The GOP is Certain to Win in 2006, Unless...
July 26, 2005
By Ernest Partridge, The
Crisis Papers
I
have frequently been accused of being hopelessly optimistic. Perhaps
so: that's what keeps me going. But now, for those who thrive on
gloom and doom � it's your turn.
Here's the very bad news - the Democrats will almost certainly
lose in 2006 and again in 2008, for three essential reasons: (a)
the GOP and the Bush junta simply cannot afford to lose, (b) they
can prevent their defeat no matter what the voters have to say about
it (as they have in the last three elections), and (c) apparently
the Democratic Party, the media, and law enforcement are unable
and/or unwilling to do anything about it.
A GOP win in 2006 and 2008 seems simply inevitable - as inevitable
as LBJ's re-election, Nixon completing his second term, and the
endurance of the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. By this
I mean that all this would have come to pass but for some extraordinary
and unforeseen developments. Nothing less will budge the GOP from
the White House and the Congress.
After all, their "private sector" supporters count and
compile the votes with secret software � and do so with no official
independent means of validation. These facts about voting in the
United States are publicly known and undisputed. And yet, despite
compelling and unrefuted evidence of voting fraud, no one, except
some determined citizen groups and a small minority of members of
Congress, seems willing to do anything about it.
So the GOP will win for three essential reasons. Let's take them
in order:
1. The GOP and Bush, Inc. cannot afford to lose
If the Democrats take control of just one house of Congress in
2006, they will gain the powers of Congressional investigation �
the right to issue subpoenas to witnesses and for essential documents,
and the right to require witnesses to testify under oath, which
carries with it the threat of criminal conviction for perjury. And
be assured that should the Democrats take charge of congressional
investigations, chaired by such prosecutorial hawks as Henry Waxman,
John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, the worm-cans would be opened.
To be sure, Congressional Democrats have recently held unofficial
hearings on the 2004 voting irregularities in Ohio, on The Downing
Street Memos, on media reform, and on the Karl Rove scandal. But
these have all been rather toothless affairs, boycotted by the Republicans,
with all testimony volunteered and none under oath. Official Congressional
investigations would be a whole other story.
For there is good reason to suspect that the Bush Administration
is less a government than it is a crime syndicate, which, thanks
to a compliant Congress and Justice Department, has to date done
its dirty work without fear of investigation or prosecution. Among
the possible crimes that are crying for investigation: war profiteering,
Congressional bribery and corruption, election fraud, war crimes,
and of course the "outing" of a covert CIA operation -
an act which Bush's own father described as treasonous.
Accordingly, the loss of either house of Congress would not merely
send the Busheviks back into private life: it might send many of
them straight to federal prison. And the prospects for the GOP malefactors
would be still worse if the Democrats reclaimed the White House
in 2008, and with it the criminal investigation and prosecution
powers of the Justice Department.
Nor is the threat of criminal prosecution the only concern. In
addition, with a Democratic victory, the GOP oligarchs would be
required to give back the keys to the federal candy store. With
a return to fiscal sanity, the super-wealthy might once again be
required to pay a fair share of federal taxes. Legislation might
be passed to cut back on corporate welfare, to further reform campaign
financing, and to reduce the influence of the lobbyists. Furthermore,
the corporate foxes would be chased out of the regulatory hen-houses
� the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications
Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, etc. - thus restoring
to these agencies their intended function of protecting the public
interest.
In sum, from the point of view of the Republicans, continuing
control of the Congress in 2006 and of the White House in 2008 is
not simply desirable � it is absolutely mandatory.
2. The GOP can prevent their defeat, no matter what the voters
have to say about it
As things now stand, a Democratic win in 2006 is as likely as
a vote for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty in the Soviet
"elections" of 1930. And for the same reason: the party
in power (more precisely its supporters in private business) counts
the votes.
