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If there is any one thing held sacred in a democracy, it is the process of democracy itself. Each voter has the right to vote, and each vote must be counted.
In the blogosphere there has been much talk of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement as well as mechanical errors and outright election fraud. I'm not going to get into individual cases for any of these. If you're interested, just poke around the political blogs and you'll find hundreds if not thousands of examples. These range in credibility from confirmed problems that have already been fixed through certain hoaxes designed to draw attention away from legitimate concerns.What truly frightens me is the lack of coverage by mainstream (particularly television) media. Can anything be more newsworthy than the efforts to determine the actual intentions of voters in this democracy? I can think of a few reasons the networks have not been covering this:
1. They don't want a repeat of 2000 with weeks of uncertainty and speculation. (This doesn't make a lot of sense, since a prolonged battle would drive ratings up, but there is a credibility factor.) 2. Since Kerry conceded, they figure it's over and nothing can change that. (Of course a concession is not binding and there is more to report on than the final outcome.) 3. As some less-than-credible sources have reported, there may be pressure on the networks not to report on the possibility of fraud, intimidation and disenfranchisement. (Would the networks acquiesce to avoid further content regulation and censorship?) 4. There are "bigger" stories to report such as Falluja and changes in the CIA and cabinet. (It has been suggested that the timing of the Falluja attack was engineered as a distraction from the election results.) 5. The mainstream media isn't liberal after all. (Liberals would surely want every vote counted and to keep the public informed.)
When it comes down to it, I don't know the reasoning behind the decision. I just know that without the coverage, relatively few Americans are aware of all the questions surrounding the validity of the election.
Ralph Nader has requested a recount in New Hampshire. This may help point out inaccuracies in the optical scan type of vote tabulation. The Indiana Democratic Party requested a recount for the Representative race in the 9th District where the Democrat lost by 1,485 votes. The same type of machines used in that area were elsewhere found to count a straight Democratic ticket as Libertarian instead. This race could easily turn around if the same problem was present in the 9th Congressional District. There have been unconfirmed reports that Ralph Nader is also requesting a recount in Florida. There won't be any pregnant chads this time, since punch card voting was outlawed in Florida after 2000, but Jeb Bush is still the Governor. Finally, and most importantly, David Cobb (Green Party candidate) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian candidate) raised enough funds and have requested a statewide recount in Ohio. If, after the provisional and overseas absentee ballots are counted, the recount gives enough votes to John Kerry, George W. Bush will not be inaugurated in January. John Kerry will be the 44th President of the United States of America.
Is the public at all prepared for this possibility? I may very well be dreaming - after all, Kerry is over 130,000 votes behind. On the other hand, one precinct in Ohio (out of more than 11,000) already found and corrected more than 4,000 votes for Bush that did not exist. What will the public think if Kerry ends up the electoral winner and they've heard almost nothing about the questionable results or recount efforts? When the mainstream media has been parroting the "Bush mandate" propaganda, would Kerry be able to govern at all? (As to Bush's "mandate", the last President to win with less electoral votes than Bush was Woodrow Wilson in 1916, excepting of course Bush himself in 2000.)
If you have any belief (or even hope) that Kerry could come out ahead in the Ohio recount, please contact the national media and 24-hour news networks. Let them know that you are interested in keeping informed on voting irregularities and the recount process.