This is not meant to be an accusation at all. I genuinely want to know why so few people are blogging about our disappearing vote.
Could you please take a second to tell me your reasons? I’m wondering how to reach people, and finding the stumbling blocks is the first step.
I’ve included a poll if you don’t want to comment, but I hope you’ll take a second and drop me a note re your specific reasons.
And yes, I do know how to spell “dictatorship” but apparently poll text can’t be edited??
I blogged about election irregularities a lot on D-KOS in the fall and winter of 2004 (see my diary “The case against fucking Ohio” for example) but it didn’t seem to get any traction so I got disgusted and gave up. My theory is most of the Dems (including Kos) are happy just to fight the good fight (like the Washington Generals, who always lost to the Globetrotters). I don’t fully understand the reasons for this. Maybe it’s all fake like pro wrestling, but probably they just haven’t thought things through.
Anyway, I got disgusted with the lack of response and sort of gave up on seriously blogging. The active antipathy of the jerks like DelewareDem and Armando (aka BTD these days) also turned me off. The only person who came out looking good was Georgia10.
That’s really sad, but thanks for all you did on the topic. I had a crazy day yesterday – just not starting to get to these responses…
Your choice number four over-states it, but is the basic idea.
The aether-voting machines march on (just came to my state, too).
It makes no sense to worry about voting unless you have a counter strategy to these machines.
“Paper trails” are worthless–in the current state of our courts, the count has to be right the first time. Now how can we make THAT happen?
So what would a counter strategy look like? It is hard to imagine.
All right: Imagine hundreds of people demonstrating at every polling place (illegally and) shutting it down.
Won’t happen.
Or imagine just setting up a parallel government like in Mexico. This is actually a better idea than a boycott.
But even that will not happen.
paper trails are extremely valuable. We need tools to protect the vote, paper trails are an essential tool.
by themselves they cannot protect our vote, but we cannot protect our vote without them.
the most important thing is that the paper vote be the ballot of record for purposes of recount.
the most important thing is that the paper vote be the ballot of record for purposes of recount.
So you have already given up on real ballots are willing to take this weak ameliorative?
But few people want to fight for clean voting, and the few that do want to settle for palliatives.
When we approach the battle this way, we lose before we start.
And I have no energy to put into that.
I would submit that voting on paper, and then auditing that paper, provides the best safeguard to our elections. S 2295, the bill from Senator Bill Nelson, would give us:
The bill also gives us much more. It’s very similar to Holt’s, but has the much needed DRE ban.
By contrast, my own Senator Feinstein’s bill is a picture of what we’ll get if we DON’T pass Nelson’s bill. No ban on DREs. Weak audits. Non-public audits. Disaster on every level.
I don’t want just any reform. I want reform that has a chance to work. S 2295 is an excellent bill, vetted over several years now. Nothing on the horizon even comes remotely close.
I feel if we do not reclaim our vote while the Democrats are in power, we will not have a chance again in our lifetimes.
Re people having different opinions, Gaianne, I’m less concerned by those who argue different positions than by those who have no positions at all on this matter to argue! I think apathy is a bigger enemy than any opponent to reform.
I guess my reason is that I’m working on a lot of other things and can’t do it all.
And I do understand that!
I’ve mostly given up on the US; it’s broken and the majority of the tenants can’t be bothered with even learning what’s wrong, let alone trying to fix it. “We’ve always had problems with election fraud; this is no different and it’s not big enough to matter.”
One can only whack the brick wall with the forehead so many times before reaching the point of deciding that the smarter thing to do is go look for a better garden to live in and let the wall-builders have this one.
I believe in democracy; if the majority wants to live in a dictatorship, they have that right. Those of us who don’t should look into finding other places of residence and work on getting there, which is where my energies are going now.
My fear is that the covert dictatorship model is already spreading to other countries that might appear, at first glance, to be a haven. For example, New Zealand is starting to implement electronic voting. That’s one of the final steps to a covert dictatorship, as I see it. Because once you control the vote, you can control everthing else.
I talked to a co-worker recently who was explaining to me that in China, the Communist government has not given legitimacy, in that it’s not democratic. There’s only one party, yada yada. BUT. That means the government has to prove on a daily basis they are serving the people, or else the forces pushing to turn the country into a democracy will triumph. So the threat of that model forces the government to raise the living standards of its people.
So to me, we live in the worst of both worlds – we appear to have a legitimate government, so there’s no overt reason to overthrow it, and yet the government has no need to serve the people because it is not threatened, so long as its cover as a democracy is protected.
I can’t vote… I just don’t see myself changing my nationality as long as I think I may need a foreign passport to get the hell out of here, if need be.
I should add that when I first moved here a dozen or so years ago I thought America was a great place to live. And when I signed up in the US Army in 97 I still thought so. But after the bush years I really do question the fate of this once great nation.
