.

Rosa Parks didn't end segregation all by herself. But the movement that she sparked punished the city/county FINANCIAL system so seriously--deprived of all those bus fares by black citizens--that it eventually fell. And, of course, it was also part of the great wave, an historical movement whose day had come.

Diebold/ES&S is a FINANCIAL system--involving billions of dollars. It's not just an election theft system. It's a MONEY system. And YOU AND I are paying for it!

And if NOBODY WILL VOTE ON IT, we show up the corrupt fools who spent all this money on it. See what I mean?

Rosa couldn't do anything about her bus ride that day. As I recall, she got arrested for sitting at the front of the bus. A bad day for her--leading to the end of segregation for all.

We can't turn this election system around today, and make it yield accurate, transparent, verifiable vote counts Nov. 7. But we DO have a tool for bringing the system down. Absentee Ballot voting.

So, don't just vote by Absentee Ballot. Write letters/call media and election officials. Help this protest get interpreted correctly. Join with OTHER Absentee Ballot voters and go picket the registrar's office. Demand TRANSPARENT counting of AB votes (before any electronics are involved.)

Think of yourself as part of a movement of ALL Absentee Ballot voters, ALL wanting PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED.

Right now, it's such a lonely, individualistic, American-type protest. Make it a COMMUNITY!

[Cyrano]

9. Peace Patriot: I suggest that you post your previous reply (#8) as a

new thread with a headline such as "Why we should vote with absentee ballots." Not enough people have seen this thread and what you've written needs to be read by many more people.

(Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, but I was out when you posted.)

[Hugin]

10. 'old reliable and unriggable lever voting machines'

Not true... Granted it is much more difficult, but, the cylinders can be
'trimmed' to count incremental or partial votes.

NOTHING is worse than electronic voting though. Wholesale vote theft.