Evidence is abundant and compelling that the presidential election
of 2004 and key congressional races in 2002 were stolen, primarily
through the use of paperless touch-screen voting machines and the
software that collected and totaled ("compiled") incoming
election returns. Though numerous private individuals and public-interest
groups have
presented this evidence, it is only through their initiatives
that the issue remains alive. Because I
have expressed my suspicions repeatedly and at some length,
I will not repeat them here.
But let's suppose, despite all that evidence, that the 2002 and
2004 elections were entirely fair and accurate. If so, this was
due solely to the civic-minded decision of the Republicans who built
the machines and wrote the software to play it straight. They faced
little prospect of exposure if they chose to fix the vote totals.
The machines produce no independent record of the votes and, as
noted, the software is secret. In addition, as numerous public demonstrations
have proven, the machines can be readily hacked leaving no trace
of the tampering.
So it comes to this: whether or not the past elections were stolen,
the voting technology is now in place (and expanding under the "Help
America Vote Act") that will allow its designers, the writers
of its software, and whoever might have access to the back-door
hookups to produce any election result that they might desire. Short
of a confession by a guilty culprit and absent an arithmetic or
programming blunder, there is simply no way that fraud can be proven
after the fact through an examination of the polling and compiling
equipment and software.
To those who demand verification of election returns, there is
only one answer: "trust us!" And to those who shout "fraud!"
there is the familiar response: "don't be paranoid."
But while there are no direct means to validate paperless e-votes,
statistical analyses of exit polling can provide external indications
of election fraud. And in fact they have done just that as, for
example, one
such study has calculated the probability of Kerry's loss at
less than one in a million. However, we all know how much impact
these statistical studies have had on the final "official"
results. Zilch!
And what is the Republican response to those troublesome exit
polls? Former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie, has a straightforward answer:
abolish the exit polls which, he claims, have been "proven
unreliable" in the last three elections. In other words: shoot
the messenger.
Then how about legislation requiring a paper record of each vote
to provide validation? The Congressional Republicans won't hear
of it. Which causes one to wonder, doesn't it? Is it just possible
that they suspect (as I am convinced) that if we had a free and
honest elections, the GOP would be burnt toast?
The bottom line: will the Republicans cheat in order to prevent
defeat in 2006? They can if they want to, and as we have noted above,
their motivation to avoid defeat is extreme.
3. The Democratic Party, the media, and the law are unwilling
to do anything about it
The Democrats
As we all know, John Kerry, who promised to see to it that "every
vote was counted," threw in the towel a few hours after the
last polls closed, even as an avalanche of reports of vote total
anomalies, of voter intimidation, and of voting machine malfunctions
were incoming. The Kerry Campaign, sitting on millions of dollars
in their war chest, gave no support to the challenges of the Ohio
returns � these challenges were pursued by the Libertarian and Green
candidates.
The Democratic Party's continuing refusal to face up to grim realities
was made evident in the DNC's investigation of the irregularities
in the 2004 Ohio election, released just last month. As Steven Rosenfeld
and Bob Fitrakis of the admirable Columbus Free Press see
it:
[The DNC report] is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely
off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and
a party that still doesn't fully understand what happened and
how to avoid a repeat in the future.
The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression
tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant
in Ohio's cities during the 2004 presidential election...
But the DNC reports says those factors do not mean John Kerry
won the election, nor does it mean that the new electronic voting
machines are unreliable � even though some of the precincts with
the highest percentages of reported problems were outfitted with
the new electronic voting machines...
The DNC was denied access to the voting machines and software,
and to the tabulating computers in Ohio. Apparently on the assumption
that what they cannot examine doesn't exist, the "fraud factor"
does not figure significantly into the DNC report.
And so the Democratic Party is cheerfully carrying on as if nothing
has changed since Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996. They are
looking hopefully to taking back the Congress in 2006 and the White
House in 2008, as they fire up the base, and solicit still more
contributions. They uncritically assume that all they need to do
is get more voters to the polls than the GOP, and that the voting
machines and compilers will do the rest � reliably and automatically.
Those poor, naive, fools!
