I have just returned from Campaign for America's Future: Take Back America 2007 in our nation's capital. It's hard to imagine that this forum hasn't been happening forever. In just six years, this baby of Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey has morphed from Very Modest to Major League. This year, there were more than 3,000 conferees. All of the major Democratic contenders were there, as well as Speaker of the House Pelosi and Howard Dean. The conference was extremely well-run and full of interesting sessions, often at the same time. I struggled to be in more than one place at the same time. The only glitch was that Michael Moore's flight was cancelled due to bad weather conditions. So he missed his session on health care with clips from his new movie "Sicko". We were pretty universally disappointed about that.
I stayed with my friend Diane Perlman again and made the trek from Dupont Circle every morning, returning late at night. Each time I got to the corner of Connecticut and Florida, I was greeted by a street sign saying: 2000 Florida. It resonated for me, symbolizing just when everything started to go wrong. Every time I passed that darn sign, it gave me another jolt. I have felt for a long time that each of us can make a difference, can make the world a better place. This is a perfect example of the flip side of that equation. W has succeeded in changing the political landscape and it will take us a very long time to undo all the damage he has done. It began with Jeb and Katherine Harris instituting voter purging in Florida, prior to the election. According to Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse, of the 94,000 'felons' purged, "at least 91,000 were innocent legal voters, but the vast majority of these were guilty of nothing more than being Black, Democrats or both." (p. 40). Then, there was the networks' premature pronouncement (kicked off by a Bush cousin) and the Supreme Court's interference in the state recount. It's been downhill ever since. Whereas a few years ago, I might have been more reticent about saying that, much of the public has pretty much caught up with my assessment by now.
I'd like to touch briefly on two of the sessions I attended. The plenary on Media Reform: Building a Bigger Tent, was moderated by Josh Silver of Free Press. In his opening remarks, he spoke about how it's impossible to ignore the failings of the corporate press. He was referring to the war in Iraq, but of course, I was busy extrapolating to the long-time virtual media blackout on the subject of election fraud. Thank goodness for bloggers! Otherwise, what would any of us know about anything? I am proud to be a part of that effort to get the word out through OpEdNews. At the Gala Dinner on Tuesday night, progressive bloggers were honored with the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award for their contribution to keeping honest journalism alive and Rob Kall, Mr. OpEdNews, was up there on stage with them.
Silver pointed out that while media reform is necessary and urgent, it is only one part of a broken system that reaches beyond party lines. What's needed is a revitalization of journalistic integrity, but it must be accompanied by campaign finance reform - to create a level playing field, and election reform - to make sure that votes are counted accurately. It's part of a package and we need to reframe the issue to include each of these components. Achieving (or making progress on) one without the others has limited value. I had long thought the same thing and was happy to have my take on this validated.
Michelle Ciccarelli, who represents workers, consumers and shareholders, gave a powerful presentation on "Curbing Corporate Crime and Conservative Corruption." Her accompanying slideshow made the repercussions of present policies all too apparent. This is the most pro-Big Business Administration ever and corporate power controls all three branches of government as well as the mainstream media. In a brazen move, Bush recently asked the Supreme Court to protect Enron from its stockholders. Talk about chutzpah! Even Alan Greenspan is alarmed about the level of fraud on Wall Street. The long sought rollback of regulation has resulted in unprecedented corruption, fraud, phony stock reports, bloated executive salaries and bonuses for those who fire the most employees, gutted retirement plans for workers and the disappearance of investor protection. According to a recent CFO magazine survey, 66% of executives admitted being pressured to falsify numbers for a financial report; more than 50% felt unable to say 'no'.
Ben Bernacke and The Wall St. Journal point to a robust economy that seems to benefit only those at the top. The better it is for that magic upper crust 1%, the worse it is for everyone else. As someone at the conference pointed out, if you do income averaging between Bill Gates and a 'regular' working person, you'd get the misleading impression that both of them were doing very well, indeed. The disparity between the salaries of top execs and those at the bottom is way out of control. In 1991, an executive's pay was 140 times more than that of his employees. By 2004, it was 500 times greater. To give a little perspective, if the minimum wage had increased as much as executive pay, it would now be $23.03! A great quote to conclude her session: "Until crime in the suites is treated the same as crime in the streets, there will be no justice."
