I've been published again: Election Reform = Peaceful Revolution

Originally Published in the Humboldt Advocate 6/29/05

Has the Consent of the Governed Been Withdrawn, YET?
By Dave Berman
6/24/05

Imagine it is November 8, 2005, the day California will hold Governor Schwarzenegger's special initiatives election. Voters are queued up awaiting their turn to cast a ballot. One by one the constituents approach the celebrity politician and whisper in his ear. At the end of the day, Arnold tells us the outcome. That is neither practical nor reliable, though it is strongly analogous to the private source code and secret vote counting prevalent in recent American elections.

Roughly 30% of the votes cast in last November's general election did not create a paper record. That means the votes were not verifiable and could not be recounted. That also means the so-called "irregularities" cannot be reconciled. So when an election machine loses data or counts backwards or registers more votes than there are registered voters, we have an inherent uncertainty about the results reported. Our elections are conducted under conditions that ensure inconclusive outcomes.

Many people clearly understand these systemic problems yet persist in data analysis and endless debate about election fraud. However strong the evidence may be, this is not an effective election reform tactic because it necessarily exacerbates partisan tension. It should not be surprising for election systems to be designed for ambiguity. Such conditions can be relied upon for polarizing controversy, which is to the advantage of those in power and detrimental to the rest of us.

The reforms we need are all systemic, just like the problems we must address. Thus, the point more important than fraud is: Because inconclusive results, by definition, mean that the true outcome of an election cannot be known, there is no basis for confidence in the results reported from U.S. federal elections. Do not accept the arbitrary argument from someone attempting to claim they still maintain confidence. Insist on understanding their basis for such confidence. You have the means to illustrate that no basis for confidence exists.

In order to repair our election process we must ensure conclusive outcomes and create a new basis for confidence. How can we accept anything less?

Clearly this is all easier said than done. Many worthwhile reforms have been proposed and it is important to note that no single one of them will ensure conclusive outcomes and create a basis for confidence all on its own. This will require a comprehensive election reform platform such as the list below, found in the Voter Confidence Resolution:

1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
3) a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission, and
4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and credentialed members of the media, and
6) equal time provisions to be restored by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a non-partisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
8) preferential voting and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections

Notice these are all systemic changes that do not reflect a partisan skew at all. In my view, partisanship has too often been put before the greater good. This is treason. Bi-partisanship is also problematic. This is where the two parties openly rather than covertly collaborate under the guise of competition. This is the death of ideas.

To eventually realize all these changes would reflect a re-birth of ideas and a new free market within which they can compete. May the best ideas win. May the people's voices be heard. And when the day comes that our voices are again heard, where previously they had been silenced, this will be a revolutionary shift in the balance of power between the Government and We the People.

What will it take for the phrase "peaceful revolution" to become socially acceptable? If each of us asks this question of one or two other people, pretty soon the answer will be obvious.

The Voter Confidence Resolution explains that the Consent of the Governed is not being sought. Universal disenfranchisement through privatized corporate elections is but one proof. We the People did not authorize suspension of the Constitution such that citizens are now subject to arrest without charge or access to an attorney. Nobody asked us if pollution for profit could trump sustaining the environment for future generations. And consider that we have no say in how our federal budget dollars are spent, even though this impacts many aspects of our local economy. During the first American revolution patriots in revolt decried "taxation without representation." This is not different.

It must be clear that the U.S. federal government is acting with the implied Consent of the Governed, only because we have not stood up to acknowledge that if they don't honestly seek our Consent they shall not have it. That's the point we're at. The peaceful move of revolutionary caliber--capable of causing the balance of power to shift between Government and We the People--is simply to ask other communities to consider the Voter Confidence Resolution and the question: Has the Consent of the Governed been withdrawn, YET?

The Arcata City Council has scheduled a hearing on the Voter Confidence Resolution on its July 6 agenda. Read the full text here: http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html


Dave Berman co-founded the Voter Confidence Committee, an election reform and watchdog organization based in Humboldt County. For more info visit: www.voterconfidencecommittee.org

You are doing fine work. The eight points of your election reform platform sound like good, sound laws to me. (If we're to have a democracy here in the U.S.)

need a link for credit.

The Humboldt Advocate does not publish online. You can link to this GuvWurld blog entry:

http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/06/big-day-for-voter-confidence.html

I am hoping other pubs will pick this up. Last night I submitted it to the Columbus Free Press. I will certainly keep a list of links to sites that run this and hope that any and all DUers who see it somewhere will add mention here. Thanks.

