Letters to the Editor
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Very Disappointed!!
After reading the Rolling Stone article I was hopeful that this issue would get some additional coverage from at least the not-so-mainstream media. I took from the article that there was significant Republican malfeasance that warrants additional investigation. (Remember in New Hampshire Republicans have already plead guilty to such charges.) And the Diebold lock on the election apparatus is a travesty. This is the most dangerous issue the MSM can bury!
I am very disappointed that the Manjoo article is the only such additional coverage I've found to date. I was annoyed by the original Manjoo articles which suggested we just shut up and take it. Indeed, this is much of the same. If he acknowledged the sad state of our elections while rebutting Kennedy's points I might have some respect. But he doesn't. Again, we're just supposed to shut up, ignore the widely acknowledged Republican chicanery and avoid being called sore losers.
I was a Salon reader before they went public. I was a Premium member when it first became available. I was happy to have a competent left-leaning news site on the web. (It was actually after the 2004 elections that I swore off CNN altogether. I now get all of my news from the Internet.) I hate to be dramatic but I also view this article as egregious enough to not resubscribe. I just got my renewal letter. I think I'll spend the money on Mark Crispin Miller's book instead.
Salon
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Politics of Personal Destruction
We opened pandora's box when Woodward and Bernstein brought down a President. Justified, every newly minted twit with a journalism degree sought to make a name for themselves by uncovering a scandal. The line of deference for personal lives was obliterated and all bets were off once Gary Hart stupidly challenged the media to "catch me if you can" relative to his own adulterous affairs.
Then along came Clinton. SCOTUS allowed a civil case to proceed against a sitting president and along came the BJ impeachment case. Stupid and boorish, it did not rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor as defined by the founders. Lying about one's personal sex life is not treasonous.
But onto that the Republicans lashed. They still seethe over Bill's Slick Willy. Bill decried the politics of personal destruction. The independent prosecutor law, used to gore Post Watergate republican presidents had finally gored a Democrat. Would we finally give it up?
And now it's the Democrats' turn to take government further into the toilet. Rather than attack a single person, its expanded to attacking the very legitimacy of the entire system. Ballots are not perfect. That some states hover in a slight margin of error range is not a conspiracy. It's the human error of elderly people counting ballots as a sort of social event and losing track. It's folks hitting the wrong button.
Bush stole the election in '00 and now it's '04. It's as idiotic as rabid righties still raging on about Clinton's blow job. It sacrifices the entire foundation of our democratic system for partisan gain.
Say what you want about Dick Nixon, but he knew to simply let this shit go in 1960. He put country ahead of his personal aspirations.
You know it's a sad state of affairs when you long for a day when our partisan leaders will rise to the level of Dick Nixon in terms of conduct and demeanor.
Just let it go, for chrissakes.
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This fight over "evidence" is a disservice to democracy
We should all be earnest about defending democratic elections. Mock me if you like at lehtolawyer@gmail.com. My name is below. You can have it -- the government already does.
Manjoo doubts stolen elections because they require "widespread conspiracy," that's "hard to keep everyone quiet." (paraphrase)
If true, then D-Day was no secret, there's no such thing as secret societies, and we don't have a secretive CIA, Delta Forces or Mafias because you just can't keep all those people quiet!
Let's be serious about elections. We're talking control of the world's richest country and sole superpower, available without the millions on payroll involved with fielding armies. WIth computerized elections, it's now possible to get the bargain of the millenium: superpower control with the bonus of public confidence in the stolen election, based in large part on the newfangled inscrutability of our e-elections, with unwitting support via "sore loser" attacks on stolen election advocates.
This high reward for faked elections is not met by anything like defense forces.
The MEDIA rarely reports election issues, like the easy and evidence-free alteration of elections. That makes even noisy "conspirators" appear silent. Google "Clint Curtis". Legit or not, not much in the media. Heck, if a perpetrator confessed to an NBC network anchor complete WITH DOCUMENTS, they'd fear sharing Dan Rather's fate for running a Guard story with expert witnesses and documents. "Chill."