Like Charlie Brown, they just assume that if they run up to the
football once again, Lucy won't snatch it away this time. But of
course, GOP-Lucy will do just that, thanks to the Democrats' reliable
gullibility. Like Brooklyn Dodgers fans in the 1940s and 1950s,
they keep saying "wait till next year." And next year
the "Bums" are creamed again by the Yankees.
2002 and 2004 were "next year" for the Democrats. So
too are 2006 and 2008. By refusing to face up to the fact that they've
been had by the GOP voting machines and software, the Democratic
Party is setting itself up for certain defeat in 2006 and 2008.
The Media
A week after the 2004 election, actor Peter Coyote reported:
I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS -
I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the
news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me
off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is
to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov.
2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year
after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse - far scarier.
She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere
in NYC are pretty horrified - every one is worried about their
jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said
they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own
time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity
as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her
to speak out, ... [and] to "spread" the word...
Regardless of the reliability of Peter Coyote's report, it is
easy enough to tell if the mainstream media (MSM) has put an embargo
on the election fraud issue. Just try to find any treatment of the
issue on the MSM (Keith Olberman honorably excepted). If there is
any such mention, more than likely it is to dismiss accusations
of election fraud as "kookery" and "conspiracy theory"
� beyond the pale of respectable public opinion.
Thus, what may be the greatest political crime in the history
of the American republic is deemed by the MSM as unworthy of their
attention. Maybe there was no such crime. But given the unmistakable
indication that there might have been, isn't at least an investigation
by the media in order? Say, something on the order of an investigation
of the (ultimately innocent) Whitewater land deal by the Clintons?
Law Enforcement
The greatest vulnerability of the e-voting companies might be a
rigorous application of state and municipal voting fraud laws. Though
I keep a close and steady eye on the issue of electoral
integrity, I have heard of no criminal investigations in progress.
Have you? If so, please report them to me. ([email protected]).
Of course, if such investigations are in their early stages, the
public is unlikely to hear of them. So some good news just might
be in the pipeline.
Is there any hope?
Not if things continue as they are. There may have to be a dramatic
disruption in the flow of events. And there is no guarantee that
this disruption won't have horrible consequences. For example, if
Al Qaeda manages to slip a nuclear device into a shipping container
and it goes off in one of our ports, all bets are off. Martial law
is a distinct probability, and American democracy will be a goner.
As it happens, Bush's Department of Homeland Security has done
precious little to intercept such horrors. And who knows, Valerie
Plame Wilson's covert operation just might have been able to intercept
it � had she been allowed to stay on the job.
Hopefully, if a different kind of "dramatic disruption"
comes around, it will work to our favor. For all we know, it may
even now be in its early stages: the Rove/Plame/CIA scandal may
be at the "third-rate burglary" phase, with the analogs
to "the cancer on the Presidency" and the White House
tapes still to come. The new "deep throat" may yet enter
the stage.
Tomorrow, some state Attorney General or municipal District Attorney
might open an investigation of voting fraud. In the United States,
elections are administered on the state and municipal level. So
if paperless machines were used in said AG's or DA's jurisdiction,
Diebold and ES&S executives and technicians could be subpoenaed
and required to testify under oath. If in fact these companies cooperated
in the stealing of a Presidential election, "the truth is out
there" to be gathered and exposed by an aggressive prosecutor.
Would that kind of news be just too much to be ignored by the
MSM? Who knows? If the truth is that the conduct of all recent elections
was 100% copasetic, then the GOP should welcome such investigations.
It may be noteworthy that the GOP does not seem to be encouraging
such investigations.
Is the mainstream media united and unmovable in its determination
to spare the American public the discomfort of reading or hearing
bad news about its government and its president? The credibility
and audience of the MSM is falling alongside the public opinion
scores of George W. Bush. Will one or two mainstream TV networks
or print publications defect from the pack and try to do journalism
for a change? Will others follow? Or will the MSM become irrelevant
as alternative and independent media and the Internet become the
primary public sources of news? (The "Pravda/Samizdat
solution").
