To the courageous House Democrats, and most especially the
Congressional Black Caucus—Corrine Brown, Eva Clayton,
Elijah Cummings, Peter Deutsch, Bob Filner, Jesse Jackson
Jr., Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee,
Carrie Meek, Cynthia McKinney, Patsy Mink, Maxine Waters,
and Alcee Hastings—we say thank you for standing up for all
the people, the Constitution, your principles and consciences:
You have our profound gratitude and undying support.
As for our worthless Democratic senators—with the
exception of Hillary Clinton, who would have risked personal
harm had she joined with the House members, given the veiled
threat made by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott soon after
her election—we shall not forget that they sold us out.
Then they have been selling us out for years. They lost what
little spine they had soon after Watergate, when they let
Ronald Reagan and his Vice President Poppy Bush off the
hook on Iran-contra—they couldn't "put the country through
that again." The word "impeachment" wasn't even whispered
when Poppy gave us Iraqgate, yet they stood by while the
Republicans trumped up charges that never rose to the level of
impeachable offenses against Bill Clinton.
In the aftermath of Watergate, they voted for campaign
finance "reforms" that were worse than money being passed in
brown paper bags or secret slush funds and led to the rise of
powerful political action committees controlled by big
corporations and political think tanks. And in order for
Democrats to swill at the PAC troughs, many soon shed their
liberal labels and became those dastardly "New Democrats,"
forming the Democratic Leadership Council, which is nothing
more than a haven for Democrats who really are Republicans,
but are either too chicken to go over to the GOP or find it
more advantageous to retain their Democratic label.
Not only did they do little to help Bill Clinton during his first
two years in office, they now have allowed the Republicans to
steal the election that Vice President Al Gore won and want to
cozy up to the commander-in-thief who will occupy the White
House come January 20, and accommodate the Senate
Republicans. And that is exactly what they are planning to do,
as they crow about their "power-sharing" victory.
Do they really think we are that dumb? Do they care? Is there
something more chilling going on under the surface that makes
what we think or do irrelevant?
When was the last honest election? Or have we come down
to, to paraphrase an old Soviet saying, "We cast votes and they
pretend to count them?"
Election fraud is nothing new. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
was great at getting out the graveyard vote. Jersey City's
Frank "I am the Law" Hague regularly had ballot boxes
dumped in the Hudson River. Florida, it seems, is the champion
when it comes to election fraud and corruption. None of this is
right, but have we moved on from, if you will forgive the
expression, small potatoes stuffing of ballot boxes and the
voting of corpses to widespread systematic theft of elections?
As with certain exhibition sports, are our elections determined
before the first ballot is cast?
It is easy enough to rig the lever-style mechanical machines.
Stuffing paper ballot boxes is no big deal, either. But
computerized vote tabulating devices—whether they are
counting punch cards or optically scanned ballots—are
especially dangerous when, in fact, the codes are known only
to the companies who make the software and local election
officials have no access to them. Imagine what could happen
if we go to paperless computerized voting systems.
James M. and Kenneth F. Collier lay it all out in chilling detail
in "Votescam: The Stealing of America," a book that has been
banned by all major bookstores. The Colliers ask and answer
the question, "Why can't we vote the bastards out?" "Because
we didn't even vote the bastards in!"
After reading the first five chapters online, we admit we were
skeptical. Then Buddy MacKay, who lost the Florida
gubernatorial race to Jeb Bush, said in a Dec. 6, 2000,
interview with Carl Bernstein that the circumstances of his
1988 loss to Connie Mack in the U.S. Senate race eerily
matched what happened in Florida in 2000.
"'This is a very difficult personal situation for me,' said
MacKay, who went on to serve as Florida's lieutenant
governor and governor and now serves as President Clinton's
special envoy to the Americas. 'I have not wanted to get into
it, although I'm convinced this thing is susceptible to fraud in a
big way. . . . It's a damned outrage. . . . I was sort of crushed
in 1988 that it could happen, and somebody should have
changed something since then so it couldn't happen all over
again.'"
Bernstein wrote, "MacKay does not rule out the possibility of a
calculated attempt to subvert the vote in 1988 or 2000. 'What
could have happened in 1988, and we couldn't get to it at the
time was that the machines could have been programmed so
that in my big precincts every tenth vote got counted wrong . .
. ,' said MacKay, who added that he attempted to investigate
the possibility of malfunctioning or fraud at the time but got no
cooperation from the manufacturers of the voting machines.
"Shortly after the '88 election, analysis by two nonpartisan
publications noted a surprising number of 'undervotes'—ballots
in which no votes were counted for either candidate in the
Senate race. 'What stunned election analysts,' said a 1989
study in Campaigns & Elections magazine, 'was the large
number of voters in four large counties [Dade, Broward, Palm
Beach, and Hillsborough] who, having voted for President
simply failed to record a choice for Senate.' (Dade, Broward,
Palm Beach, and Hillsborough became known as the
'Fantastic Four' in skeptical journalistic accounts of the time.)
An analysis by The Miami News determined that there was 'a
drop-off of more than 200,000 votes in these counties from the
presidential to the senatorial contest, or more than six times
Mack's margin of victory.'
" Studies by both The Miami News and Campaign & Elections
magazine concluded that the overwhelming number of
'missing' votes were Democratic."
After reading that, we bought the book and urge you to do
likewise if you don't already have a copy. This may explain
why the Democrats in the Senate thumbed their noses at us,
and why we have to be careful about what we wish for in a
new voting system.
But the senators and the members of the House who ignored
our pleas to object to the Florida electors would be wise to
heed the warning of Rep. Maxine Waters—which also is our
warning—that "the days of doing business as usual is over."
As Rep. Waters said, "We shall never forget what happened
in this election."
We shall not take it lying down. Also, let the Republican thugs
understand that they have done more than any individual or
group to solidify the Rainbow Coalition, because they have
brought people of good will—white, black, brown, yellow and
red—together. And together we shall stand and fight to get
our country back.
While the dupes of the rabid right are reveling in this moment,
their glee will be short lived if their commander-in-thief
succeeds in ruining the economy, costs them their jobs, sets his
captains of industry loose to drill into and dig up the landscape,
jeopardizes their health by building more nuclear power plants,
and hands them the bill for his maniacal Star Wars.
And to any Green who can drop the nonsensical bit about Al
Gore being his own worst enemy and who can understand the
concept of a systematically stolen election—which we shall
have much more to say about as time goes on—coupled with
the blatant way African Americans throughout this country
were robbed of their votes, we say join us in the Rainbow
Coalition, because we intend to overcome.
Bev Conover is the Senior Editor of Onlinejournal.com