"100,000 protest Mexican election results" - why don't we?

[fearthem]

What's wrong with us that we have become so complacent when our votes aren't counted, elections stolen? We'd do well to consider what the Mexican people have done! This is what people did before there were blogs to complain at. Blogs are good, but not sure they are as effective as taking to the streets, being visible. I think our computers have made us lazy and not sure keyboard outrage is really effective as it's inherently invisible.

[IndyOp]

1. Mexicans expect fraud & were warned in advance about fraud in this

election and what to do if it happened. Same for Ukraine.

Our job: Get Americans to expect fraud & let them know what to do if it happens.

:kick:

[Recursion]

2. How many people would have to mob the streets for a RW&B revolution?

I mean, we have a MSM that looked at hundreds of thousand of antiwar protesters and said that there were no antiwar protesters. How big would this have to be to have the same effect as Ukraine?

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Surround t he WH for days with hundreds of thousands if not

millions, bring the country to a halp, for god sakes get at least 1\3 of the population to stop watching American Idol and take to the streets, regardless of the fear

I gave up on this happening in the US. Americans are NOT hungry enough

[walldude]

3. Um... far be it from me to disagree but I seem to remember

half a million people marching on Washington not long ago....




edit: This was Sept 24th 2005

[fearthem]

7. Yes, we need the same response to voter fraud as events against war

[nashville_brook]

9. pssst...

"election fraud"

... b/c the "voters" don't commit it.

[RagingInMiami]

19. One day out of the year is not going to cut it

It has to be day in and day out in several cities. Kind of like the immigrants did recently.

[CrispyQ]

4. I totally agree.

I think we are becoming more & more disconnected. Our real-time communities are suffering greatly because we put so little back into them, both monetarily & with our personal time & commitment.

In Kurt Vonnegut's book A Man Without a Country he writes that we should all fart around more. He means that we should get out in our real communities. He tells about his encounters when he goes out to buy a single large sized envelope vs. if he lets his wife buy a package of them online. Our virtual communities are valuable but they are not a replacement for real time interaction with our here-&-now communities.

[BillZBubb]

6. Because our candidates asked us not to.

In other places, the candidates ask their supporters to show up and they do. It's hard to get people to rally if the principal actor isn't behind it.

[nashville_brook]

8. DING DING DING!

[LibDemAlways]

10. Imagine if Gore had asked his supporters to come to Florida

and join him in massive protests and demonstrations until every vote was fairly and accurately counted. That would have gotten the country's attention. You're right. The leaders have to provide the leadership.

[BillZBubb]

18. Yep, we could have filled Miami and Tallahassee.

It would have been glorious!

[chat_noir]

11. Election Deception

http://www.tvnewslies.org/donate/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=191




http://www.tvnewslies.org/donate/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=192

[Union Thug]

12. Americans are too self-centered to give a damn about

anything that happens beyond their 3 feet comfort zone. So long as the credit cards keep them laden with and unwittingly enthralled to useless crap they can't afford, and they can pretend to be rich, nothing really matters at all. Once the piper comes to call, things may change. And based on recent stats on negative savings, and an increase in americans seeking credit counseling, that time may be at hand. We'll see.

[Peace Patriot]

13. The new Left in Latin America has been in development for some time.

We northerners have been asleep for about 3 decades, while the fascists plotted all this, and gradually took away our rights, our labor protections, our money, our social safety nets, our jobs, our sovereignty, and everything good about America--and, finally, even our right to vote. We can't expect an effective Left to just spring out of nowhere. It takes time and dedication. The Latin Americans have been working on transparent elections for at least a decade. And it shows. There are Leftist governments now in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia--virtually the entire continent--with growing Leftist movements in Peru (getting very big), and in other places like Nicaragua, and even in Columbia. The Left won this election in Mexico--that seems very clear. And because it borders the U.S. and is so important as a vast Corporate sweatshop. the fascists stole it. But--as with many other Latin American countries, the Left in Mexico is now highly developed and they are not going to put up with it. Mexico's southern states have been hit very, very hard by global free piracy, and the Zapatista movement has been on-going there for quite some time. Also, I think Latin Americans are closer to their communities than we are--often that's all they have, in devastated poor areas. Few have the prosperous alienation that we experience here--as Corporatized and regimented onto freeways as we are.

So I don't know if I agree with these criticisms of our people. We also have a much bigger country--truly unmanageable in size, when you are talking about very large protests against a government that couldn't care less what we think. As I've said elsewhere, we could put a million people onto the streets in DC, and they'd just carry on their fascist junta in their armored bunkers.

You know, there WERE a lot of protests some years back--starting in Seattle in 1999 (50,000 people!), and against the IMF/World Bank, and more recently, very large protests against the war--much bigger protests than were ever mounted against the Vietnam War (500,000 in New York, against the Iraq war, as I recall). I frankly think that the earlier protests--anti-WTO, etc.--in some way triggered this fascist junta. The Seattle protest had the potential to undo NAFTA. That's why it was so maligned. And the Left was hitting hard on the institutions of corporate oppression. This country was beginning to bleed jobs. The Left tried to warn people, and put up a mighty stink about it. (I know, I was part of that.) Then the Boot came down.

All of these protests fell on deaf ears. It's really the rest of the world that is preventing the Bush junta from bombing/invading Iran, not us. And Iraq continues, in no small part because half the Democratic Party leadership is openly or furtively in favor of it. The only true representatives of the American people are the Democratic Party Leftists, and they--we--are struggling for power. But this is no reason to give up. Far from it. Just think for a moment what Latin America has suffered--decades of brutal oppression, stark widespread poverty--but they are rising up, with a really rather incredible belief in democracy and determination to achieve it.