Even looking at the prospects with a Democratic candidate possibly winning in ’08, I am not sure that this country will ever fully recover from this downfall because the Dems don’t seem to be offering a real light at the end of the tunnel. Just another train moving a little slower, but in the same direction.
However, the voter apathy is real — and yet, I’m not fully convinced that it’s lazy/worthless Americans .. rather, the apathy may be a product of the current environment, including dwindling access to healthy, brain-supporting foods, an education system that produces cogs for the industrial machinery (See http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm for more), and a media system trained very effectively in the persuasive methods of Edward Bernays.
The cancer is deep and wide, the tacit networks between voters are weaker than ever. I’m not sure what to suggest, really, as the problem seems a huge Hydra.
I read an interesting post along these lines recently over at Morgan’s Musings. She argues that we aren’t living so much in an Orwellian world as one of the Aldos Huxley/Brave New World model. It’s not that books are being burned, it’s that no one has an interest in reading the books that matter, so dulled have they become by the constant drivel of pablum in our schools, in the media, and the numerous entertainment diversions which keep us from focusing on the big picture.
Hop on over – I think that post would be right up your alley.
http://morgansmusings.wordpress.com/2005/08/14/was-huxley-right-rather-than-orwell/
What if they held an election and no one voted.
What if a tree fell in the forest because it was so through-and-through rotted that no one gave a damn anymore if it lived or died.
Not voting IS voting.
I am a nonarchist, myself.
On all available evidence, NO “system” (includng anarchy) is much better or worse than any any other.
You have benevolent dictatorships and monarchies and you also have truly NON-benevolent democracies.
Who ya gonna call? Graft Busters?
Bad government is like bad weather. It occurs over ANY kind of territory.
Occasionally…it DESTROYS territories. Then they build themselves back up again.
So it goes.
Peace…AND war.
And everything in between.
Later…
AG
I love you, Arthur, but I’m going to take issue with the statement that all governmental systems are equally bad. Would you really rather live in Pinochet’s Chile? Bush’s America? Or would you rather live in Kennedy’s America? Or the tiny country of Kiribati? Each government has pluses and minuses, but I don’t think they all balance out. I do think some are much better than others. I used to think America was much better than any other place on Earth. It still is, in many ways. But there really are other models, and some seem to be working very well.
In Russia and in Venezuela, for example, leaders Putin and Chavez are using profits from state-owned oil to benefit the public at large. Nothing like that has ever been done in America! The land bearing the oil was privately owned, the oil profits went solely to the owners of the enterprise. For all their problems, that one piece of their model is vastly superior to ours!
“Systems”, Lisa.
Not the way those systems are used.
We are al familiar with the term “benevolent despot” are we not?
(It happens…)
Well, we need new terms.
Like…”hostile democracy”.
Or perhaps “non-participatory democracy”.
They happen, too.
Bet on it.
The Zen koan pertains here…”What are you drinking, the cup or the water?”
The cup may be “democracy”, but the water has been poisoned.
And there have been dictators and kings…Castro comes to mind, and there have been many others over the course of human history…the works of whom benefitted the greatest possible number of their subjects.
You ask if I would rather live in Bush’s America or in Kennedy’s America.
You prove my point.
Same “system”…diffferent aims and results.
AG
#4 comes closest to my thinking, in that if the Democratic congress we elected isn’t going to address the issue then we’re royally screwed. Just another item on their to do list that remains unaddressed.
Thanks for the comment. I share your sense of despair, although I haven’t given up on this issue yet!
I cannot understand why fixing this voting situation wasn’t and still isn’t priority number one for the dem’s in congress. Without a real and unobstructed voting experience our democracy does not exist.
Paper ballots seem to work best. Why not get back to the tried and true.
Why not more writing about this problem? After a while of being continually shouted down with. . .stop saying the election was stolen or altered, “they” will think we are all tin foil hatters, you just get to thinking that those supposedly on “our side” are more interested in appearances than real solutions to very real problems.
The congress and senate have done NOTHING about this and don’t appear to want to. What’s their ulterior motive? I can’t imagine what it is.
head+brick wall = very bad headache
I’m all for returning to paper ballots, but I don’t see why electronic ballots can’t be used either. All it would take is open source software. Diebold makes ATM machines that work. They process millions of transactions a day with virtually no errors. Yet, they claim they cannot produce a machine to do something simple like counting votes with less than something like a 3% margin of error. It’s bullshit, of course. But, even beyond that, why is something so basic to democracy (like elections) being produced in secret and for profit? It’s downright unamerican.
Kudos to RH Lisa for keeping the noise up on this very important issue.
I’m in favor of a joint paper ballot/machine count AND hand count situation. I wouldn’t trust one over the other, but if the two consistently provide the same results, I’d sleep a hell of a lot easier.
Thanks for the kind kudos. Just doing my part, as are all of you here!
