Some Dem candidates worry discussions of election fraud will lower turnout

[OzarkDem]

I attended a meeting last week of Ohio Dem women and a surrogate for one of our Dem candidates expressed the concern that raising public awareness of elections fraud and electronic vote tampering, while a valid concern, would only discourage voters from turning out at the polls.

Natuarally, the majority of us politely disagreed and advanced the issue as best we could (and those women did a fine job of it), but it really was a glimpse into some of the thinking of our Dem leaders and candidates who have been reluctant to speak out on the problem.

Are they right? Could their concerns be valid? Is there a way to approach the issue in a way that keeps elections honest and open without hurting voter turnout (some of the electronic voting issues are complex and not easy for many voters to undertand).

I came away with the impression that we need to make sure this doesn't happen and assure our Dem leaders of the same if we're ever going to get them engaged. To be fair, its probably an issue they're debating among themselves.

[msongs]

1. IT IS NOT VOTER FRAUD!!! it is election fraud thank you very much

the voters are not responsible for this fraud so please do not blame them.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
get your pics on shirts!

[OzarkDem]

2. Apologies, now, any suggestions? n/t

[MissWaverly]

3. I am confused

Are they saying let's not talk about it, I remember someone telling me about Katherine Harris
being elected, everyone thought that she would lose and then in the last 20 minutes all these
votes registered. Can we deal with the problem by denial, will it just go away. Is a 20%
margin enough to over-ride fraud. I don't know.

[OzarkDem]

6. While I can't speak for them, my impression was they feel conflicted

and that the fear of lowering voter turnout trumps election rigging. I had the impression they thought keeping quiet about the fraud issue and winning by big margins was the solution. Risky strategy, IMHO. :shrug:

[KingFlorez]

4. Very valid point

We need all the votes we can get, so we need to be careful not to discourage people with talk of election fraud. It needs to be done in a better way.

[applegrove]

5. Depending on how afraid you are of Bush & the GOP.. who assume

them capable of election suppression or outright vote fraud. Thing is there is no smoking gun on the outright vote stealing. But much in the way of evidence of all other kinds of voter suppression and dirty tricks.

This will divide. Shouldn't we deal with it now and agree to disagree but work together to get a government back in the WH?

Cause really - I'm in Canada and I cannot stand the propaganda two-step the Bush WH and the freaks on the radical right do with our right wingers.

We need to get back to real government asap. To get back to solving actual problems. Cause there are serious ones facing us.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. They are wrong

What will hold down voting is despair that we are powerless, that we can't even say the truth out loud, that there is a big secret red elephant in the room that no Democratic leader dare mention. If instead they will fight for fair elections, we will vote in numbers, knowing that they have our backs covered in case someone tries to steal our votes. That is all that we demand of them, and if they can't even do that, then indeed there may be many who will not be motivated to vote.

[OzarkDem]

13. Keep in mind, low voter turnout historically hurts Dems only

The GOP has been able to successfuly exploit this in the past with negative campaigning, sex scandals, wedge issues, etc. None of those things lower their turnout, only Dems.

The concern is how to make sure a valid issue like election fraud doesn't end up getting exploited by the GOP in the same way.

[mod mom]

17. You got it T R! If voters think no one is addressing what occured, they

will be less likely to bother to vote. That is why we must bring this up and SERIOUSLY ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS!

[robinlynne]

8. I don't think a larger margin guarantees anything.

That being said, this is an important question. I have never really looked this question in the face before, but I have heard many people say, even here on Du, if you have a large enough margin there won't be fraud. I think that is untrue. The republicans are shameless. you would think, logically that the downing street memos would have ended the war, and brought down the government. In the same way you might think they wouldn't have the gumption to reverse a huge electoral margin. They probably already have. We just didn't react strongly enough.
This does seem to be an extremely important debate to have.
i don't have an answer here, but I do think it should be a priority within the dem debate.

[IndyOp]

9. Our message must make *VERY* clear that we fight election fraud BY VOTING

Voter suppression *IS* a means of stealing elections - by all definitions that I will accept - and voter suppression has been THE KEY mission of the fanatical, GOP base for 25 years+.

