For whom the bell tolls..

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572 - 1631), Meditation XVII

If you have a meditation practice, or maybe even if you don't, perhaps you've had the experience of KNOWING, absolutely knowing, that we're all one. If you know this, how can you sit by and pretend this election wasn't stolen? Now, meditation won't fix this one, not in the short run, anyway. Yes, we can imagine the White House full of white light. But right now, what you can do on a physical plane is give money to the Green Party or www.blackboxvoting.org for the challenges that MUST happen if we are to maintain our democracy.

Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities

By Donna Britt
The Washington Post

Friday 12 November 2004

Is anyone surprised that accusations of voter disenfranchisement and
irregularities abound after the most passionately contested presidential campaign
in memory? Is anybody stunned that the mainstream media appear largely unconcerned?

To many people's thinking, too few citizens were discouraged from voting
to matter. Those people would suggest that not nearly enough votes for John Kerry
were missed or siphoned away to overturn President Bush's win. To which I'd respond:

Excuse me -- I thought this was America.

Informed that I was writing about voter disenfranchisement, a Democratic
friend admitted, "I'm trying not to care about that." I understand. Less
than two weeks after a bruising election in a nation in which it's unfashionable
to overtly care about anything, it's annoying of me even to notice.

But citizens who insist, election after election, that each vote is
sacred and then shrug at hundreds of credible reports that honest-to-God votes were
suppressed and discouraged aren't just being hypocritical.

They're telling the millions who never vote because "it doesn't
matter anyway" that they're the smart ones.

Come on. If Republicans had lost the election, this column would be
unnecessary because Karl Rove and company would be contesting every vote. I keep
hearing from those who wonder whether Democrats are "too nice," and from
others who wonder whether efforts by the mainstream media to be "fair and balanced"
sometimes render them "neutered and less effective."

Perhaps. But the much-publicized voting-machine error that gave Bush
4,258 votes in an Ohio precinct where only 638 people cast ballots preceded a flood
of disturbing reports, ranging from the Florida voting machine that counted backward
to the North Carolina computer that eliminated votes. In Ohio's Warren County, election
officials citing "homeland security" concerns locked the doors to the
county building where votes were being counted, refusing to allow members of the
media and bipartisan observers to watch.

Bush won the county overwhelmingly.

Much of the media dismisses anxiety over such irregularities as grousing
by poor-loser Democrats, rabid conspiracy theorists and pouters frustrated by Kerry's
lightning-quick concession. Some of it surely is.

But more people's concerns are elementary-school basic -- which isn't
coincidental since that's where many of us learned about democracy. We feel that
Americans mustn't concede the noble intentions upon which our nation was founded
to the cynical or the indifferent. We believe in our nation's sacred assurance that
every citizen's voice be heard through his or her vote.

The point isn't just which candidate won or lost. It's that we all lose
when we ignore that thousands of Americans might have been discouraged or prevented
from voting, or not had their votes count.

If it were us, we'd be screaming bloody murder.

Yesterday, Lafayette Square was the scene of a lively rally at which
dozens of upbeat, mostly older-than-25 protesters organized by ReDefeatBush.com
heard democracy-praising singers, rappers and speakers. Protester Susan Ribe, 33,
a Wheaton tax researcher, said that though she's "open-minded" to the
possibility that election results might be correct, she believes that reports of
irregularities suggest "there's the need for a serious investigation."

Election Protection, the nonpartisan coalition of civil rights organizations
that sent 25,000 poll monitors across the nation to ensure that registered voters
could cast their ballots, received hundreds of reports of Election Day abuses.

Some were from voters who said they repeatedly pressed the "Kerry"
button on their electronic voting screens, only to have "Bush" keep lighting
up. Others said that though they pushed "Kerry," they were asked to confirm
their "Bush" vote. There were calls about a Broward County, Fla., roadblock
that denied voters access to precincts in predominantly black districts, and reports
from hundreds who said they'd registered weeks before Florida's October deadline
yet weren't on the rolls.

Why aren't more Americans exercised about this issue? Maybe the problem
is who's being disenfranchised -- usually poor and minority voters. In a recent
poll of black and white adults by Harvard University professor Michael Dawson, 37
percent of white respondents said that widely publicized reports of attempts to
prevent blacks from voting in the 2000 election were a Democratic "fabrication."
More disturbingly, nearly one-quarter of whites surveyed said that if such attempts
were made, they either were "not a problem" (9 percent) or "not so
big a problem" (13 percent).

Excuse me?

Electronic, paper-trail-free voting is a danger to democracy that the
United States can, and I believe will, address. But not giving a damn about fellow
citizens' votes?

Election Protection volunteer Bernestine Singley, a Texas-based writer-lawyer
I know, was torn between elation and outrage on Nov. 2 as she monitored polls in
three Florida precincts. Inspiring to Singley were hundreds of volunteers, most
of them white, who'd traveled hundreds of miles to ensure the inclusion of minority
voters. She felt stirred by scores of young, black voters whose attitude, she says,
was, "I don't care how long I have to stand in line before I do what I came
here to do."

Singley's outrage was sparked by clearly hostile white poll workers,
and the police officer who stood -- illegally -- by a polling place door, hand on
his revolver.

Did I mention the guy who shoved her?

After watching Singley assist voters for hours, a scowling, white-haired
70-something poll worker patronizingly suggested that she was not a poll monitor.
When she replied that he knew exactly what she was doing, he rammed his chest into
hers, shoving her backward.

Pushing right back, Singley told the man, "You better get off me."
He did. Minutes later, Singley says the man told another poll worker within her
hearing: "I don't know why she thinks I know who she is. They all look alike
to me."

Excuse me -- is this 2004 or 1954?

Ironically, if all Americans did look alike -- if "black"
and "white" and "poor" and "well-to-do" didn't exist
-- outrages such as those would happen much less often.

When they did, many more Americans would fight to ensure they never
happened again.