There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune. Omitted, all of the voyage of their life is bound
in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
—William Shakespeare
leads on to fortune. Omitted, all of the voyage of their life is bound
in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
—William Shakespeare
To those of my fellow citizens who feel anxious and disenfranchised, who know the truth, who understand what’s at stake, do not underestimate the power of your vote. Rejecting John McCain and Sarah Palin on election day is the single most important personal thing you can do in the national interest. You must vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Reports indicate record turnouts in early voting. It’s impressive, but not enough. Not nearly.
The margin of victory must be an unassailable declaration, an unmistakable mandate, and an undeniable demand. Anything less, and we’ll see the resurrection of the Rovian election redirection apparatus (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green by Joshua Green), cramming our courts, perforating our precincts, and digitally dumping our votes. We know the drill, we’ve seen it before. The Republican oligarchy will stop at nothing. Already have we seen them atop their demolition backhoes, driving democracy into the nearest ditch, pulling up in private drives, piercing hope.
Take the example of a 67-year-old woman in New Mexico badgered by a private investigator this month. According to an Oct. 23 story in the New Mexico Independent: Guadalupe Bojorquez said a man who identified himself as a private investigator by the name of Al Romero visited the home of her 67-year-old mother on Wednesday. “She calls me and she’s panicked because there is this man outside and he’s telling her he’s an investigator and he wants to come in to the house,” Bojorquez told NMI.
She said her mother then put the man on the phone. “I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me who he worked for. He just said he wanted to verify that she was a legitimate voter and he wanted to see her documents. I told him ‘No,’ and we argued for a little bit. “He said ‘You have to realize we’re just trying to protect the people, we just want to make sure that she’s a legitimate voter and if she votes and she’s not supposed to, then it’s illegal.’
“He was pressuring me so much that I told him that she’s not going to do anything until she speaks to her attorney.” Bojorquez said she asked the man several times whom he worked for. “He told me he worked for Pat Rogers.”
Rogers is the Republican attorney who also made claims of voter fraud in 2004 and 2006. He was cited in the federal Department of Justice report about the firing of U.S. attorneys as one of the New Mexico GOP activists who complained to the Department of Justice about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. The good news is the push-back: In its letter to U.S. Attorney Fouratt, Project Vote said the private investigator’s visits constitute a form of “intimidation and suppression” that violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (http://newmexicoindependent.com/6457/nm-gop-accused-of-voter-intimidation)
How were these people’s names exposed, you may wonder? At a press conference on October 16, State Representative Justine Fox-Young claimed to have solid proof that individuals had illegally voted in the June, 2008 Democratic primary election. At that press conference, the Republican Party broke state law by distributing the voters' personal information in its press packets.
Not All Votes Will Count
They haven’t in the past and they won’t this year. It was 537 votes in Florida that outmaneuvered Al Gore and manipulated George Bush into the White House in 2000, and it was 119,000 contested votes in Ohio that saw Bush’s re-commandeering the cockpit in 2004. Not again.
Lest there by any fading of memory, I think it’s important to highlight the major tactics of the initial highjacking in November and December of 1999. The first returns of Florida’s results showed Bush the winner by 2000 votes. The Gore campaign, as allowed by Florida statute, requested that disputed ballots in four counties be counted by hand. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in Gore’s favor. Florida statutes also required that all counties certify and report their returns, including any recounts, by 5 p.m. on November 14. The manual recounts were time-consuming, and, when it became clear that some counties would not complete their recounts before the deadline, both Volusia and Palm Beach Counties sued to have their deadlines extended. The Bush campaign, in response to state litigation in the case of Palm Beach Canvassing Board v. Katherine Harris, filed suit in federal court against extending the statutory deadlines for the manual recounts.