I have posted this in the GuvWurld News Archive. Unfortunately, the URLs for my files are long and and unwieldy so I won't paste it but I will embed it so you can find it and use it if you want.

which speak to the fundamentals of our democracy, are getting an airing. I like your first two paragraphs a lot. They lay the problem out very well and graphically.

(Just as an edit, I would amend this sentence as follows: "One by one the constituents approach the celebrity politician and whisper THEIR VOTE in his ear." --just for narrative clarity.)

I also like all of your recommendations, except #3 (see below)--all the rest are excellent and to the point. I am very, very, very glad to have these ideas out there in the public venue. Thank you for doing it!

Here are some suggestions for re-publication (future publication/re-write):

"Many people clearly understand these systemic problems yet persist in data analysis and endless debate about election fraud. However strong the evidence may be, this is not an effective election reform tactic because it necessarily exacerbates partisan tension." --GuvWorld

This sentence turns reality around and says that, because we were disenfranchised, and because we have strongly objected to being disenfranchised, and because we are occupied with compiling and analyzing the evidence of that disenfranchisement, WE are causing some kind of unnecessary disruption, or "partisan tension." It is the people who deliberately designed an unverifiable, partisan-controlled election system, and who used it to steal the election, who are causing the disruption, not we who are investigating what they did.

Truth is truth. The Bush Republicans STOLE this election--and the two previous ones as well. If Republicans don't want to face the truth about that, too bad. If it makes them want to have MORE unverifiable elections, they can go live in China, or Saudi Arabia. If they believe in democracy, then THEY should be as anxious to know the truth as we are. But you know many of them are not. Many of them LIKE having the powers of government without having to win the majority. I think there are some who DON'T, too--some who are honest--and quite a few who voted for Kerry and had THEIR votes changed and stolen. But I'm talking about the Republicans who support Bush and DON'T CARE how he obtained power.

I think you should careful of unconsciously pitching your arguments to this latter group, thinking you can persuade them. They are not the ones who need persuading--they are obdurate in their views, in any case. It is the DISENFRANCHISED who need persuading that the election system is not transparent and not valid. Too many of them have their heads in the sand, or simply don't know the truth.

You don't need to dis those of us who have been seeking the truth, and compiling the evidence, and analyzing this election system. It appears to me that you are seeking a phony "objectivity" or "non-partisanship" in stating things this way. That is, you are saying that YOU are not partisan; YOU are not a trouble-maker; YOU are not like US--us obsessives, us agitators who can't stand that this crime was committed. You just want everybody to be nice, and to be fair.

"Yet we persist." You're damn right. This last election was a CRIME. We have not got to the bottom of it yet. But we will. And we do have strong probable cause, if not the "smoking guns" and the perps in hand. And it is not something you can be neutral about. It is not something you can have a lofty, philosophy of government discussion about. I think that's what you're trying to do, and it just doesn't work at certain points.

"Yet we persist." Come on, GuvWorld, if we hadn't persisted, this would all have been swept under the rug and there would be no movement for election reform.

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"inconclusive results"

The Bush Cartel which now controls the White House, the Congress, the courts, the military, the intelligence apparatus, and the corporate news monopolies doesn't agree that the result was "inconclusive." They think the election system is just fine. They set it up quite deliberately to give them the result they wanted.

So how do you deal with that? "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

Are we not the ones--us trouble-making, partisan, election fraud analyzers and agitators--who ESTABLISHED that the result is not just inconclusive but very probably wrong? It takes trouble-makers to do that--to point out what's "broke" so that it CAN be fixed. If this keeps being covered up, nothing will get fixed. Yes, "inconclusive results" is not okay. But who cares--who is going to create a movement around THAT?

I agree that that is a neutral way to put it--we can't have "inclusive results"--but I think you have to be harder on what that means, on who set it up that way, who is profiting from it, and who has been corrupted by it.

There are REASONS why we have "inconclusive results." Motives. People. Decision-makers. And, I think, a whole lot skulduggery, corruption and crime.

Having conclusive results--that is, transparent verifiable elections--is a no-brainer. Or should be. Why are we suddenly WITHOUT conclusive results--in this highly developed, 200 year old democracy?

Until we face those obstacles--the why's--we will be stymied in fixing it.