It seems to me that public opinion has moved a lot since last year. Ending the war is a given. The candidates bent over backwards to outdo one another on their positions. Calls for universal health insurance are heard from every corner. I'm sure that Moore's presentation would have generated even more energy for it.
Like last year, there was one session on election reform. There were several informal sessions organized by attendees. That was a nice addition. Unfortunately, the sessions were not well publicized and they were held in far corners of the Exhibit Hall where it was noisy, so it was difficult to hear or be heard. For one of the sessions, I was the only one in the audience. It was hard not to feel like Cinderella minus the fairy godmother.
The candidates did their song and dance. Some of them were pretty impressive. But, I was left with the awful feeling that despite what continues to emerge as clear evidence of widespread election fraud and voter suppression, we are no more prepared to deal with it then we were before. And 2008 is looming. How will this time be any different from 2004? Or 2000? In that case, what difference does the candidate, the platform, the energy and the effort make?
Legislation that entrenches secret vote counting without citizen oversight or checks and balances is not what I'm looking for. Neither is turning over permanent control to four White House appointees (the Election Assistance Commission). It's simply anti-democratic to outsource our elections to private, for-profit corporations with secret, proprietary software. Look closely at what happened in Alaska in 2004. When it was discovered that there was a gigantic 100,000 vote discrepancy, state officials stalled before admitting that the election data 'belonged' to Diebold. It took over two years of lawsuits to get the data released and by that time, the voters discovered that the records had been accessed and altered. That's simply unacceptable. Our votes should not be held hostage by corporations which hide our votes from us inside opaque computerized voting machines and laugh all the way to the bank with billions of our tax dollars. That's not what our founding fathers had in mind, I assure you.
Call me naïve but here's what I want. It's not complicated: that each eligible voter be able to easily exercise the constitutional right to vote and be confident that his/her vote is counted as cast. That's it. "Vote in secret on a paper ballot and count it in public with citizen oversight". What do you think? Is that asking too much? The future health of our country may very well depend on the answer to that question.
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
After reading the statements from the candidates, can you really say that there was no standout? Dennis Kucinich is by far the only candidate that makes any sense. And the audience knew that, too. He is the only member of Congress who consistently voted against the war; he has introduced a bill to impeach Cheney; he has the only workable plan for a national health care; his idea for a dept. of peace is the answer for a world free from war. Are you suffering from the same flaw that most of the American public does, by that I mean because he has been virtually ignored by the whores in the media that he couldn't possibly be a viable candidate? Th audience seemed to be undeniably moved by what he said. My feeling is that if people experience his presence first hand, he is the only candidate to bring us out of this inertia that this country seems to be unable to overcome.
by
Caronome (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 202 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 9:47:41 AM
actually, i did find kucinich very strong. and charismatic in a non-packaged way.
my problem, which i alluded to in my piece, is that if the process (election system) is fatally flawed, all of this discussion/debate/campaign is for naught because nothing different from the past will happen again. that makes my personal feelings about any of the particular candidates irrelevant. i have read too many articles/books, seen too many documentaries on the many ruses to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters to be sanguine (as the vast majority in attendance at the conference seemed to be) about 2008 or any election for that matter until we clean this whole mess up.
Thanks for writing.
JoanB
PS i was at the WeCount 2006 conference in Cleveland when Kucinich gave a speech that he was introducing HR 6200 about hand counted paper ballots for the presidential election. I was/am in favor. It never got anywhere in the last Congressional session. I'm hoping that he will reintroduce it and that it can be a stop-gap measure to preserve some voting integrity for 2008. but we'll need a huge groundswell of public opinion to force Congress to do something positive here. What I'm ever mindful of is that ticking clock...
i'm hoping that you were not referring to me as a whore in the media... i would find that extremely offensive. please clarify.
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 9:56:23 AM
i'm not a rabble-rouser. i'm stilll willing to try working from within for the time being. i certainly understand your position though. there are many days when this whole 'thing' makes me want to stay in bed until it all blows over. but, whenever would that be? i'm constitutionally (pun intended) ill equipped to just sit by and do nothing.
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 10:00:56 AM
That's just the point Joan. There IS NO within. This country is as close to anarchy as it's every been. Both parties are corrupted in the extreme. Who is it you want to write to? The American people have clearly opted to let Washington do what it pleases. So I suppose i'm trying to understand what you want to work within?
