(Wherein I lay out the rough idea of a plan for achieving election reform & get in a few whacks at Daily Kos to boot.)
Last week, as I participated in the thread on dKos that got me banned, the thread whose subject was election malfeasance in Ohio, a few things jumped out at me:
First was just how widespread is the belief that our election system is just shot to hell & degraded to the point of having no more credibility (& maybe less) than that of Ukraine, Belarus or some Third World Banana Republic.
Second was the palpable sensation that some people are ready for violent revolution to regain control of their government – their loss of faith in the trustworthiness of our current system is that far gone;
Third was a challenge from mcjoan – “What have YOU done…?”
Quite frankly, I haven’t done much. Like the fabled Tommy, “I became aware this year”. Well, not this year, not even last year, but late 2002 – when Bush first began rattling his (our) saber at Iraq, after what I considered a feeble attempt to get Osama.
The light has slowly come on & I began to acknowledge that I personally had to take an interest in, & get active in, this stuff, because those I had trusted to act in my stead were failing miserably at that duty. And, by that, I mean the entire political class – the Republicans for their headlong gallop into corruption, & the Democrats for their failure to act as a check.
At that time I participated in an aviation hobbyist Forum run by a Brit, but with a substantial US membership & I began to become appalled at the racism, rampant jingoism, & blind acceptance of Bush administration policy of the other participants. When I argued that US policy was wrong-headed & went against our highest principles, I was met with the usual “Why do you hate America?” bullshit. So, I began reading the blogs, starting with Josh Marshall, Digby & CalPundit, & after a while I found dKos. Altho’ Kos claimed to be all about getting Democrats elected, it was the rich variety of topics, contributed by everyday people, that really impressed me & dKos became my daily news source. After a while, I even signed up & began participating. I had made around 500 posts over the course of two years before I was abruptly banned for suggesting that, perhaps, if the WTC Towers were brought down by controlled demolition, the means by which this was accomplished was thru the use of small, low yield nukes similar to the warhead of the B61 “bunker buster” (whose yield can be ‘programmed’ to be as small as .3KT).
Early on in my career at Kos I wondered aloud whether Kos was a genius or just lucky. As I read other blogs I thought I observed blogger-burnout, where the writers became exhausted & couldn’t find fresh topics or fresh angles to write about. Kos’s genius (or lucky break), IMHO, was in giving progressive voices a forum to express themselves – that “rich variety of topics” that I mentioned above.
Allowing OTHER PEOPLE to post on his blog kept the material fresh & relieved Kos himself of the burden of providing it all.
And there were plenty of passionate, articulate people who were happy to have a venue from which to speak. Progressives are all about ‘free speech’, however, and the quashing of discussion of certain topics and claims that “this is my private board & I make the rules” hurt his credibility as a progressive, by revealing an ugly, controlling side to his personality. Instead of being a place where one can become educated about political action amongst a group of friendly progressives, it is a collection barely controlled “self-governing” children, ala ‘Lord of the Flies’, where diverging opinion is met with chants of “Kill the Pig” … errr, “Ban Him”.
He has been less successful at being “about getting Democrats elected” & his efforts to refocus on that effort – to ‘use the resource’ (ie, the people who read the blog)has also disappointed people. People don’t like being cast in the role of ‘cow’ – to be continually ‘milked’ for the contribution du jour, or told who they ‘must’ or ‘must not’ support.
But I digress.
Fourth, and most important was this: In the mob scene that was what became of our “discussion” of election fraud in Ohio, there were a few clear voices that rose up – and, one of them belonged to a fellow who called himself Henry David.
He advocated, as an alternative to violence, the establishment of a ‘Velvet Revolution’ type of mass protest and that is where this idea of the ‘First Tuesday Movement’ began.
The idea is to begin a loosely coordinated mass protest and reform of US Election Policy – with escalating levels of action taking place on the First Tuesday of every month.
We would begin by formulating a bill of State & Federal election reforms, to be uniformly applied across the country, and then we would agitate for adoption of this bill thru a series of increasingly strong actions.
Our bill of election reforms would include some or all of the following:
- – mandatory voting as a duty of citizenship – ala ‘jury duty’,
- – an Election Day ‘holiday’ to enable people to exercise their right & fulfill their duty,
- – 100% publically funded campaigns,
- – re-establishment of the “equal-time” provision for political use of the media,
- – votes to be cast & counted on paper ballots only,
- – non-partisanship required for Secretary of State & other election officials,
- – requiring of open sourcing of all physical, electrical, hardware & software specifications for voting machinery,
- – requirement for open verifiability in all registration, vote-casting & vote-counting procedures,
- – etc (add your ideas here – I’m sure that I’ve left many important points out).
Once our bill was formulated, we will agitate for its adoption by a series of increasingly strong actions:
Start by a letter-writing, fax & phone campaign to get the bill sponsored & introduced.
Write, call & fax your Congress-critter of the ‘First Tuesday’ of every month until the bill is passed in the form we desire.
Continue the calls, faxes & letters every month as the bill progresses – if the bill gets watered down, ignored, poisoned, etc – escalate the calls, faxes & letters to the First Tuesday of every week.
If that doesn’t work, go in person to their offices on the First Tuesday of every month (what will they do if there are even 20 people inevery office, local & national, of every Congresscritter, every Tuesday, all waiting patiently to talk to the Critter about the same topic?)
If THAT doesn’t work, it is time for work stoppages, sit-down strikes, sick-outs, boycotts of newspaper, cable & cell phone subscriptions, & other economic protests until the elected finally get the message that it is the people that rule & the they will have their will be done.
So – how about it? Is this a crazy idea? A bannable offense? Or something that just might work to take the reins of power back & put them in the hands of the people, where they belong?
If it just might work, what ideas do you have that would make it better (‘cuz surely what I’ve laid out is not the best it could be)?
The floor is open.