Keep the Republic "Robert Koehler"

[kster]

THE HUFFINGTON POST

The ground feels a little soft, but we're going to stand it.

Premise one: Having a fair election -- all votes counted, all who are eligible and want to vote allowed to vote -- is far, far more important, even in 2008, than who wins.


Premise two: Fair elections are not a given. They never have been, but things are worse now than ever before because of a perfect storm, you might say, of factors that have converged in the new millennium: officialdom's seduction by unsafe, high-tech voting systems; the seizure of power by a party of ruthless true believers who feel entitled to rule and will do anything to win; a polite, confused opposition party that won't make a stink about raw injustice; and an arrogantly complacent media embedded in the political and economic status quo.

The result: Benjamin Franklin's worst nightmare.


SNIP...I know, just thinking about this is terrifying. The stakes are too high. We have no context for contemplating the possibility that the United States is anything but "the world's greatest democracy," which surely explains why most of the media, including a phalanx of progressive publications that ought to be on hair-trigger alert about vote suppression and manipulation, have ignored or dismissed the glaring danger signals.

SNIP...It all comes down to the first few words of Dorothy Fadiman's about-to-be-released documentary, Stealing America: Vote by Vote, spoken by investigative journalist Greg Palast: "The nasty little secret of American democracy is that not all the votes get counted."

SNIP..."This really is the serious business of our lives," said Ion Sancho, election supervisor of Leon County, Fla., a fair-elections hero and one of the participants. "My goal is waking people up. My tactic is to put myself in the middle of the road and say" -- to anyone who would suppress or interfere with the vote -- "hey, you're going to have to hit me."

These are just words unless you sign on with your life.




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/keep-the-republic_b_93726.html