Who... besides us, believes there was election fraud...

[ccarter84]

What well known personalities do we have on our side?
Some I know include:
Randi Rhodes & Ed Schultz,...others from AAR? Maybe Bill Maher?
What celebrities do we have

Also, I've got about a dozen blogs that i've been collecting the past two weeks who believe there was probably fraud...they aren't very mainstream but that Huffington press guy wasn't bad.

I'm not fully sure what came out of the National Conference down in Nashvill but here are my thoughts and maybe fellow DU'ers can set me straight and provide their own ideas.

Its time to step back and re-think our strategy, I agree with others that we need to take it local...but also we shouldnt' discount taking it national or even trying to promote awareness outside of the US (again). And when we do take it local...there needs to be some time given for others to catch up the learning curve and become as well versed as we are, or else we'll have a very uninformed group of followers and they wont' be nearly as effective as they could be.

Stats and figures are good...but they need to be simple, the Repubs have mastered this ability, and I think we might wish to focus a bit more on instead of "250 reasons to doubt this election"...we might wanna narrow our scope a bit...to like 5 with pretty graphs and mind twisting examples of 'discrepancies'.

Reasonably soon we should then start to network these people together if possible...thats difficult I agree, but first I think we should gather some more of them to our ranks, also start to strike up a dialogue between some of them and a few of us, maybe we can include some of the reporters that have been trying to break through the media blackout too.

Ok, those are some beginning thoughts
fire away, please

[emlev]

1. Help people know what to do

Good information about scary situations like the death of democracy can really send people into a tailspin of hopelessness. The key, I think, is to make sure that we're giving them real options of things they can do to make change. We need to match up the people with the ideas with the people who are good at creating projects and the people who want to do those projects.

We want to change the message so that instead of asking, "What can one person do?" they hear us saying, "We could do so much more with you on the team!"

Because it's true. So many of the election reform groups are tiny groups of overworked and UNpaid activists. Many of them don't have activism/organizing experience but come from the technical sector. (Some are techies with activism experience, of course.)

I'm very interested in working on coming up with really powerful answers to the question, "What can I do about it?" with regards to the electoral system (both reform and follow-up on past misadventures). Who wants to work with me?

[ccarter84]

2. Perphaps while unions are still allowed we should try and use them

I am not wishing this on our country...but if this rumor of a trucker strike turns out to be true....It might be able to be spun to our advantage...gonna have to think for a while on this one though, cuz that would be tricky from a PR perspective as well as just getting any of them onboard

[kster]

15. Ask them to honk if they think the

election was stolen,or better yet drape giant signs that say READ "silent scream of numbers" or "The Biggest Story of Our Lives" on the sides of their trailers.

[kansasblue]

3. Sierra Club

"for the second time in a row our presidential election appeared bumbling, if not outright fraudulent. "



http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200505/tensteps.asp

[ccarter84]

4. oh, very good catch

I am not wishing this on our country...but if this rumor of a trucker strike turns out to be true....It might be able to be spun to our advantage...gonna have to think for a while on this one though, cuz that would be tricky from a PR perspective as well as just getting any of them onboard

emlev: good thoughts, I agree and think we need to give people a sense of hope as well as being able to set milestones that are attainable so we can keep morale up over the coming months. They need to feel part of something that can make a difference, yes, a team, not isolated out in the vastness of america. Thats why I think Air America could potentially be such a help to this movement...but we'd have to craft it so that it doesnt' get going too quick before anything is ready to happen...for example we've been doing research for six months and refuted most of the complaints against our exit poll theories...and yet to less informed people this could be a problem making sure our points get to them on the same level footing.

I'm torn between wishing for the mainstream tv media to really try their hand at this, and hoping that they stay ignorant and don't ruin the chances we have with some of the undecided's

[demodonkey]

5. I have a friend who is working for the Dems, making donation calls...

Says that the majority of donors he talks to, DO think it was stolen (and a lot are PO'ed at the Dem Party.)

[garybeck]

6. he might have called me last night

every time they call I get on my soapbox. I tell them NO MORE MONEY unless you start fighting election fraud.

