I'm not sorry that Kerry wasn't elected but I was sad that there were so many votes for Bush.
Did anyone else notice that the media called it for Bush before literally hundreds of thousands of votes were counted in several key states that were close (florida, ohio, etc)?
I'm glad to say that the candidate supported by the IRSM, POW Leonard Peltier, collected over 22,000 votes his way!!
I recieved this by email and you might find it interesting. Like Redstar2000's been saying, it's not possible to elect a reformist party anymore.
The main author of the email below is my nephew, Ryan. He went to Miami
to volunteer for Kerry and to help get people to vote. As sure as I am
breathing, I can assure you that Ryan is INCAPABLE of not telling the
truth. This needs some press. I know it sounds bold but if the below is
accurate (and coming from Ryan, I don't know how it could _not_ be) Florida
needs to re-vote.
Begin forwarded message:
On The Front Lines in Florida
Spurred by the unwillingness of the
broadcast media to report voting problems during the 2004 election race,
we want to alert our friends, family and colleagues to the widespread
voter suppression and disenfranchisement that occurred in Broward County,
Florida. We staffed the emergency hotline for the Kerry Campaign
Headquarters in Broward County from late October through the election. All
of us were devastated by the margin of Bush's win in Florida, particularly
since polls predicted the race would be extremely close.
Many of the calls to our hotline were from voters who had pressed the
"Kerry" button on their electronic voting screen, only to have "Bush" light
up as the candidate they had chosen. In some cases, this would happen
repeatedly until about the 5th or 6th time the voter pressed "Kerry" and
eventually his name would light up. In other cases, the voters pushed
"Kerry" but were later asked to confirm their "Bush" vote.
We had calls about a road block, put up by the police at 7am on November 2,
which blocked road access to two precinct locations in majority black
districts. There was no justification for the road block -- no accident or
crime scene or construction.
Many of our calls dealt with voter suppression, or manipulation, of the
Haitian population -- occurrences which seem too numerous, and their
targets too indefensible as primarily poor first-time-voter Creole-speaking
refugees, to be anything but systemic. In one example, a voter whose hands
were bandaged could not press the touch-screen himself; he asked the
nonpartisan election official to press "Kerry" for him, but the election
official pressed "Bush" and sent his vote immediately into the
machine. Many, many others were denied the right to vote and were not
given provisional ballots, while others were refused assistance at the
polls, even though provisional ballots and voter assistance are legal
rights. Others were told they had already voted and were turned away,
although they had never voted previously. This latter experience was a
complaint not isolated to Haitians but also included other surprised voters
with no recourse except their word against that of the Supervisor of Elections.
We spoke with hundreds of voters who were certain they had registered to
vote in the past 6 months, well before the October 18 deadline, but were
not on the rolls. And those were just the people who had the information
to contact us.
The local paper, citing the Supervisor of Elections office as its source,
told all people voting by absentee ballot that they could turn in ballots
by hand to any of its seven offices by 5pm on Tuesday, November 2. Every
single one of those offices except one was closed on Tuesday.
We had numerous calls from voters on November 2 whose precincts had closed,
yet the Supervisor of Elections office had given voters no notification of
the closure, and no notification of where to go to vote. Thousands of
people were likely disenfranchised because of inexcusable mishaps such as this.
We had many calls from people who had been harassed by poll workers, who
were turned away without being allowed the right to vote provisionally
(another breech of voter rights). Other people were turned away because the
address on their drivers license did not match the address on their voter
registration card; again, this is in direct violation of election law.
All of these problems do not even take into account the 58,000 absentee
ballots that had been "lost" by the Supervisor of Elections, in perhaps the
most Democratic county in the state, disenfranchising thousands of people
who were disabled, out of the country, or elderly and unable get to the
polls. These events, and many others, have been documented and also
reported to lawyers, but we fear they will not get the attention they
deserve. This is what we witnessed in just one county. We believe that
these "voting irregularities" raise serious concerns about the legitimacy
of the results in Florida, and more broadly, about the health of democracy
in this country. Please circulate this widely.
Libby Anker
[email protected]
Ryan Centner
[email protected]
Jill Greenlee
[email protected]
Rachel Van Sickle-Ward
[email protected]
Ryan Centner PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley