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Will American voters do the right thing eventually? Email Print

By NG
11/23/2005 04:00:34 PM EST

After reading the diary "The War Against Civilization By empireburlesque", I remembered a diary that I wrote a while back elsewhere and how closely my thoughts related to that diary. My big questions related to how long can the larger lower and middle classes keep voting to shoot themselves in their economic feet and in their economic security by giving/voting the corporate an business owner elite classes the power to keep screwing them?

Winston Churchill luckily must have been a truly wise man because his statement about Americans seems so true! Churchill said about Americans, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." There have been times that I doubted this wisdom in the American people, but thank goodness, Churchill's predictions always seem to be borne out in the end!

Of course, I see the world from a progressive perspective, and the times I have my greatest doubts are when the Repub conservatives seem to be gaining power. I would never vote Repub, and I am sure many conservative repubs will never vote Democratic/progressive. However, there must be a large number of voters who can and do change from election to election, but what makes/motivates this change? Is it just boredom with the status quo such as a need for new directions every once in a while? Is it fear of too much power developing in anyone's hands? Is it a sense of fair play and when that is violated, they change votes? I think it is important to understand this for anyone interested in when and maybe how they can win elections in this country.  It also relates closely to the conundrum of why the larger poorer and middle classes keep voting the economic elite into power!

Lets look at relatively rapid major turn-arounds in voter sentiment as examples of this tendency.

In 1972 Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, trailing only in Massachusetts. He then had to resigned just 2 years later during the Watergate Scandal, effective August 9, 1974, at which time his approval rating fell to 25%, the lowest approval rating for any president. What enabled this rapid change?


The 8 Dover PA School Board members were all conservative repubs and they were all quite suddenly voted out together in favor of a democratic slate of members in favor of not teaching Intelligent Design in science class. What enabled this rapid change?


In May 1951, two members of the Cambridge Five -- Donald MacLean, Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Guy Burgess -- defected to Moscow after it was discovered MacLean transmitted information on the atom bomb from the British Embassy to the Soviet Union during World War II. McCarthy was worried that communism would spread into America and internal treason would result. In this atmosphere, McCarthyism flourished. McCarthy faltered in 1954 as his hearings were televised live for the first time on the new American Broadcasting Company. ABC needed to fill its afternoon slots, which allowed the public and press to view first-hand McCarthy's interrogation of individuals and controversial tactics. In a famous exchange, the Army's attorney general, Joseph Welch, rebuked McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" The press was by this time quite anti-McCarthy, and reports that McCarthyism was ruining the reputations and lives of many people without credible evidence were common. Even some Republicans denounced him, among them Henry Luce and Robert R. McCormick. By the time famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow's highly critical "Report on Joseph R. McCarthy" aired on March 9, 1954, McCarthy's public support had all but withered. What enabled this somewhat rapid change?


George Bush's poll numbers have plummeted over just the last year especially. What enabled this rapid change?


I am sure there are many other examples that I could cite and work on, but each of these examples shows a rapid voter change from conservative repub to democrat. Maybe there are examples of the change going the other way from Dem to conservative repub, but I am having a hard time visualizing such a rapid change in the modern time. I suppose another part of the question could be why does this large group of voters keep going back to the conservative repubs only to be disappointed again and driven away by scandal and greedy policies. What do folks think is going on here that makes Churchill's predictions from the Democratic perspective so true, and why must we Dems keep going through this torture, as if the movie Groundhog day was alive and well in politics?  After all and again most importantly, there are more potential voters in the poor and working classes than in the wealthy classes, so why can the party that represents these more wealthy types ever win elections??  Is it that the skill or real motivation of the potential political party that should represent these working classes must be inferior or tainted to allow this to ever happen?

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Will American voters do the right thing eventually? | 3 comments (3 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
maybe I'm overly optimistic (none / 0)
but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The first flicker came during the 2004 election when die-hard Republicans, of the old-school variety, were disgusted with Bush and his agenda. A couple of relatives of mine for whom I'd previously held out no hope whatsoever voted Democratic for the first time in their lives.  The second flicker came when the Social Security BamboozlePalooza ground down to a halt when just good old ordinary folks decided the whole pitch was just another way for Wall Street to collect commissions and fees.  Cindy Sheehan came along and made it ok for middle class American mothers to oppose the war, and some fathers seem to have tagged along. Downing Street Minutes?

Then the wheels started to come off the Bush Family War Wagon.  Katrina ripped the cover off the top.  Micheal Brown did a heck of a job, proving that you just can't put any Bush in charge of FEMA.

So, what's for dessert? The Enron/Lay/Skilling  trial begins in January. Tom DeLay's got some "s'plainin' to do. Libby's indicted. Scanlon's turning on Abramoff? This could be bigger than Abscam?  Savafian's already pled guilty. Phase II? Rendon Group? This will not be a good year for the Bushites. Their turkeys are coming home to roost?

by greatbasin2 on 11/24/2005 12:14:59 PM EST

If you are correct, how long (none / 0)
do you believe this lastest turn-around will last?  My point is why do the larger number working/poor classes in America keep going back to the almosy feudal politics of the conservative repubs, which is always detrimental to these workers in the long run. 

by NG on 11/25/2005 10:09:32 AM EST

[ Parent ]
The US is the only major democracy that allows... (none / 0)
The article below should clear up most, if not all of your questions... This is what is really going on here!

Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

  1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

  2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

  3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

  4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

  5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

  6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

  7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

  8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.

The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software.

The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:

  1. The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.

  2. A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County

  3. Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were suspiciously low.

  4. A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.

  5. In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.

  6. In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.

  7. In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.

  8. In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.

  9. Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts," technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.

  10. In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.

  11. In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.

  12. In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better."

But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.

Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that's exactly what happened.

by Jenakastar on 11/30/2005 01:53:26 AM EST

Will American voters do the right thing eventually? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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