Remember who, what, when, why, and where and How? In light of the "universal bias" created by everyone taking sides, AMEICANS ALL HAD BIAS AND ALL KNEW:
1. WHO we wished to favor: Kerry or Bush.
2. WHAT we wished to favor them with: Votes.
3. WHEN we wished to favor them. November 2, 2004
4. WHY we wished to favor them: Electoral College and life/death issues.
5. WHERE we wished to favor them: Swingstates!
6. ...and the only thing we may or may not have known was:
7. HOW we wished to favor them: MYRIADS OF WAYS, with even more if you're an official or have access.
Thus, NONE of us need "marching orders" from the DNC/RNC to know how to act simultaneously, YET it looks like acting "in concert" from the outside.
Strengths become liabilities in e-voting: (1) computers do what they are told without question, and (2) there's no such thing as total security, just raising costs-to-penetrate high.
If the price were really high to rig an election, then only governments, huge corporations and KGB agencies could do it! Government can't give us a SOLUTION with elections, Elections must instead be immune from any substantial or unsupervised government tinkering.
THE FINAL SOLUTION for this "widespread conspiracy" canard would be especially amusing if it weren't for the fact democracy was at stake. The Goebbelian final solution is the (misleading) charge that there's "no evidence" of election fraud on electronic machines. Because computer scientists have warned democracy for almost ten years of the problem of "no {direct} evidence" there's a special hell on earth for election activists silenced with "There IS no evidence, you fool!" Google "Harri Hursti" for links to proof of how a hacked machine can disobey certified software, pass all tests, and evade detection for years before kicking in.
The fundamental problem: People of good faith must necessarily disagree about the quality of the stolen election "evidence", because the evidence is indirect, and in short supply from butt-covering officials. E-voting is like having a body that can't experience the warning of pain: Extremely likely mutilation and death from untreated infection.
We will see the death of democracy as we bicker about the quality of conflicting "evidence" and miss the real issue. It's only a matter of time before someone succeeds with e-elections, and then once installed, pulls up the ladder of elections behind them and insures elections are fakes, but superficially identical to real ones.
Government "protections" don't matter, they boil down to trust of the government when our system's based on checks and balances. With invisible secret vote counting, there’s no basis for confidence in the results of such counting, Elections are political Rohrschack tests. Our Founders settled that Rohrschack question, favoring distrust, and placing checks and balances in lieu of "trust" and the "plausible explanations" that are actually the favored habitat of election cheaters for the cover they provide.
It's wise in times of good administration to be prepared for bad administration. So distrust is no offense if you think the present administration loves liberty and serves the public's will.
Whether we break down along "partisan" lines or along "strict proof" "rational suspicion" or "faith-based-elections-OK" lines, the dreams of both Right and Left are all at risk by quibbling over the winnner and loser of one election, when democracy is in peril.
We won't know democracy died from suspended elections -- fake elections are dictator-approved worldwide.
When elections aren't real they are (1) like casinos: you win enough to stay addicted, (2) politicians don't listen, (3) incumbents have 97% or higher re-election rates, (4) the public isn't informed, (5) the government is surprisingly bold sometimes, (6) more exceptions to red tape of asking for warrants (7) the public accepts the rationale of totalitarians "nothing to fear if nothing to hide", and (8) unpopular wars continue, to save face. Only "Face" limits power at all.
The evil genius here is making elections inscrutable so that people argue with their partisan foes, enough academics honestly opine the evidence ambiguous, peaceful Americans detest the "partisanship" even though all fake victims are partisan. This happened through the government's solution to ambiguous evidence of Florida's chads, which was to *eliminate* that evidence with e-voting, funded by feds.
Meanwhile, Machiavelli laughs at the stupid Americans fighting each other instead of him, proud of his genius using necessarily ambiguous evidence to confuse, getting professionals to unwittingly protect him because there's "no proof" but they don't even know what proof would be, so they won't find it. If Machiavelli isn't real today, how long before political vacuums get filled?
Paul R. Lehto