Recounting was in progress on December 9 when the United States Supreme Court 5-4 (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting) granted Bush's emergency plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping the incomplete recount. On December 12, the U.S. Supreme court ruled to stop all recounts, which allowed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to certify the election, and George Bush assumed office. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2000)
Experts predict there will perhaps be two landslides this year, the certain one being the number of challenged and uncounted votes. An estimated nine million new voters have registered for this election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one. The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warns that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy. (http://www.truthout.org/102008VA)
The Fraud of 'Voter Fraud'
To lay out the argument, I quote from a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, September 2006. “Each act of voter fraud risks five years in prison and a $10,000 fine—but yields at most one incremental vote. The single vote is simply not worth the price. Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible. Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time. The similarly closely-analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%. National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often. (http://www.federalelectionreform.com/pdf/Voter%20Fraud%20Issue%20Brief.pdf)
Nonetheless, and despite the 4 or 5 zeroes to the right of the decimal (9/10,000 of one percent and 4/100,000 of one percent) respectively in the above examples, McCain, triggering Republican fear mongering, continues to speak of it as a threat to democracy. The following list of malfeasances conducted by the Republican “Turn Off the Vote” campaign and its operatives is nauseating and dispiriting. They’re also motivational.
They haven’t in the past and they won’t this year. It was 537 votes in Florida that outmaneuvered Al Gore and manipulated George Bush into the White House in 2000, and it was 119,000 contested votes in Ohio that saw Bush’s re-commandeering the cockpit in 2004. Not again.
Lest there by any fading of memory, I think it’s important to highlight the major tactics of the initial highjacking in November and December of 1999. The first returns of Florida’s results showed Bush the winner by 2000 votes. The Gore campaign, as allowed by Florida statute, requested that disputed ballots in four counties be counted by hand. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in Gore’s favor. Florida statutes also required that all counties certify and report their returns, including any recounts, by 5 p.m. on November 14. The manual recounts were time-consuming, and, when it became clear that some counties would not complete their recounts before the deadline, both Volusia and Palm Beach Counties sued to have their deadlines extended. The Bush campaign, in response to state litigation in the case of Palm Beach Canvassing Board v. Katherine Harris, filed suit in federal court against extending the statutory deadlines for the manual recounts.
Recounting was in progress on December 9 when the United States Supreme Court 5-4 (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting) granted Bush's emergency plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping the incomplete recount. On December 12, the U.S. Supreme court ruled to stop all recounts, which allowed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to certify the election, and George Bush assumed office. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2000)
Experts predict there will perhaps be two landslides this year, the certain one being the number of challenged and uncounted votes. An estimated nine million new voters have registered for this election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one. The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warns that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy. (http://www.truthout.org/102008VA)
The Fraud of 'Voter Fraud'
To lay out the argument, I quote from a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, September 2006. “Each act of voter fraud risks five years in prison and a $10,000 fine—but yields at most one incremental vote. The single vote is simply not worth the price. Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible. Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time. The similarly closely-analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%. National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often. (http://www.federalelectionreform.com/pdf/Voter%20Fraud%20Issue%20Brief.pdf)
Nonetheless, and despite the 4 or 5 zeroes to the right of the decimal (9/10,000 of one percent and 4/100,000 of one percent) respectively in the above examples, McCain, triggering Republican fear mongering, continues to speak of it as a threat to democracy. The following list of malfeasances conducted by the Republican “Turn Off the Vote” campaign and its operatives is nauseating and dispiriting. They’re also motivational.
- Students in Virginia, Colorado and South Carolina were wrongfully told by voting officials that they could lose their scholarships and their parents would no longer be able to claim them on their income taxes if they registered to vote in their college towns. (http://www.truthout.org/102008VA)
- Citizens of Virginia have been given “official” flyers explaining that the anticipated long lines on election day necessitate another election day, Wednesday, specially designated for Democrats. Republicans are encouraged to vote on Nov. 4. (story at http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6138925&page=1, flyer at http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/FakeSBE_Flyer2.pdf)
- The Michigan Department of Civil Rights launched an advertising campaign last week to combat misleading rumors—some started by local officials in mailings to voters—that people would be denied the right to vote if they lost their home to foreclosure, have a criminal record or do not have photo identification. (http://www.truthout.org/102008VA)
- Earlier this month, the GOP successfully challenged 200,000 names on the Ohio voter list. However, this lower-court ruling was tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court on October 17. Last Friday, President Bush asked the Justice Dept. to look into whether those 200,000 new Ohio voters must “reconfirm” their registrations before Election Day, to make certain mismatches don’t signal fraudulent registrations. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-tucker/dems-mobilize-against-gop_b_137528.html)
- Then there’s Jacob Eaton, the Montana Republican Party executive director, who in early October challenged 6,000 registration records of Democrats. The Democrats went to Federal Court, the judge issued a harsh opinion, and Eaton resigned (http://www.montanasnewsstation.com).
