UNION-TRIBUNE
October 1, 2004
"We intend to enforce the fundamental constitutional right of every American to vote – to ensure that the Constitution's promise is realized and that, in disputed elections, every vote is counted fully and fairly."
– John Kerry
Democratic presidential nominee
"In 2004, Democrats will win the White House back the old-fashioned way – by counting every vote."
– John Edwards
Democratic vice presidential nominee
"Every American must be able to exercise his or her basic, non-negotiable right to vote. This year, Americans deserve an error-free, intimidation-free, voter-disenfranchisement-free, chad-free, butterfly-free election."
– Terry McAuliffe
Democratic National Committee chairman
The party of Kerry and Edwards and McAuliffe continues to insinuate that the last presidential election was stolen. Democrats continue to suggest that black and senior voters were disenfranchised.
They continue to promote the fiction that, if each and every vote had been counted four years ago, George W. Bush would not be sitting in the Oval Office.
So this time around, Democrats say, they are going to dispatch observers and lawyers to polling places throughout the country "to monitor elections and enforce the law." In this presidential election, they declare, every ballot cast will be counted.
Well, it's nice to know that Mssrs. Kerry and Edwards and McAuliffe have dedicated themselves this year to protecting the voting rights of poor little minorities, like yours truly, as well as seniors.
But I, for one, am not worried about my voting rights being abrogated. I'm far more concerned that the ballot I cast on Election Day will be neutralized by voting wrongs.
For example, a coalition of groups supporting Kerry's candidacy has set up a Web site that urges supporters of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader to vote for Kerry in battleground states in exchange for votes by Kerry supporters for Nader in states where the outcome is not expected to be close.
Groups engaged in this unlawful vote-swapping claimed to have "helped 36,000 voters exchange pledges" in 2000. Those votes could have, conceivably, changed the election outcome in Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin – states that Bush lost that by fewer than 17,000 votes total.
Then there's the recent revelation that some 46,000 New York City residents are unlawfully registered to vote not only in the Empire State but also in Florida. Of those registered in both states, nearly 70 percent are Democrats.
Nearly 1,700 of those registered in both states requested that absentee ballots be sent to their home in the other state. It appears that many, if not most, voted twice, making the much-contested 2000 Florida presidential election closer than it otherwise would have been.
A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association identifies yet another area of voting abuse – the large numbers of Americans suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia who are allowed to cast ballots, no matter how mentally incapacitated.
Workers for a party or a candidate who show up at a nursing home to "assist" with voting can commit "wholesale fraud," said Stanford University law professor Pamela S. Karlan, an author of the article.
That is borne out by two other studies, one in Pennsylvania, the other in Rhode Island, which found that patients in dementia clinics actually turned out in higher numbers in proportion to the general population than did voters overall in the last presidential election.
And Democrats continue to troll for votes in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities. For example, in Santa Clara County, Kerry campaign operatives have sued the local Veteran's Affairs medical center for preventing them from signing up dementia patients to vote.
Finally, there's the issue of noncitizen voting. The 11-year-old National Voter Registration Act declared that state driver's license applications "shall serve as an application for voter registration with respect to elections for federal office."
The so-called "Motor Voter Law" has made it all too easy for noncitizens to add their names to voter rolls in states that do not require proof of U.S. citizenship as a condition of obtaining a driver's permit.
Indeed, in his just published book, "Stealing Elections," a former colleague of mine, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, notes that at least eight of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida.
Yet, whenever the suggestion is made that, in a nation where some 32 million residents are foreign-born (where as many as one-quarter of the foreign-born are here illegally), people ought to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote, Democrats cry "intimidation."
Whenever the proposal is made that people who show up at polls to cast their votes ought to present some form of photo identification, the Democrats shout "racism."
The party of Kerry and Edwards and McAuliffe hasn't had nearly as much to say about voting wrongs as it has about voting rights.
Maybe that's because the Democrats know they stand to benefit most from vote-swapping, double voting, registration of dementia patients, and noncitizen voting."
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Defeat George Bush
Support the critical voice of third parties
Build a progressive majority
You can make your vote for president count by joining the national VotePair campaign and using your vote to elect Kerry-Edwards while supporting the role of progressive third-party candidates. As we learned in 2000, a few hundred votes in the right states can make all the difference in the world--and the whole world is watching now.
In vote-pairing, swing-state progressives whose first instinct might have been to vote for Nader, Cobb or Badnarik are paired with Democrats (and others whose first choice for President is Kerry) in 'safe' states where either Bush or Kerry has a decisive lead. Paired voters can communicate with each other and decide to vote strategically: swing-state participants for Kerry and safe-state participants for Nader, Cobb or Badnarik. As a result, the paired voters' support for progressive third parties is recorded in the popular vote and their preference for Kerry over Bush finds voice in the Electoral College.
Defeating Bush means redirecting the current Administration's aggressive unilateral foreign policy, protecting the environment and women's right to choose, and keeping Bush from stacking the Supreme Court and federal courts with right-wing judges like Justices Scalia and Thomas.
Together, we can vote strategically to build a progressive majority and prevent another disastrous Bush presidency.
Isn't that special? |
