[lbo-talk] No Stolen Elections!

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

Doug writes:
>> So say Kerry won Ohio - he still would have lost the pop vote by 3m+.
>> When Bush lost the pop vote by 500k and won the electoral vote, we 
>> denounced that as an antidemocratic abomination, which it was. But while
>> 500k is virtual tie, a 3m pop vote lead is serious. Would we want to
>> call a Kerry electoral college victory under those circs legitimate?
>> The fraud & intimidation should be investigated and denounced. But 
>> saying "Kerry won" is delusional and hypocritical.

The Republican party conspired to steal the election, and succeeded (time 
was, that was illegal).  Do we now say that any jim crow era tactics, any vote 
suppression, any electronic machines with no paper record, any rejected 
registrations, any 9-hour lines, any purge lists, any fraudulent phone calls and fake 
petitions and threatening mail and challenged voters, any of this is normal 
and expected and if the perpetrators win in the end, well, they get to take 
office?  And are believed to have received a 'popular' mandate?  The popular vote 
reflects these thousand cuts more than the electoral vote does.

In Florida, the Senate race was very close and had these tactics been 
stopped--oh, say, by enforcing the law?--we would've seen a different outcome here.

Nationally we saw suppression and manipulation of the vote that I think we'll 
find is only exceeded in the post-reconstruction period.  It'll take a while 
for all of it to come out.  Kerry made a bad mistake in conceding (giving him 
perhaps more credit than is due).  He has no interest in fighting for our 
right to vote, however we do.

Jenny Brown