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The power of a social movement can beat the GOP double Chickenhawks

It's never been more true that the one thing we Americans can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we have never elected him president of the United States.

The regime is even more despised than ever, in part because the derogatory term "chickenhawk" now applies in all its worst double meanings.

And while Bush and Karl Rove crow that they're about to "win" again, we think they are about to run into their worst nightmare: a full-blown grassroots social movement.

The GOP strategy for stealing 2006 is much the same as in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, and in key Senatorial elections in 2002: mass disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democratic voters, combined with mass inflation of mostly rural Republican votes.

The primary tools for disenfranchisement include the decimation of voter registration lists and outright harassment of would-be Democratic voters. In Ohio alone, there has been the electronic disenfranchisement of some ten percent of the state's registered voters, along with the virtual abolition of the recount process.

Dorothy Fadiman’s Stealing America: Vote by Vote

This is a film that is more than simply the sum of its parts. It combines powerful content, high-quality camerawork, effective graphics, and a haunting musical score. The film is clearly the work of someone with extensive experience in the field. In fact, Dorothy Fadiman has been making documentaries for the last 30 years, and has many awards to her credit.

Stealing America is a quiet film, and most of the action takes place away from the bombast of politicians. Floundering democracy is the true protagonist here. The corporate media do not come out well – film clips of commentators on Election Day remarking on how smoothly everything went are interspersed with long lines of voters standing in the dark for hours, waiting for a turn to vote. When the networks began to call the election for Bush, inner city voters were still in line – some standing there for as long as thirteen hours – trying to take part in an election that had already been declared.

Meet some candidate

http://mattbors.com

Repairing the U.S. system of voting: 50 concrete steps

VOTING, LIKE FREE SPEECH, SHOULD BE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT. Until we pass that constitutional amendment, a new voting rights law must be passed establishing a federal right to vote. What the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections illustrated above all else is the ability of partisan and ruthless political operatives to manipulate a haphazard system comprising 50 different state voting laws, as interpreted by secretaries of states and various county, ward and precinct officials....

READ THE FULL DOCUMENT (requires Adobe Acrobat)

Official states electronic voting system added votes never cast in 2004 Presidential election; audit log missing

An electronic vote counting system included votes never cast in the total vote count reported for the 2004 Presidential election according to an official directly in charge of conducting the election, the Republican Director of the Miami County (Ohio) Board of Elections. The audit log for the system is missing all information for the 2004 Presidential election....

Read the full document (requires Adobe Acrobat)

Check out We Count for a great TownHall confrontation between Vicki Lovegren of Ohio Vigilance and Michael Vu, Supervisor of Cuyahoga County BOE

See this video at the We Count 2006 Blog

This is well worth watching if you want to understand why pollworkers in Cleveland will not be allowed to post precinct results. It is fairly short because there is no reason. No acceptable reason in a Democracy, that is. Vicki Lovegren of Ohio Vigilance lays it out in plain, clear irrefutable language. Pollworkers need to perform an extremely simple two-step process. The BOE agreed to do this procedure in the spring, and now -- due to pressure from superiors -- may not do the posting.

Please also see Vicki's call to action below: This is What Democracy Looks Like !

The whole world will be watching next week's election, and Cuyahoga County's will be a major object of focus. WCPN will host World Have Your Say here in Cleveland on the 7th and 8th. Director Michael Vu was on Lou Dobbs on Sunday night and on CNN today. And wait until the new film, Hacking Democracy, airs this Thursday?

Oneonta

There's a small college town in New York state called Oneonta.  Some of the students at the state university there organized an event Monday night that had terrific turnout, and for once the crowd at a college political event was made up of mostly college students.  I'm used to seeing adults in the majority at campus events related to political activism.

I was one of 10 speakers on a variety of topics related to the influence of campaign "contributions".  My topic was war.  The other speakers were excellent, and the students were well informed.  That is, some of them were.  One anonymous person submitted this question on a card during the Q and A part of the event:

"Mr. Swanson – Can you address the counter-argument to your idea.  That if we leave Iraq a worse leader will take power and attack the US again?"

Again?

After pointing out the problem with that word, I replied primarily by speaking to the damage being done by the occupation, the inability of the occupation ever to come up with a strategy that would avoid making conditions worse and even worse, the need for withdrawal and for UN assistance if Iraq is to have a chance. 

Keeping our eyes on the ball

AUSTIN, Texas -- I'm still worried sick. The R's have seized the news cycle! Which says more about how dim American politics are than anything I can think of.

            Apparently, the Michael J. Fox affair didn't have enough meat to it, and even Rep. Mark Foley is out of the game, so now we have the semi-hemi-demi-gaffe from John Kerry, who is not in fact running for anything.

            If Kerry had been given as many breaks for misspeaking as George W. Bush has, he'd be a professor of grammar by now. And this all shows what the Bush regime has -- attacks on Kerry, Clinton, Kennedy, Pelosi, liberals! -- not any actual policies to help them.

            The Great Wall of Republican ads is bearing down on us -- race-baiting, scare tactics and sleaze-mongering. (Who knew so many people had signed up to "promote the homosexual agenda"? I don't even know what it is. But apparently, you don't have to sign up to support -- you could be part of it and not even know!) The R's are throwing distorting ads, funded by endless money, all over the place. Can the people see that, and ignore and punish them for it?

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are on Democracy Now - See October 31, 2006 archive

Tune in on your TV or visit http://www.DemocracyNow.org today to watch Bev Harris, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman and others discuss voting reform efforts and the most recent attacks on democracy in the United States.

The direct link to the electoral reform portion of the program is: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/150223

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