The morning after the November 5, 2002 election, I wrote this post.
In many ways, I regret making that post before all of the facts were in — even if I was correct in my assumptions. (It’s just a bad practice in general for reasons I’m sure I don’t need to explain here.)
However, now that the facts are in, it would appear that the situation is actually even worse than I feared.
We need to work together to not only get to the bottom of this stuff (purge lists, lack of exit polls or conflicting exit poll results, computer voting manipulation, conflict of interests/politicians owning stock in voting machine companies) — but keep focusing on the big picture: a fair election in 2004.
That means it will be more important to make sure everybody knows who these people are — and work with the good guy democrats and republicans to reform our system — and fast — and, in many ways, leave it at that.
If we’re not careful, we’ll get caught up in some “make the skapegoats pay” bullshit session while the real people responsible for what’s is happening quietly steal another election.
Attention Geeks, Newbies, and Those of You Who May Not Have Ever Voted Before In An Election: Your country needs you. It’s time for us all to get hands-on in a big way with our country’s elections.
This post was actually inspired by Douglas Rushkoff’s threatening to not write about politics anymore. On the countrary Doug. After this beautiful post, it is my hope that you will be writing about politics more than ever!
After Democracy
As is becoming increasingly clear, the system through which we are supposed to elect our government has been subverted. I’m not just talking about black people in Florida being taken off the voting rolls, or poor people in Maryland being handed flyers that tell them the wrong day to vote or that they’ll have to pay traffic tickets before voting. True enough, machines at which black people were likely to register their votes were set differently than in white, Republican districts. (In white areas, ballots with errors were re-read; in black areas, they were destroyed.) But that’s not the kind of subversion of democracy I’m concerned about right now.
As is now being reported widely in the ‘alternative’ press, in the last midterm election, the computers responsible for exit polling – an unofficial but telling check on the official vote count – were suspended without adequate explanation. Shortly later, the exit polling company went out of business. Meanwhile, an increasing number of districts came under the control of a private vote-counting company owned and, sometimes, operated – surprise – by Republican Chuck Hagel. His polling machines may or may not be responsible for his and other recent Republican electoral victories that confounded pollsters and analysts in the United States and abroad. (Republicans won by landslides in largely black districts that had never voted Republican, before. And then there is the question of memos with the subject line “how we stole the election”.) But they sure don’t inspire confidence. (For more, see the links at SeetheForest)
The Democrats might best use their remaining time in elected positions to safeguard what is left of the electoral system, or begin supporting Republican candidates who might have the resolve and patriotism necessary to dismantle the corrupted aparatus and voluntarily submit themselves to fair elections.
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