Is the CIA going to sit still for this? After all, that's in their
charter � stay out of US politics. But of this much we can be confident;
the rank and file of the CIA is super-pissed-off. One of their own
has been trashed, her operation demolished, and dozens (?) of agents
and operatives put in grave danger. Possibly some have been killed.
Nor is that all. The CIA has been asked to take the fall for the
Iraq fiasco � the result of "flawed intelligence" the
Bushistas tell us. The motto on the floor at Langley, The Truth
Shall Make Your Free, has been effectively supplanted with The
Truth Shall Get You Canned.
Pissing off the CIA can be a very dangerous business. These folks
are very good at overthrowing governments. What does it take to
get them to bring these skills home? I'm not talking about tanks
surrounding the White House. Just the usual bag of behind the scenes
spook-tricks: bribery, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation �
you know, the sort of stuff that Karl Rove uses to perfection. If
I were Bush, I'd be afraid � very afraid.
What about the Republicans? To date, they are a solid block. In
the entire GOP Congressional delegation, not a single Senator or
Congressperson has stood up to denounce and deplore Plamegate. What
does it take for at least some Republicans to face up to their conflict
of loyalties between the Republican Party and the United States
Constitution, to which they all swore an oath of allegiance? Where
is today's Howard Baker, now that the country so desperately needs
him? Might it be Voinovich? Chaffee? Snowe? Collins? Lugar? McCain?
Maybe Chuck Hagel, who has a lot to tell us about e-voting. When
will just a few Republicans come to appreciate that, as in Watergate,
if the President goes down he could take the party down with him
� to avoid which, they may have to cut him loose? When a few start
to defect, who will follow?
Then there's the economy. A sudden downturn would surely get the
public's attention. How long will China and Japan continue to support
our deficit spending? As middle class incomes continue to decline,
consumer debt expands, and interest rates rise, when does the retail
market collapse? With China, Japan and India entering the market
and production at a peak, oil and gas prices can only go up. Most
informed economists outside of Bush's reservation are pessimistic.
Clearly, the U.S. economy can
not go on like this, and yet Bush is determined to stay the
course � all the way to and over the precipice.
Something's gotta give � and when it does, if the Democrats are
smart, resourceful and bold, will seize the moment. But if they
sit by and ponder, as they've been inclined to do of late, then
they, and we, are done for.
What to do?
Can the GOP be beaten in 2006 and 2008? As we said, not if things
continue as they are. So do we give up? Not on your life! We do
our utmost to determine that things do not continue as they are.
Here are some suggestions (and send me some of your own):
If you live in a state or a district that uses paperless voting
machines, and if there is statistical or other evidence of voting
fraud, contact your state Attorney General or your local District
Attorney and demand a criminal investigation.
As the 2006 election approaches, join the determined effort to
abolish e-voting and to use paper ballots instead. Failing that,
demand paper receipts from the e-voting machines. If, as is likely,
e-voting and computer compilation remains in place, it is still
possible to institute safeguards, e.g., double-balloting, random
inspection of touch-screen machines, and parallel compilation of
regional votes. (For more details, see my "What
Can We The People Do About Election Fraud?")
Insist on exit polling. If the RNC tries to put the exit polling
companies out of business, set up alternative exit polls. Same with
pre-election polls.
A simple majority may not suffice in your district or state. Work
relentlessly for a super-majority. If sufficiently large, the "fixers"
might not dare to steal the election. Suppose, for example, that
the imminently defeatable Rick Santorum were behind in the late
polls by 65% to 35%. How would a "surprise" Santorum victory
go down? Add this to several more "surprises," resulting
in continuing GOP control of Congress. Might it finally dawn on
the U.S. public that their trips to the polls are a waste of time,
and that the election results are simply what the GOP want them
to be? And might that public finally begin to see the 2002 and 2004
elections in a new light?
Above all, remember: if things continue as they are, we're cooked.
The GOP will not be stopped. They count the votes. Simple as that.
We must see to it that things don't continue as they are.
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in
the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes
the website, The
Online Gadfly and co-edits the progressive website, The
Crisis Papers. Send comments to: [email protected].
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