Also - the ONLY way we will consistently discover and muster the political will to fight election fraud is if voter turnout is HUGE. If 80% to 90% of the eligible voters registered and voted then EVERYONE would be watching the process like a hawk to make sure everything is fair.

In a nutshell: The machines are not the problem -- the fanatical GOP base who are willing to cheat are the problem. The GOP has, literally, 10,000's of *passionate* voters who are willing to play hardball and 1,000's who are willing to suppress voters and outright cheat.

How the hell is the Democratic Party going to stop 1,000's of GOP cheaters without 10,000's of Democrats who are watching to prevent cheating? They have troops who cheat. We need just as many or more troops will know what to watch for and how to prevent them from cheating.

Paul Weyrich, Father of the Reagan Revolution, Founding Father of the Social Conservative Movement, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation speaking in a church to Republican activists (and probably not knowing he was being recorded) said this:

How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome?

Good government. They want everybody to vote!

I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now.

As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as voting populace goes down.

And now for a :rant: from IndyOp:

I am sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of the PATERNALISTIC lying that the 'powers-that-be' are doing at all levels!

WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK WE ARE that THEY can know the truth, reason logically, and act responsibly - but we can't?

I am sick of the INSULT that this is to my intelligence. This is not THEIR NATION -- It is OUR NATION.

For freaks sake, tell the truth! Tell the truth! Tell the truth!

The Democratic Party is NO BETTER than the GOP when it comes to top-down control and lying - the powers that be believe that they should make the decisions for the brain-dead electorate. I CALL BULLSHIT!

[laundry_queen]

10. I just don't understand this reasoning:

Don't talk about it because it will discourage people from voting?
What rock are these people living under!?! People already suspect it's happening. What they see is no one willing to stand up for them. THAT is what makes them not want to vote.

[IndyOp]

11. You Lie to Your Kid. Kid Knows You Are Lying. YOU LOSE.

I KNOW each and every person reading this message has been lied to before, has known they were being lied to, and has been HURT by that lie.

IF YOU CAN'T TELL ME THE TRUTH - then get the hell away from me.

WE KNOW that voters know that elections are going very, very wrong.

The Democrats are all fucked up if they think that lying is going to get them votes - it is destroying trust and hope - and ALL I WANT IS TO GET enough Dems in office that I can start KICKING THE CURRENT DEMS THE HELL OUT OF OFFICE.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[OzarkDem]

15. No one proposed lying about it

They just didn't think it was a good idea to make a big public issue of it, but to work behind the scenes instead to ensure it doesn't happen, ie fighting it in a low profile way, instead of making it a major campaign issue. They don't think the candidates should be bringing it up in every stump speech and waging big public campaigns about it.

To their credit, Dems in Ohio have already put together a comprehensive plan to fight election fraud in November. They plan to have trained attorneys in every county and polling place, ready to blow the whistle.

They're also doing a lot proactively to keep pressure on problem BOE's to ensure elections run smoothly and no one is turned away.

They're also waging a high profile campaign to get Blackwell to recuse himself as Secy of State from overseeing or issuing any orders related to the election.

[MissWaverly]

18. I have sent money to Strickland and plan to again

even though I live in Maryland, but I think that there needs to be a strategy on these voting
machines, the last time I voted in 2004, my machine was rigged to vote Republican, okay,
so they don't want to trumpet election fraud from the rooftops, but I want a workable strategy
from them on what to do if they can't find my voter registration or if my machine thinks
that only the Republican candidate is running. At least give us a number to call for help.
And don't go along with the provisional ballot, I think the election should be extended over
several weeks to allow time to correct glitches. In 2004, our candidate for Senate in Maryland,
Barbara Mikulski was left off the ballot in 4 counties, oh, but Diebold is very sorry, you just
don't know how sorry they are. We should have alternatives if things mess up again. Time is
marching on, how long before we can vote again.

[mod mom]

19. lying, sweeping it under the rug-whatever ever you want to call it, if it

is not addressed huge #'s of people will say why stand in those long lines again when they never fought for our vote.

[IndyOp]

20. By not admitting aloud what everyone knows - I believe they lie by

omission. I do not know the Ohio Dem Party - except that they seem not to have provided the necessary force to investigate the Hackett close loss after 'humidity' problems occurred and Schmidt rose victorious. They also seem to have not been too concerned when the 5 voting issues went down to defeat last Fall after 2 of the 5 showed strong, strong leads in newspaper polling the Sunday before the Tuesday elections.