Also, you're not going to get anywhere with election officials who have been promised lucrative employment with Sequoia after their "public service" is over. You're not going to get anywhere with public officials who are handing out OTHER government contracts to Diebold, in exchange for, oh, a week at Beverly Hilton at an "electronic systems conference."

What is going on with this is corrupt and criminal. It is not reasonable. And if you don't address these realities, then you are going to be up against ordinary citizens who have been lulled and reassured and lied to by these officials, and who don't understand why you don't trust these nice people.

Some will understand your reasonable argument. But many will not--because of the clever lies and propaganda and coverups that are going on with regard to these systems. (And some will just be Bushites who prefer an election system that is owned and controlled by rightwing Republicans.)

We need a purge. We need to clean house. We need to stop being so damned nice. And I am happy to be non-partisan about THAT. I think there are plenty of corrupt Democrats who need to be purged from our elections offices (as well federal/state elected representatives who are corrupt or malfeasant on this issue).

And Kerry voters need to know the truth, and need to get mad--for this to get done. Reason and good government arguments are not going to cut it. We are looking at very serious corruption.

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#3 of your recommendations

"...uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission"

I think all of your other recommendations are excellent. But I don't like this one. Here's why. I am very wary of anything "uniform" or "national" because of the imminent danger of this phony, private Baker/Carter "commission" and what I think it is really up to: federalizing elections under Bush Cartel control.

I don't want anything that's "uniform" or "national" while the Bush Cartel is in power. It's extremely dangerous.

HAVA was bad enough--the corruption of our election system, and many of our election officials, with $4+ billion in federal dollars as a bribe to the states to buy Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and other such electronic systems owned and controlled by Bushites, with the lavish lobbying of these companies, and with the quite deliberate failure to control any of this.

Power over election systems should remain with the states. I think the Bush Cartel is going to try to take that power away, because of the threat of citizen election reform movements. Ordinary people still have potential power and influence at the state/local level. Any federal effort to impose "standards" can easily be turned into imposing Diebold--and then we'll have the voter purges and the vote "tabulations" all occurring in the White House basement orchestrated by Karl Rove. They had a patchwork system of control this time. Next time they want all control.

No "non-partisan nationally recognized commission" has any power to impose such standards. It has to go through Congress or the states. If it goes through Bush's Congress, you think we're going to get restoration of our right to vote (i.e., verifiable elections)? Not on your life! No way they are going to IMPROVE our election system--except to their criminal benefit.

This sounds uncomfortably similar to the B/C "commission." They claim to be non-partisan. It's a lie, but they claim it. They are acting just as official-sounding as they can, but they are a private entity that sprang out of nowhere, packed with interested parties to the exclusion of REAL voting right groups. And they are going to make a "report to Congress." (Nobody asked them to--it's their own idea.)

I would just as soon Bush's Congress, and the fed gov't, and phony national commissions like this one, keep their hands off our election systems. The Bush Cartel didn't care to enforce the Voting Rights Act in 2004. And they won't enforce--or permit--anything else that truly protects the right of the voters to vote them out of office.

So, if it is THEY who devise or impose "national standards," look out! Your right to try to restore and protect your right to vote will be the next thing to go.

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I'm not sure I fully understand your tag line: "Has the Consent of the Governed been withdrawn, YET?"

Shouldn't the question be: Has the Consent of the Governed been given YET?

Perhaps I'm not understanding something.

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Again, thanks for your work, GuvWorld! Please give us a report on any feedback you get!

---

P.S. I was just thinking, I'm not dealing with what you are dealing with--city councils, cautious politicians, the Dem Party corruption influencing liberals to be fearful of this issue, and lots of uninformed people. I have strong feelings about things--but I am not doing what you are doing at the moment. So take or leave my advice accordingly. Gettting verifiable elections is the important thing, and you are doing great work toward that goal.

I'm glad anytime I can stimulate thought and debate, so thank you Peace Patriot for advancing the dialog.

Regarding fraud, I think you have read too much into what I wrote. I'm saying that continuing to harp on that issue is not going to be a successful tactic. I agree 100% that fraud occurred in 2000, 2002 and 2004. But it is not a necessary argument to make to move the discussion where I'd like to see it go. In fact, I think it is counterproductive because it invites mindless, arbitrary resistance (even though it also can educate and win over some people). As a general rule, I like to look for arguments that have no inherent opposite. It is a fact that unverifiable votes, by definition, make it impossible to know the true results. I don't think this is arguable. By making this inarguable case I think we can build bridges more reliably than we could win converts via the fraud argument. I think this speaks to both your first and second main concerns, with the exception of motive. Here again I agree it is a real factor but a counterproductive tactic to try to address. We must build unity, itself a revolutionary step when it shifts the balance of power between government and We The People.