- Or take the Republican Michigan Secretary of State, Terri Lynn Land, a staunch Republican and co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Campaign in 2004. She attempted to purge 5000 voters from Michigan’s rolls. A federal judge ruled that the activity violated federal law and a federal appeals court on October 30 rejected her request for a stay. She must now remove the “rejected” marking in the state’s qualified voter file (http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081030/METRO/810300442/1022/rss10).
- On Sept. 10, the 240,000 Wisconsin voters who had registered by mail since 2006 found their voting status up in the air as the state's attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen, a McCain campaign co-chair, sued the state’s Government Accountability Board. In Michigan that same week, Macomb County GOP party chairman James Carabelli allegedly told a reporter that he would use publicly available lists of foreclosed home addresses to “make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.” (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/15/voter_suppression/index.html)
Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud, Minnite says the true aim of Republican efforts appears to be voter suppression. According to Minnite, investigating voter fraud has become a Republican cottage industry over the last 20 years because it justifies questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters, often targeting poor and minority citizens in urban areas that lean Democratic. Playing the role of vigilant watchdog appealingly disguises the Republicans’ true mission, to obstruct the path of marginalized and first-time voters. (full story at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/15/voter_suppression/index.html)
Professor Richard L. Hasen of Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School, one of the nation’s foremost election law scholars, said in a Stanford Law Review article that 33 chief state election officers were chosen in partisan elections since 2004. “In many ways, save technological improvements in the casting and counting of votes, the situation is worse than it was in 2000. Election administration today is more partisan and more contentious than it was before the public had ever heard of ‘dimpled chads,’” Hasen said. Rather, he said, there will be “individual instances” of voter suppression. These will take place in countless polling places, be initially judged by local election officials, and then move up to the state chief election officers, mostly partisan, and finally to the courts, often run by political judges. In other words, a process of political hacks administering incomprehensible laws. “The most successful way of keeping minority voting down is [using] the law,” Hasen said. (http://lawreview.stanford.edu/content/vol60/issue1/hasen.pdf)
I could be going out on a limb here, but at this point, the words of Jeremiah Wright, the flamboyant pastor at Obama’s former church (and recipient of seven honorary doctorate degrees), resonate: “Goddamn America.” I do believe the above misanthropy is to which he refers. I’m no Wright apologist. But to those who indulge the option of thieving others’ rights through suppression, exploitation, and intimidation—specifically of one of the most fundamental rights born in the bloody crucible of our democratic society—goddamn them indeed.
In Case You Have a Problem at the Polls
Of course, contact local officials first. Then the media. And this year, you are encouraged to video your voting experience, whether positive or negative, and upload it at YouTube Video Your Vote, in conjunction with PBS, at http://www.youtube.com/videoyourvote. By the way, PBS maintains a vast amount of information in general at http://www.pbs.org, and about the election specifically at http://www.pbs.org/vote2008/.
The Right to Vote: Exercised at an Expense Beyond Measure
That crucible of the Revolution (1775 to 1783), only 225 years ago, was just the beginning of a bloody history for those Americans (formal citizens and others) who have died defending many rights, including the right to vote. The Civil War (1861 to 1865) consumed nearly 600 American lives per day, or nearly 2% of the U.S. population at that time. World War II cost 400 American lives per day (1941-1945). In total, over 1.94 million Americans (soldiers and others) have died and 1.5 million Americans have been wounded in 44 wars, battles, operations, and invasions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war)
The right to vote was not the sole focus of any of these conflicts, but was implicit in their mission, which is to preserve the American way of life, as so many call it. If you need further motivation to go to the polls this Tuesday, consider these numbers. Or imagine the life of a boy, a young Revolutionary soldier, dying of disease in the hull of a British prison ship in 1778. I could go on, but you get the point.