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tedbohne (87 articles, 103 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 119 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 10:11:55 AM
how to get candidates to take this issue seriously?
Thank you for sharing the highlights/lowlights of your mission.
How to get the candidates to take electronic and other forms of vote fraud and manipulation seriously? Maybe only by accessing those secret docs and emails that Cheney and Rove are so busy deleting and hiding. If they go public, then the full extent on the calculated war against democracy that has left America a shiny shell with its innards devoured would be known. (That is, if the media-owned press cared to publish it.)
But...on Lou Dobbs, I see he had a feature about Bush and Cheney called "Do they have something to hide?" So perhaps there is a shred of hope.
Perhaps this time next year, the headliners will all be talking about vote fraud.
L L
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 4:50:20 PM
Thank you for the great summary of the 'Take Back America Conference'.
In Minnesota we always had paper ballots for almost forever. It is marked with a simple pencil and optically scanned on site with a simple tabulator. A few years ago the scan was off-site for cost reasons and the ballot box was carried there. The vote counted is displayed by the tabulator so the voter can instantenously check it. The tabulator keeps the paper ballots and sends the counts to a central computer. After the election is closed, the local tally and the central tally are compared so the mainframe totals can be hand checked. Recounts can be re-counted by either the original tabulator or a freshly tested one, by the multi-party citizen observers. On a very close election (requested by either candidate) the paper ballots can be hand counted. The new Holt Bill should make elections much safer if not yet completely safe. As explained by Kathy Dopp, I must repost her comments ASAP. IMHO eventually we should all go to a balloting system like we use here in Minnesota! -- George >
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 5:38:15 PM
Minnesota seems to have its elections in hand. Nevertheless, despite Kathy Dopp's approval of the Holt Bill, I beg to differ. There are some serious shortcomings in it, including making permanent the EAC (they took out the wording but left the budget in and referred to it twenty or more times) and the entrenching of secret vote counting by private corporations. That is, simply, anathema to democracy. If we lose public oversight (and how can you oversee a computer whose innards are hidden from you?), how do we know that what the computer spits out has any bearing on the truth? In fact, there have been hacks done on DREs and Optical Scanners and studies show that the printers have many serious problems as well: jamming, creating an unmanageable 'toilet roll' which makes recounting or auditing nigh impossible, and just hard to verify altogether.
We need meaningful election reform and while the Holt Bill has some good points, the damage that it would do, in my humble opinion, would not be easily overcome.
Thank you again for your comment.
JoanB
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 5:45:47 PM
Michael Moore has just released a film about how we don't care about others less forutnate than oursevles. I wonder, how does Michael Moore feel about people starving to death when he clearly over eats?
At the time I thought the Left really cared about the 2000 election. Now I'm not so sure. Why didn't Gore run with Ralph Nader instead of against him? As proof, how do you feel about Broadway Joe of Connecticut now that he has morphed himself into a neocon campaigning for Republicans? If Gore had chosen Nader as his running mate, he would have been declared president. The Democratic Party has demonstrated it is in bed with corporate America, people are just learning that the hard way.
As a Rightist I support corporatism and oppose Fascism. I believe the ultimate owners of a corporation are the shareholders. We all remember the story of the corporation that refused to meet until the shareholders asked the federal government, the SEC, to demand a meeting.
I support free enterprise, free education so every citizen is free to make money. I oppose slavery and labor. Instead of labor let everyone form their own corporation. There would be true freedom.
As the United States controls the world politically, economically and militarily, and the word's governments are based on the American Constitution, I support the right of every citizen of the world to exercise their right to vote and run for office in America.
It is true the current system favors those at the top. It is agreed that corporations produce wealth. The problem is that not everyone participates freely; they work for slave labor. When everyone is free to compete, slavery will end.
I support the Green, the Libertarian and the Constitution parties. The Republican Party no longer represents freedom and the Democratic Party has sold out.
by
Barker (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 111 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 7:19:47 PM
you touch on too many topics for me to answer them all. one comment about corporations and belonging to their stockholders. as i mentioned, Bush recently urged the Supreme Court to ignore the shareholders and side with Enron in their lawsuit. deregulation has slashed investor protection and left stockholders naked and vulnerable. maybe in a perfect world, it would not be so. this is what we have now. it serves no one except the fat cats on Wall St. and the grossly overpaid executives.
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 10:21:05 PM
