"Fears Be Damned, Get Out There and Vote."

[Kurovski]

From an interview with Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist:

“This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we’re having to go out of our way to counter them this year.”

Now this part is good:

"This will be the first midterm election in which the Democratic Party is mobilizing teams of lawyers and poll watchers, to check for irregularities including suppression of the black vote, in at least a dozen of the closest districts, Ms. Brazile said."

I urge Ms. Brazile and other strategists who are worried about voters "giving up" to pump up the rhetoric a bit to help overcome the all-too-common fretting Dem strategists are prone to, to go a little further out of your way this year (as Ms. Brazile says) by trying a speech something like this:

"Fears be damned, get out there and vote, bring everyone you can to vote. Swamp the fraud, capsize them with an overpowering number of votes. It is your power, YOU can make fraud an impossibility by having every single eligible voter at the polls.

It is YOUR vote, It belongs to YOU and was won with the blood, effort and tears of uncounted millions before you, from slaves, soldiers and suffragettes alike.

We promise that we will have your back, we will remember those who fought before us and we will not turn our backs on the theft of the power every American possesses, the power you have by merely casting a vote, and standing up for that vote until it is counted."

That might be more effective than merely fretting that concerns about election fraud might suppress turn out. Actually urging turnout might be a wiser strategy than worry.

Link to the article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/us/politics/27race.ht...

[StellaBlue]

1. yep

"It is YOUR vote, It belongs to YOU and was won with the blood, effort and tears of uncounted millions before you, from slaves, soldiers and suffragettes alike."

AFUCKINGMEN. Same goes for the five-day work week.

If those people in IRAQ can vote, we sure as hell can.

[AndyTiedye]

2. We Have Heard These Words Before

We promise that we will have your back

We have heard those exact words before. Nobody believes it anymore.
There is no way we are ever going to get voters to wait for hours in line to vote again.

[Mr_Spock]

3. Are you suggesting that people should not vote as we cannot trust them?

I am having trouble understanding what you are saying here - please provide more information...

[AndyTiedye]

4. I am Saying That Many of them WILL NOT

I said nothing about what people should do.
It really doesn't matter what we say anymore.

In 2004, we persuaded millions of voters to stand in line for hours to vote.
Kerry told them their vote was important, and that he would make sure it counted.
Instead, he conceded, and the Republicans got away with stealing another one.

They will never stand in line for us again, no matter what we say.

[Mr_Spock]

5. Is that the kind of cynicism you want to project to Democrats?

This is the worst possible message that we can send to our fellow Democrats.

"Don't trust them (Democrats), they let you down once, and therefore they will let you down again!"

Is that really the cynical message you want to send here right before a critical election?

[AndyTiedye]

7. That is the Message We Are Hearing FROM Democrats in Polls

They don't think their votes will be counted accurately.

I cannot think of anything we could tell them at this point
that would make them believe otherwise.

The phrase, "We've got your back" is a singularly bad choice,
as it brings back a lot of very bad memories from 2004.

We should still vote, of course. At least make them go to
the trouble of stealing it.

[Mr_Spock]

9. The only people who are really cynical about whether their vote will be counted

seem to be here on DU. I almost never hear of people who are that cynical. Yeah, people worry a bit when they hear the stories, but, and it is important that we fell this way, they WANT to believe they will be counted. We have to believe in the system or we are all doomed.

[AndyTiedye]

10. 50% of Democrats Have Little or No Confidence in the Count, Per AP/Ipsos Poll

UNITED STATES: Only a fourth in the United States say they are very confident that their votes are counted accurately and two-thirds have some confidence. After questions were raised in the 2000 and 2004 elections, about a third said they are not confident. Republicans, 87 percent, were more likely than Democrats, 50 percent, to be confident in the vote count. That was almost as high as the 39 percent in Mexico who expressed doubts. Voter turnout in 2004 was 62 percent of those eligible to vote, the highest in many years.

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=314278

[Mr_Spock]

11. I wish that was meaningful to me

But it has no meaning at all to me - those people will still vote if they have voted in the past.

Half the people don't vote in a midterm election anyway. Clearly we should be telling people to vote - discouraging people is no different that promoting Republican candidates IMHO.

[AndyTiedye]

13. Encourage People to Vote If You Can, But DON'T Say "We've Got Your Back"!

Use some other words, at least.

[Mr_Spock]

14. That is a good point

Personally, I put Donna Brazile in the same category as Bob Shrum - I'd just a soon have them say nothing at all.

[Kurovski]

19. re: "got your back"

The point is to make the message positive, there are many ways to say that work will be done to protect the vote.

Of course if Ms. Brazile feels there is no such thing as election fraud problems, then it will be difficult for her to be positive as she will see talk about fraud as an annoyance. Some do, others see more and more evidence of wide-ranging problems.

Mark Crispin Miller's Book "Fooled Again" outlines the many ways it was done in 2004, as you probably already know.

[Kurovski]

6. My thinking was that Ms. Brazile could say this with some honesty

because of this statement she made:

"This will be the first midterm election in which the Democratic Party is mobilizing teams of lawyers and poll watchers, to check for irregularities including suppression of the black vote, in at least a dozen of the closest districts, Ms. Brazile said."

That's why I thought it would be a good time to point out that such a rhing was at least being done at the very front of the elections.

[AndyTiedye]

8. First MIDTERM Election, Yes

Because we did all that in 2004.

[blm]

12. I hope she realized her failure in 2004 and is correcting it. She was in charge

of Voter Integrity office at DNC from 2001 and did nothing to secure 2002 and 2004 because she and Terry McAuliffe never believed machine fraud and never acted to secure the election process for the four years they were charged with doing so.

They assured EVERY candidate and Dem voter that they would counter the GOP tactics to suppress the vote, and they did NOT - 2002 and 2004 were WORSE THAN EVER.

Dean working to repair the collapsed party infrastructure in so many states is one tough job that should take another two years. I hope he oversees Brazile carefully.

I hope Brazile is sincere this time. She will be letting alot of us down again if there is election fraud....again.

[upi402]

16. from a thumbwarmer to my eyes

i am glad she said those words if she said it.
saying words like that is good.
i hope people do that.

but she sat on her hands, hid her thumb, and... i dunno the media probably ignored her efforts too... i dunno

election fraud will occur she is telling us. it's not her fault, though she could have done at least as much as a journalist in old blighty -Greg Palast- to sound the alert and light a fire.

but lets not get all radical, huh

[SharonAnn]

17. If we don't vote, then we lost. So we have to vote.

[BlooInBloo]

15. She's right. DU vote-depressers are part of that problem.

The ones - there's jillions of them - saying (to cop from Aliens) "Game over, man! Game OVER!".

Fuck the vote-depressers.

[Kurovski]

18. If you ever see anyone on DU telling people not to vote,

or suggesting voting isn't worth it...please hit the alert button.