I Cogitate

The bedrock basis of democracy is every citizen having the opportunity to voice and vote his or her beliefs and have that vote counted. Is there any credible moral basis for opposing this?

All people of every political affiliation should be standing together as one in support of the efforts of California U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, Ohio U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones and others, in fixing a voting process that has become far too closely allied with a sleight-of-hand preferred by Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Sour grapes you say? Sore losers! Get over the 2004 presidential election!

Well, we are all losers--this country suffers--democracy is mocked--if efforts are undertaken by anyone to disenfranchise legally registered voters from exercising a cherished freedom. Either we all have equal protection under the law or none of us do. How can we rightfully be the exporters and proponents of democracy in Iraq when something like this soils our reputation?

This is worse, different from the scurrilous James Tobin, a former New England chairman of the President Bush re-election campaign official, federally indicted late in 2004 for phone-jamming New Hampshire Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines in 2002.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State and co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, and other officials proactively made decisions to put up roadblocks and make it more difficult for registered voters in Ohio Democratic strongholds to cast their ballots. Call it a modern day version of the poll tax.

This is unethical and morally indefensible.

Curiously, Mr. Blackwell's biography lists his religious preference as Christian. One wonders just how does he reconcile his deliberate actions with the righteousness of his faith?

Some will say that Democrat John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960 over Republican Richard Nixon due to highly questionable voting irregularities in Illinois and that Nixon chose not to challenge the Illnois ballot count. If this wrong happened (and it probably did) it was just as objectionable.

To all the newspapers and think tanks that moan and bleat about the low percentage of the American public who actually take the time and make the effort to cast ballots--step up to the plate right here, right now. Your current silence is deafening.

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Statement On Her Objection To The Certification Of Ohio’s Electoral Votes

January 6, 2005

For most of us in the Senate and the House, we have spent our lives fighting for things we believe in – always fighting to make our nation better.

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice.

Now we must add a new fight – the fight for electoral justice.

Every citizen of this country who is registered to vote should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth of their community, their vote has as much weight as the vote of any Senator, any Congressperson, any President, any cabinet member, or any CEO of any Fortune 500 Corporation.

I am sure that every one of my colleagues – Democrat, Republican, and Independent – agrees with that statement. That in the voting booth, every one is equal.

So now it seems to me that under the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees the right to vote, we must ask:

Why did voters in Ohio wait hours in the rain to vote? Why were voters at Kenyon College, for example, made to wait in line until nearly 4 a.m. to vote because there were only two machines for 1300 voters?

Why did poor and predominantly African-American communities have disproportionately long waits?

Why in Franklin County did election officials only use 2,798 machines when they said they needed 5,000? Why did they hold back 68 machines in warehouses? Why were 42 of those machines in predominantly African-American districts?

Why did, in Columbus area alone, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 voters leave polling places, out of frustration, without having voted? How many more never bothered to vote after they heard about this?

Why is it when 638 people voted at a precinct in Franklin County, a voting machine awarded 4,258 extra votes to George Bush. Thankfully, they fixed it – but how many other votes did the computers get wrong?

Why did Franklin County officials reduce the number of electronic voting machines in downtown precincts, while adding them in the suburbs? This also led to long lines.

In Cleveland, why were there thousands of provisional ballots disqualified after poll workers gave faulty instructions to voters?

Because of this, and voting irregularities in so many other places, I am joining with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now."

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Let's check and see if Mr. Blackwell's state elections office has any reference books to Ohio election law. It makes one wonder exactly what red state moral values Kenny Boy has picked up from the Bible:

Associated Press
Sunday, January 9, 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 8--The state's chief elections officer, accused of mishandling the presidential vote in November, sent a fundraising letter for his 2006 gubernatorial campaign that was accompanied by a request for illegal contributions.

A pledge card with the letter from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who co-chaired the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in Ohio, said "corporate & personal checks are welcome."

Corporate donations are illegal in Ohio..

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell called it an oversight.

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