It makes me sick, then, when I see a report, say on “NOW” with David Brancaccio (PBS) interviewing a white woman in Illinois who is standing in the kitchen of her foreclosed home, her dream denied, surrounded by packing boxes and her disabled and unemployed husband, about her misfortune. She remarks that much blame is to be assigned to the current president. “Whom did you vote for in 2000?” “Bush.” “In 2004?” “Bush” “Why?” “Because he’s against abortion.” She giggles lightly, nervously, standing there in her fleece, as if the irony just crept forth into clarity.
Her simpleness is nearly incomprehensible. She has given herself permission to reduce the battle-scarred right to decide who should be president of the United States based on this one single issue of limited global significance, and in doing so, has distilled her view of the world into another lapse of righteous certitude, likely believing her personal sacrifice was worth it. Yet there she stands bewildered. The reason is her rather immoral and debauched disregard for the world around her.
The American satirist Ambrose Bierce once wrote of the vote: “The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”
This is Our Moment
This is our time. There is a reason why over 200,000 people came to Berlin’s Tiergarten to hear Obama speak on July 24 this year. Many Berliners remember the days under a dictator, and America’s contribution to rebuild West Berlin after World War II, its commitment to overcome the division of the Cold War, and finally its urging to tear down the Berlin Wall. Yet, many Germans have been keenly unhappy with Bush’s policies, especially the invasion of Iraq. They wait. A dear friend of mine returned to New York a few weeks ago from a month’s stay in Hamburg, where she grew up. “Let me tell you,” she said as we walked through Riverside Park, “all will be forgiven if you elect Obama for president.” “Even Iraq?” I asked. “Yes. I believe it. Europeans are frustrated and want to see things moving again. We want to see things going forward with America. Obama represents change, new energy, progress.” “But what if McCain wins?” She said, “More of the same.”
I do feel the moment is here—to renew, restore, and revive. Interrupt your day and go to your precinct. Cutting it close before the polls close? Drop whatever you’re doing and go. Tired? You’ll make it. Need help with transportation? Call for help. Nearly all communities have resources to help you get there. In my own case, I could easily rationalize staying home. Though my precinct is two blocks from my home, I live in a city in which approximately 90% of the turnout is predicted to go for Obama. (In 2004, 86% went for Kerry.) It appears that my vote is no tie-breaker. Then my neighbor thinks that, and someone else stays put, and we’re back to the venal process of Supreme Court justices muttering about the stamina of the people, trying to be deciders about the precise pressure to apply to the scales of justice. Not this year.
The presidency is a hugely complex job and it requires elite skills. It’s a common concept. Do we tell Navy SEALs to stay home because they are too elite? Should we turn away doctors if they are too highly trained? The fairly recent notion that the successful candidate should be comfortable in jeans and a cowboy hat while drinking weak coffee at the local Waffle House has produced its shocking legacy. That McCain finds the perfect proxy of the average voter in an unlicensed plumber with recording industry aspirations is bad enough. That he committed the country’s future potentially to a shrill, calcified hypocrite who prays for pipelines should permanently close the book on his candidacy. And hers. In fact, we’re way overdue to close the book on the appointments of incompetent conservative judges, the resignations of government scientists, and the firings of inconvenient military generals.
I believe Obama has the right values, the right ideas, and the right skills. And I believe Joe Biden is amply experienced to take over if necessary. I could present an enormous list of endorsements from every sector of our society: government, industry, finance, the military, etc. But most important is your endorsement. It’s time to dispel the deceit, and reroute the flight of our future to the fundamentals of liberty, security, compassion, honor, and valor. Join me in electing Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.
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