The Right to Vote

It's deja vu all over again

by Alan Bisbort

Source: Hartford Advocate, October 28, 2004.

It is one week before the most important election in our lifetimes, and we still don't have the right to vote -- that is, "we" who don't vote for the right. What we're witnessing now in America, the land of the three-bay garage, 5,000-square-foot cottage, 10-foot-tall TV screen and eight-mile-per-gallon family car, is what passes for democracy in parts of the world where they have no indoor plumbing: voter intimidation, polling station tampering, ballot-fixing, destruction of valid ballots, no paper trails, and doomsday threats from the incumbents. The only difference is that, in these other, less-privileged countries, the voter turnout is much higher.

It is a mystery to me how Americans can not care about this, especially after 2000, when more than 20,000 valid ballots, most of which would have gone to Democratic candidates, were not counted in Florida. Especially after 2000, when we had that laughably random 527-vote victory margin for Bush that put the Sunshine State's electoral votes in his column and made him the winner over a candidate who beat him by more than half a million votes nationwide.

Few people batted an eye then. Apparently, the incumbents are banking on that happening in 2004, because, as Yogi Berra once said, it's deja vu all over again.

All internal polling for both major parties point to a convincing victory for John Kerry on Nov. 2. But the chances of that occurring without another vicious power struggle are slim. This is due to the fact that the voting problems that occurred in 2000 have not been rectified. Thus, the Democrats are (finally!) prepared to fight to the death. John Kerry's campaign has mobilized six "SWAT teams" totalling 10,000 observers and lawyers who will fly to troubled polling spots around the nation. If there are unexplained irregularities or sleazy shenanigans, they will fight in the courtrooms and possibly in the streets rather than acquiesce this time. But why has it come down to this? Why wasn't Florida ashamed enough of itself, after 2000 made it the national laughingstock, to fix these problems? And are Ohio, Oregon, Nevada, West Virginia, South Dakota and Pennsylvania prepared to join Florida in the Hall of Voting Shame?

Consider the following:

• A national voting registration firm (Sproul) is under criminal investigation for destroying Democratic registrations. AP has reported that canvassers in Oregon, Nevada, West Virginia and Pennsylvania say they saw Sproul officials destroy Democratic forms and that they were told they'd be fired if they registered Democrats.
• James Tobin, New England director of the Bush-Cheney campaign, just resigned for his illegal "phone jamming" activities in New Hampshire in 2002.
• South Dakota churches have been mailed bumper stickers that read: "Vote for Daschle & Vote for SODOMY." The head of the state's Republican voter drive has resigned after being charged with absentee ballot fraud.
• Voters in the South are being called and told that Democrats will ban the Bible.
• Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, the company that makes touch-screen voting machines, is a friend of Bush's who sent a letter to Ohio Republicans that he would "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President."
• In Columbus, Ohio, elderly voters are being called under false pretenses and told (inaccurately) their precincts and polling places have changed; and 600 goons have been hired by the state Republican Party to hassle minority voters in Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Cincinnati.

And so on. Every day for the past four years, it seems, I have awakened with one question on my mind: What will the Republicans do next to destroy our democracy? And every day for the past four years, it seems, they always come up with some new twist of the knife into the guts of the U.S. Constitution.

But consider this: It's the only way they can win.

We have only one option open to us: Bush must be deposed next week.

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reprinted from The Hartford Advocate