Why Democrats Don't Count

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> Why Democrats Don't Count
>
> Lessons from the Un-Gore of Mexico
>
> July 14, 2006
> By Greg Palast
>
> [Watch "Florida con Salsa, Palast's 15-minute investigative report 
> from Mexico City for Democracy Now!  linked from

> http://www.gregpalast.com

> The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his 
> victory away.  His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter 
> rolls.  Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away 
> from the polls.  Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed 
> no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads.
>
> And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to 
> re-count those votes in public.  Everyone knew full well a fair 
> count would certainly change the outcome.
>
> You've heard this story before:  Gore 2000.  Kerry 2004.
>
> But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the 
> scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats."
>
> For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head.  In it, 
> an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up 
> in front of the White House and says three magic words:  "Count the votes."
>
> This past Saturday, my dream came true.  Unfortunately, it was in 
> Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get.  There was Andreas Manuel 
> Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- 
> the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling 
> clique inside, "Count the votes!"
>
> Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million 
> pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- 
> vote by vote.
>
> And you know what?  I think they are going to have to listen.  I 
> suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant 
> elite, may well have to count those votes.  But, for that to happen, 
> someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms.
>
> Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats 
> stand up when their elections are stolen?'
>
> The answer:  for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're 
> invertebrates.
>
> I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn 
> funny).  Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a 
> devotion to democracy deep in the bone.  Yet weirdly, candidates 
> that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy.
>
> Why?  Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the 
> great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful.  But the 
> candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come 
> from the privileged and pampered class.  Votes are just the 
> surfboards on which their ambitions ride.
>
> Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied 
> bundles uncounted.  That's four times the "official" margin of 
> victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador.  Supposedly, they're 
> "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable.  But, not surprisingly, 
> when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly 
> unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's.
>
> If you think that's a Mexican game, think again.  Because that's 
> exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio.
>
> In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for 
> President.  A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission 
> statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were 
> cast by African-Americans.  Did Black folk forget to vote for 
> President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network 
> implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot?  Not at 
> all.  Machines can't count some ballots.  But people can.  For 
> example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines 
> rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot.  The 
> write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring 
> out that voter's intent.
>
> The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago 
> reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority 
> attempted to choose Gore.   And they would have been counted -- but 
> Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt.
>
> So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing 
> their count.  And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a 
> quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio.
>
> But why fixate on Florida and Ohio?  Here's a nasty little fact 
> about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your 
> newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 
> presidential election that were never counted.  In 2000, the 
> uncounted ballots totaled just under two million.
>
> And where were the Democrats?  In 2004, behind the huge jump in 
> uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black 
> and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, 
> mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots."  They could have been 
> counted, if someone had fought for it.   Hundreds of lawyers were on 
> stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in 
> confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told 
> them to stand down.
>
> Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was 
> stolen.  "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not 
> now," said the beta dog.  (I suspect that if Al Gore were found 
> bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with 
> "There may come a time when I speak on that...").
>
> Lopez Obrador is of a different breed.  At the rally last Saturday 
> in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of 
> fraud on a screen eighty feet tall.  Imagine if Gore had projected 
> the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen 
> in front of the White House.
>
> Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by 
> calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the 
> capital.  Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday.  The 
> result:  the word among the political classes is that the election 
> may be annulled.  Even the conservative Financial Times has warned 
> Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a 
> full vote count.
>
> North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it.  The Republican 
> Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID 
> requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter 
> registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it 
> completely.  The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is 
> not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them.
>
> The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party 
> gringos.  Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the 
> Democrats will count for nothing.
>
>
> **********
> Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED 
> MADHOUSE 
> <<http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ncmVncGFsYXN0LmNvbS9tYWRob3VzZS9pbmRleC5waHAvb3JkZXItdGhlLWJvb2sv&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NTY0MzU%3D&CampaignID=25&CampaignStatisticsID=19&Demo=0&Email=jhorn@monmouth.edu>http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ncmVncGFsYXN0LmNvbS9tYWRob3VzZS9pbmRleC5waHAvb3JkZXItdGhlLWJvb2sv&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NTY0MzU%3D&CampaignID=25&CampaignStatisticsID=19&Demo=0&Email=jhorn@monmouth.edu> 
> :  Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme 
> to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the 
> Front Lines of the Class War."  Go to www.GregPalast.com 
> <http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5HcmVnUGFsYXN0LmNvbQ%3D%3D&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NTY0MzU%3D&CampaignID=25&CampaignStatisticsID=19&Demo=0&Email=jhorn@monmouth.edu> 
> .
>
> Palast's report, "Florida con Salsa?  Vote Fraud in Mexico" was 
> filmed and produced by Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen (Big Noise 
> Films 
> <<http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5iaWdub2lzZWZpbG1zLmNvbS8%3D&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NTY0MzU%3D&CampaignID=25&CampaignStatisticsID=19&Demo=0&Email=jhorn@monmouth.edu>http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5iaWdub2lzZWZpbG1zLmNvbS8%3D&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NTY0MzU%3D&CampaignID=25&CampaignStatisticsID=19&Demo=0&Email=jhorn@monmouth.edu> 
> ).