Learn to Question

It seems that throughout history, executive and/or royal authority has been gained via a ruthless determination to reach out and take as much power as people allow.

Idealogs have risen to power in large part because too many people are too easily led. A "bandwagon effect" leads to almost a cult like following of "true believers." These true believers have two main rolls (besides being cheer-leaders). They recruit new members or intimidate the opposition. Still, this dedication is not enough to maintain long-term power.

Totalitarian movements grow because far too many citizens are uninvolved with politics and don’t ask questions. These citizens are the disconnected, silent majority. The key to positive change in America lies not with divisive partisan politics. The key is tapping into the pent-up hopes and dreams of the disaffected, uneducated, and uninformed Americans who don't even bother to vote.

On a positive note, I recently found a very interesting website LearnToQuestion.com. This site is one example how the silent majority can learn how to ask questions. It's Propaganda Lessons section is good complementary reading to OhioDem1's How to Sell a War.

I am glad I found this site while Googling "question." It is encouraging to find fellow Americans who are taking positive actions to help wake up America.

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90,000 Bad Punch Cards, Does Anyone Care?

Prior to Ohio ’04 election, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell predicted, based on previous elections, that from the counties using punch card ballots - more than half the 88 counties - there would be 90,000 spoiled punch card ballots statewide. This was reported in a very matter-of-fact manner, and did not seem to be of much concern to the SecState. This prediction proved to be true.

Did this help swing the election? I cannot say.

In Ohio, most of the locations using the punch cards were rural, which tend to be Republican, so maybe it did not make much difference to the presidential election outcome. However, this development may have impacted local or congressional races, school levies, and the like. I do not know the rules re: if one part of a ballot is spoiled, is the entire ballot thrown out, or only the race involved? This is another avenue of potential disenfranchisement that is never discussed.

Several questions come to mind concerning these "spoiled" ballots. How often are bad punch cards an issue in other elections? Is this a widespread problem? Will the media ever look into this?

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misneach

I WISH

I Wish

My wife was kicking my ass this evening in Scrabble. Her '108' score for one play, was by far the highest score I have ever heard of in Scrabble! Anyhow, since she was already kicking my ass in a nuclear way, I decided to 'waste' one of the blank tiles for a "W" to spell WISH.

I wish you peace.
I wish you love.
I wish you help from above.

I wish you passion.
I wish us compassion.

I wish us freedom.
I wish us wisdom.
I wish us integrity.

R.E.B.

The Man is Here to Challenge Your Vote

During the presidential election of 2004, challenge laws permitted citizens to challenge the right of a voter to vote at the polling place. Challenges were intended to enable others to confirm a voter is a US citizen; actually lives at their registered address; and was in fact, the person whose name appears in the book.

Yet, the challenge was hardly ever used, even though has been on the books since 1951. The Republican plan for Ohio in 2004 was to place attorneys as challengers at voting places with 65% or above Democratic voters. The intent was to intimidate voters, citizen immigrants, and to keep likely Democratic voters away from the polls.

Curiously, Ohio challenge rules changed several times during the week before the election, (no challengers, ok to have challengers, no challengers, ok to challenge, and so on). On Monday, the day before the election, it was ruled that no challengers were allowed. Next, at approximately 2:00 AM on Tuesday morning, just four hours before the 6:30 AM opening of the polls for the presidential election, the rule was changed to permit challengers.

By this time, the Democrats were mobilized to have counter challengers at the same targeted precincts, and it turned out that little or no challenges took place. This is another blatant example of how Blackwell’s abuse of his rule making authority was used to confuse and intimidate voters.

I actually wanted them to challenge me. I had my hospital birth certificate with my tiny baby feet footprints in ink, my passport, my boot camp portrait, a photo of me in Viet Nam, and my Driver's License, a phone bill at my address, the whole shooting match. I was planning on announcing the challenge very loudly so that everyone in the voting room could hear me.

Too bad they did not challenge me; I would have liked doing that. It was wishful thinking. There are far too many Republicans in my precinct for them to have challengers there.

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Welcome to the Machine

It is about time someone with strong name recognition took on the Ohio voting problems of the 2004 election. RFK's article in Rolling Stone could be an historic document. It could also become a footnote. It seems the mainstream media is already working to defuse the situation and argue for the official view. Will this story get legs or will it get buried?

One thing that gets mentioned in most news reports on Ohio '04 is the 12 hour wait in Gambier, where Kenyon College is located. That 12 hour wait is a true anomaly, or a statistical outlier. In reality, the media focus should be on the hundreds of polling locations where the wait was 3 to 4 hours. This is the real scandal, because this caused hundreds, probably thousands to leave the polls and caused mass disenfranchisement. The Gambier students received nationwide publicity while it was happening, as such; they were all empowered to stay and finish voting, which they did. In effect the Gambier incident distracted away from the massive creation of lines in the inner city, and the disenfranchisement it engendered.

I was working "Get out the Vote" on Election Day on the west side of Columbus in a mixed race lower-middle income neighborhood. Another person and I formed a team to call on two precincts that voted at Bishop Hartley High School in a neighborhood called the Hilltop. Later that evening, we were stopped on the street by a man who we had talked with earlier that morning. He told us that he had been in line at Hartley for over three hours, and he had to leave because he had to pick up his children. Therefore, the inexcusably long delay denied this man his right to vote. It is one thing seeing snippets on TV news; it is quite different thing being there. I saw with my own eyes 21st Century Disenfranchisement due to long lines, in part caused by reallocation or misallocation of voting machines.

The Hartley location had two Wards voting, and in past elections each Ward had four voting machines. I was surprised to see that on Election Day '‘04 - when record turnout was expected - each Ward was allocated only three machines. It was also reported that machines from some urban locations were shifted to suburban locations, and that another seventy-two machines were out of commission, sitting sin warehouses or on trucks.

As one may expect, polling stations in more affluent neighborhoods had lower wait times. I live in a suburban location in the same county, and our Wards had four machines, and about one-hundred-fifty voters per machine. I cannot cite an exact number of voters per machine in the inner city, but I expect it was in the neighborhood of two-hundred to two-hundred-fifty per machine. Therefore, voting is much like many things in America today: Equality for all, but some people are more equal than others. Unequal distribution of voting machines is a modern means of disenfranchisement.

Written by: OhioDem1
Editted by: REB 84
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