Regarding national standards, there are two things I want to say:

First, as I've said steadfastly since the beginning, and which you can read about in the Guide to the Voter Confidence Resolution, the resolution and its reform platform are templates meant to be customized on the local level. This means we can avoid splitting hairs and keep continuity with the major frames across many communities. I have no problem if you want to amend or remove #3 when you promote it in your town.

Second, consistent with the nature of a template, saying "national standards" can mean different things in different contexts. Personally, I do not feel like a citizen of the 50 UNITED States. If anything, it is the 50 DIVIDED States. I don't see this as a permanent thing and imagine a day when my country extends from Santa Cruz to Portland. I'm working on another essay called "Blueprint for Peaceful Revolution" which deals with some of the anticipated post-Peak Oil realities including a drastically shifted economic paradigm based on bioregions. National standards, in this context, will mean something totally different than it would coming from the B-C Commish.

Finally, regarding Consent of the Governed, this is supposed to be a given. And it is treated as such by the government. But it is not actually in effect. That is, the government acts like they have our Consent but only because we haven't challenged the fact that they don't do anything to seek and confirm this Consent. Yes, you could say we have not given it. But this does not lend itself to the mechanism of cumulative impact which is intentionally targeted as a means of building community by community support for the resolution up to an eventual tipping point. Asking, Has the Consent of the Governed been withdrawn, YET? assumes that this answer is no but will someday switch to yes. This is what will happen when enough towns have passed the Voter Confidence Resolution.

Thanks for all you do Peace Patriot, and for your thoughtful and respectful comments. I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Just posted a link to this on the daily thread. If you or someone else will nominate the daily thread this will appear on the greatest page!

I tried to nominate but the thread is too old.

:yourock:

:kick:

This post starts its own thread here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x382865

Visit the GuvWurld blog for full HTML version with LOTS of links.

http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/07/self-imposed-curfew-halts-arcata.html

Self-Imposed Curfew Halts Arcata Hearing on Voter Confidence

Arcata's City Council meeting had a full house and full agenda last night. At about 10:45pm the Council voted to continue meeting until midnight. They were still several items away from the Voter Confidence Resolution, aka Draft Resolution No. 056-09.

At approximately 11:55pm the Council voted 3-1-1 (Dave Meserve voted nay, Paul Pitino abstained) to place an initiative on the November 2006 ballot for Arcata voters to decide about water fluoridation. Finally our moment had arrived.

Despite the prodding of Councilmembers Harmony Groves and Meserve, Mayor Michael Machi would not stay open for business any longer and invited public comment for just the limited moments remaining before their self-imposed curfew. The Voter Confidence Resolution should now appear on the July 20 agenda, hopefully under "Old Business" which will come up earlier in the meeting.

We definitely had a strong showing of supporters prepared to speak, including many members of the Voter Confidence Committee and Vets For Peace Chapter 56, Martha Devine officially representing the Green Party of Humboldt County, and Revolutionary performance artist Shaye Harty, among others. Given what we saw from Council and from the community, my determination and optimism have multiplied manifold.

Meanwhile, Ohio activist Rady Ananda, my key liaison with the J30 group I have previously mentioned, has repeated and amplified her call for support of the Voter Confidence Resolution. See the GuvWurld News Archive for a thoughtful piece she's written on election reform strategy. She has also compiled a data-heavy workbook (.pdf) of election reform resources being distributed to advocates everywhere, along with the suggestion that localized versions be customized (just like the resolution). Notice that she has included the Voter Confidence Resolution as well as the companion Guide as the last elements before a closing quote from Abby Hoffman:

Democracy is not something you believe in or hang your hat on, but something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls.

Read the Voter Confidence Resolution here:
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html

I finally got a scanned copy of this essay uploaded to the GuvWurld News Archive as a .pdf. Here's the link:

http://tinyurl.com/bghzc

Since this article was published, the Arcata City Council has adopted the Voter Confidence Resolution. Please check out our latest call to action, a request for solidarity:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x388444