Sorry - I am beyond believing that *anyone* can work behind the scenes on this - tell the whole truth. Summarize and publicize ALL means of cheating used by GOP in the past recent set of elections.

I believe that the Democratic Party becoming the party that will TAKE ACTION to ensure that ALL elections have been held fairly is a *big* selling point.

I've read stories/posts from people who went to Florida to help get Gore elected in 2000 and when concerns about election fraud were raised they were reassured - don't worry, we've got it covered.

We all know that the Kerry campaign/Dem Party reassured election justice activists and regular citizens over and over - don't worry, we've got your back.

Sorry. Do not believe in 'behind the scenes' or 'quiet' -- we. can. not. allow. the. GOP. to. steal. another. election.

And they will. They've begun already. If the Dems work behind the scenes and do not educate the public, then the morning after the THEFTS the citizens will go to work feeling a little more despondent and, once again, not knowing what could have happened. We campaigned, we donated, we voted. What happened? We'll just have to work harder next time. Gosh, those Republicans sure do have a better ground game.

Telling citizens the truth will INCREASE voter participation.

[robinlynne]

22. Isn't that exactly what they did in ohio in 2004?

[Awsi Dooger]

24. Attorneys mean almost nothing

Election day means almost nothing.

All the low tech theft is conceived and put into place long before election day. If we get to that point we've lost already.

The idea is to anticipate and thwart, every conceivable area of theft. Ballot designs. Number of machines. Voter rolls. Poll workers, trained and on time. Functioning machines. Provisional ballots. Accessibility to polling places. Absentee ballots. And so on. For every old woe there's a potential new one.

[OzarkDem]

25. They're focusing on that, too

But having attorneys on site the day of the election does help when it comes to dealing with problems that will still surface the day of the election.


Ohio Dems need a long term, focused effort to get better representatives on each Board of Elections. Most of those appointments are still political favors, etc. and often those in power don't or won't take the necessary measures to ensure fair elections.

[koopie57]

12. I think it is time to stop being afraid of

speaking the truth and facing our problems openly and fearlessly. There are real problems that need to be corrected, not hid. We're not really fooling anyone by doing that anyway. I think we look like cowards and it makes us look like we actually are a party with no ideas when we do things like that.

[Fleshdancer]

14. All they have to do is take strong offensive measures...

Think about it this way. If you owned Deibold machines and you were thinking about committing acts of election fraud throughout the country, what would scare you away from doing it? International review? Extreme amounts of media coverage discussing how hackable your machines are? Every other politician running for office standing at the mic and raging against election fraud?? Witnessing a public that was charged up and angry at the idea that their vote could be stolen from them?

Fraud of ANY kind thrives on ignorance and apathy. Voters aren't going to stay home because the voting machines are vulnerable. They're going to stay home because they can't find a politician who cares enough to change the fact that the voting machines are vulnerable.

[kentuck]

16. Why would anyone not vote just because they thought the machines ....?

were fixed? Why wouldn't they stand in long lines to throw away their vote? They wouldn't have anything else to do anyway. They know it's not gonna count but they will flock to the polls anyway so their votes can be stolen once again by those evil Diebold people. Why would they ask such a silly question?

[IndyOp]

21. We can't prevent e-vote stealing by Massive Voter turnout - we can

overcome voter suppression with massive voter turnout and we can quickly move the public to TAKE ACTION if they know about the possibility of election fraud in advance of the election AND they know what to do after the election to overturn an unfair result -- think Ukraine. The Ukranians were told in advance there were would likely be election fraud and they were told exactly what to do - what color to wear and were to go to protest. And - it worked. Right?

Also - we aren't as likely to detect election fraud if the numbers of voters is low - if we have huge turnouts it makes it more likely that we can detect election fraud.

Greg Palast, Thom Hartmann, Maxine Waters, Mark Crispin Miller -- ALL people I know of who know the whole story and are working to prevent theft of the next election -- emphasize over and over how crucial it is to VOTE -- and take 5 eligible, registered voters with you.

Peace. Love. VOTE.

[OzarkDem]

23. Good points

Thanks!