I agree with this:
I also agree with AliceDem’s comment below:
Having written about another highly triggering subject for years, the Kennedy assassination, I do understand the need to be ABSOLUTELY FACTUAL in our presentation, and to keep rhetoric to a minimum, or avoid it altogether wherever possible. I do put some blame on activists who have used deliberately inflated language. I do think that hurts our cause.
I also agree that sites that shut down this topic are a serious part of the problem. I shudder to think what they are — inadvertently or vertently (don’t you wish that was a word?) — enabling by enforcing silence on this topic.
I blame the major media too, because outside of RFK Jr’s excellent article in Rolling Stone, there’s been almost utter silence on this story, not counting the little news blips here and there.
I’m hoping that Debra Bowen’s actions in CA will spread. She temporarily revoked the approval of many electronic voting vendors’ machines, and is making them individually prove why they are worthy. It’s a start.
Thank you, all who commented in this thread. I really care and have been trying to figure out why some are silent. You’ve given me much food for thought!
After a while of being continually shouted down with. . .stop saying the election was stolen or altered, “they” will think we are all tin foil hatters, you just get to thinking that those supposedly on “our side” are more interested in appearances than real solutions to very real problems.
Just so, Kos, Oliver Willis and many other high traffic bloggers bear major responsibility for the fact that this has not been fixed. It is not just that they won’t blog about it, it is that they actively discourage anyone else from doing so.
Well, I think a much larger segment of an apathetic public is responsible, as are all the election officials who are either too naive or too compromised to serve in those positions. As disturbing as blog behavior has been, bloggers are still a small segment of the public at large.
Go see Lions for Lambs. It’s a powerful indictment of the kind of apathy that allows this to happen.
election officials are the biggest reason we still have vapor voting. they are more interested in protecting their decision to purchase this scam then they are in protecting the ballot.
My personal theory is that people just can’t believe the dimensions of it. It’s overwhelming.
When I suggested to a friend that Kerry actually wont the election, that the machines stole it, her response was that she just couldn’t deal with that possibility.
And frankly, Kos and the high traffic blogs have not played a constructive role. It is not just that Kos & Co isn’t interested, it is that, collectively, they have discouraged anyone else from doing anything constructive.
Thank you Booman for creating a place where we can talk about this.
Also, Brad and Bev Harris take a over-the-top rhetorical style that has held us back. The larger the claim, the more restrained the rhetorical style must be.
It is a long hard slog.
That’s a good point too, re people being overwhelmed by the implications of this. If our vote is gone, we’re in a whole new world that isn’t at all pretty. But isn’t it safer to err on the side that it might be gone, than to pretend everything is rosey if it’s not?
I try to be gentle with people. Not everyone is open to the truth about where we’re at, as a nation. That’s why I too treasure places like Booman Tribune, a truly reality-based community in the most accurate sense of the phrase!
The reason is that I have no knowledge that could add to the discussion of the topic. One could conceivably ask the same question about a variety of important topics. We each have our own areas of knowledge (and interests) and pursue those to the exclusion of others.
That’s fair, and, I suspect, a reason many others have been silent on the topic.
lisa, the reason l don’t blog about it is two fold:
1. l don’t believe there is enough impetus to resolve this at the national level. were that the case, we would have seen something along theses lines proposed and supported, dare l say, in a bipartisan manner. right, wrong, or indifferent, that leads me to…
2. l believe the solution lies at the local level. for example, here, in the county l live in, a group of activists organized after the 2000 elections and forced the issue with the county clerk and commissars. as a result, we have adopted a paper ballot, that is optically scanned, and a percentage of the ballots [10% ims] is, as a matter of course, audited for accuracy in every election. [unfortunately, the name of the system adopted escapes me at the moment]. additionally, any election result that fall’s into a finish that is smaller [ie: closer] than a certain % threshold, is automatically audited via a hand count of the paper ballots. there are accommodations for both political parties, and qualified groups to have observers and there is an ability to challenge contested ballots.
is it perfect? no. have there been problems? yes. most notably time delays in getting the final results…a minor issue, in my estimation, but the need for instant gratification always seems to detract from the seriousness of the issue.
in spite of some learnig curve issues, we now have a system that is very transparent, we have a verifiable paper trail, and we have a process that achieves a valid result.
additionally, we have the option of ‘mail in ballots’ in off year and local elections, which, aside from the arguable opportunities for fraud and coercion, are still subject to the same review processes, and have, so far, proven to increase voter participation.
it comes down to a riff on the adage: think globally…in this case nationally…and act locally.
my 2¢…your milage may vary. it has proven to be a successful strategy here.
lTMF’sA
Thank you for all your work on a local level. Now if we could just instantly clone you for all the counties in America..!
That’s why I’m pressing for both local AND national solutions. I’ve spoken before the Los Angeles County Board of Supes, and before the federal Elections Assistance Comission. I’ve pressed for local, statewide, and national legislation.
I’d amend what you say only to add, think Globally, act at every level you can reach. Don’t stop with just one! 😉