[helderheid]

7. I'm the co-vice chair of the Utah Democratic Progressive Caucus

and have posted election fraud information on our website in several spots:

http://udpc.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=5
http://udpc.org/interesting.htm
http://udpc.org/videos.htm

[bunny planet]

8. Thom Hartman definitely thinks they stole the last three elections, 2000,

2002 in some states, and 2004, he talks about it all the time. I think there is an article on Arianna Huffington's new blog that talks about the fraudulency of the 2004 elections. Cynthia McKinney knows they stole it, hell, they stole it away from her in 2002. She just ran again and got back into office. I think we should focus in on candidates whose elections were tampered with on the state level and get them to run again and get involved with the investigation of what went on in a very public way. Gore, John and Elizabeth Edwards, Teresa Heinz and John Kerry, Chris Heinz, Cynthia, Max Cleland, Tom Daschle could all become public faces in a campaign to let the voters know that the election system is broken, lay out the ideas for verifiable voting and instant run-off voting to the public now, so that they can be aware of what needs to be done before its too late for 2006. Letter campaigns should get going for every state Governor and every state's Attourney General to let them know the people of their states will not tolerate a voting system with vapor votes and no verifiable paper in place. I also see ahead to these new 'Real ID' cards as the new plan to keep voters from the polls in the 2008 election. They will be enacted in about 3 years, just in time to mess with that Presidential election.

[helderheid]

9. Robert Thurman talked about it being stolen on AAR

http://www.bobthurman.com/

[Laura PourMeADrink]

10. Christopher Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair about possible fraud

in Ohio. And he's been a Bushie (pro war) - Couldn't get the article since their website archive is down.

[KaryninMiami]

11. There's Clint Curtis, John Conyers, David Cobb, Susan Sarandon

William Rivers Pitt, Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Greg Palast

"Come on. If Republicans had lost the election, this column would be unnecessary because Karl Rove and company would be contesting every vote."

Here's a good place to begin...

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/

And you can try googling election fraud 2004 and here's what you'll get(over 2 million links as of today):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Election+Fraud+2004

[Nederland]

12. Depends on what you mean

Fraud of any kind?

Lots of intelligent people. Fraud of some sort probably occurs in every election.

Fraud that was large enough to rob Kerry of the election?

Virtually no one.

[ccarter84]

18. I guess that makes me one of the very few then

I'll admit that I was just rereading Febble's thread over at Dkos this afternoon and felt the doubts creeping back up, but I kept reading and thinking that all of these 'discrepancies' can't be merely a result of a 'systematic bias' due to response rates or whatnot.
In the thread they cite the example of North Carolina http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/4/6/8028/83645/126#126 and in the last 1/3 or 1/4th of the thread there are some serious challenges to her assumptions on which she based her diary on.

We also have to remember the articles written by Freeman where he disproves a fair number of the different explanations given for the EP difference.

His first paper is linked below
http://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/center/get.cgi?item=exitpollp
and I believe he is publishing in the coming months

Questions are of course needed and encouraged...we don't want blind sheep following the cause, because then they won't be very good at convincing others to follow them.

So yes I do believe that there was fraud of enough significance to rob kerry of the election, can I prove it? No, not yet and maybe never to the level at which we can satisfy everyone. But it shouldn't be the job of the citizenry to prove that our votes are counted, no that responsibility should fall to our elected leaders unless of course they've been corrupted or bought or are ignorant/negligent when it comes to their duties. In ANY case its time to get the grassroots growing.

Peace
-cc

[FreepFryer]

13. Theresa Heinz Kerry. (n/t)

[Nightjock]

14. Jim Lampley

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=367632&mesg_id=367632

[Chomp]

16. I sense....

...that it has been rather sombre here since Febble's posts. I think they really hit people pretty hard.

I have to say in all honesty that I thought her contributions would have been very discouraging to many here who "believed"* mathematical analyses by various DUers, only to realise late in the day that they essentially didn't understand the numbers in the first place.

Blind faith in rows and rows of numbers if you don't understand how they work is, in my honest opinion, fundamentally illiberal.



*I use this word in a neutral not accusatory sense.

[Fly by night]

17. More people today (35%) than in late November (20%) & in January (30%)

I think the American people are discussing this issue way more than we think. And the constant drip, drip, drip of regular comedic references, combined with (scant but growing) coverage, commentary (Koehler, Mitteldorf and Lampley), concern and backlash just keep chipping away at the dam of
corporate media-complicit totalitarian silence.

When this dam breaks, we'll find out who can swim in this country-saving river.
-----------------

" ... There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

"Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
See who is there with you and celebrate...."

Hopi Elders Prayer

[smartvoter]

20. Is that a guesstimate or is there a data source...??

[Fly by night]

21. Sources

The November figure is from a Gallup, CNN, ABC or other national post-election survey (can't remember which one). The second figure is from an Annenberg Public Policy Institute survey. The third figure (most recent) is one I've read recently on DU but don't know the reference. I hope it's true, and would appreciate other readers providing a more precise reference for these sources than I have. (I can find the exact reference for the Annenberg survey, as it was the subject of several DU threads on this forum back in January/February.)

[Verve]

19. the world. n/t