We should be inspired by them, and not get so down on our own people. We have different problems here, and are not used to these kinds of oppressions. A lot of people are in denial. Most people despise Bush (70%) but don't know what to do about it. Reviling people for not pouring into the streets is not only hackneyed, it's not the kind of strategic thinking that is needed. We may need to find a more dispersed but widespread form of protest, or promote one that is already happening--as I believe is the case with Absentee Ballot voting--an indigenous protest of ordinary citizens against the voting machines, that is becoming quite widespread). What if it got up to, say, 70% Absentee Ballot voting--or 90%? Big, big monkey wrench in the machine!

In Argentina, the poor and the middle class worked together and took tiny hammers, and went round and cracked the display windows in all the ATM machines of offending banks, who had bankrupted the country with IMF/World Bank loans. It brought down the government. They had a specific grievance. So did Bolivians, who drove Bechtel out of their country, for privatizing the water and then driving up the price of water to the poorest of the poor. (They expelled Bechtel with large street protests, then elected Evo Morales!)

So what is our grievance? Well, a very big one is that we can't get good people elected because of these goddamned Bushite "thumb on the scales" voting machines with their TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. How do you address that? By saying that the one thing that ordinary people are doing to protest it--Absentee Ballot voting--is stupid and not the answer? No, I think you use it. It's a peoples' protest. (50% in Los Angeles, I heard.) You use it--you promote it, you make it very big--in order to make these shiny new election theft machines obsolete before their time. To make a laughingstock of the fraudulent election system. To put the election officials who have been corrupted by these Bushite corporations under siege, with Absentee Ballot votes.

Have some pity on people! Americans are not happy. They--we--are very unhappy! Kicking people when they're down--calling them "sheeple" (as some do)--and having unrealistic expectations is not the way. FIND the way. That's what I think. What could work here, now, today? Maybe something that's never been done before. Think creatively, and strategically. Strategic means you understand your resources--what you have to work with. You've got to understand your people, and choose your ground. Don't want what isn't there, what is not possible. Look for what IS there, and develop it.

For Gandhi? Cloth; salt.

For Martin Luther King? Buses, cafes, drinking fountains, the poll tax.

For the first American Revolutionaries? Tea.

For us?

[Peace Patriot]

15. Re: The great grass roots movement that elected John Kerry and ousted

the Bush Cartel. I was amazed by this movement, which seemed to spring out of nowhere--but of course had some elements and passion from the anti-globalisation movement within it. It was remarkable. This movement blew the Bushites away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40--and kept Kerry competitive financially with small donations, against the Bush junta money machine. And this movement got its teeth kicked in by election fraud, but, even worse than the fraud, by the "Iron Curtain" that came down, even from the liberal establishment, ABOUT the fraud.

I think we need to be understanding of OURSELVES, and compassionate towards ourselves, and towards other Americans, and RECOGNIZE what happened--and the enforced sense of powerlessnees, and demoralization, and disenfranchisement--and also LONELINESS--that resulted. We were all alone in a strange land. Our party abandoned us. All of the news media, without exception (or, with the sole exception of Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy and others at AAR, Truthout and DU), abandoned us, and colluded against the American people. All of our institutions failed us, all at once.

It was catastrophic to the Left (the majority)--as it was meant to be. And people have to get over that--that they put out such effort, in energy, fundraising and voter registration--and got whacked upside the head with election fraud, in a form hardly anybody knew anything about, as well as old forms that were massively inflicted.

So, think about that when you descry the failure of the American people to pour into the streets at the seemingly limitless outrages of the Bush junta. That movement was a triumph in many ways. But nobody--and I mean nobody--anticipated the depth of the betrayal that was about to occur.

[Igel]

14. There's also no one, single focus.

The DF is the capital; IFE is there, with the tribunal that'll be hearing the case. The feds run the election, they declare the winner, and the guy who wins is, in some sense, in charge of the machinery. There's a single organization putting together precincts, vote tallies, vote totals, and initial arbitration; there's a single court arbitrating challenges (ignoring the appeal to the supreme court, which apparently lacks jurisdiction).

Where do you protest in the US? Protest in DC, and you've protested where the electors meet: but by the time they're there, the entire process has mostly run its course. If you don't protest for *that* election, you're stuck protesting 'at home'.

You can protest in front of the FEC, but who cares? They have no say over the presidential election once it's in motion. If they find the elections fraudulent and the states have transmitted the materials to the House, it doesn't matter: The best you can get is a second slate of electors, and have the House choose. But that means the FEC has some fancy legal footwork to do in little time. The alternative is to protest in 50 different state capitals, plus Wash. DC. But the states aren't fully in charge of things, either: locally elected (or appointed) bipartisan BOEs funnel the results to the state. Verifying the BOE totals against the state total is a trivial matter.

If there's fraud, it has to be run through the BOEs. You'd either have to protest there, or at the state level to force a recount (but recounts are typically under the local BOE's jurisdiction). Some BOEs cover areas with large populations; some don't. You try to protest all the BOEs, you get lots of goofy little demonstrations; pool your protesters, and you wind up with people protesting in front of BOEs other than their own.

At least Lopez Obrador is saying that all the precincts where his guys weren't present to supervise the vote are corrupt (although I'm not sure the ballot paquetes that were recounted and turned out to have been miscounted actually support that claim). Here we says dems on many hundreds of election boards are corrupt, or deceived.

The place to protest is to your congressfolk, now, to ensure that acceptable machines are in place. The problem is that fraudulent elections don't depend on BBV.

[Peace Patriot]

16. Yeah, I know that there are a lot of other kinds of election fraud, than

just the electronics. (And the electronics are used for more than one thing--for the machines on which you cast your vote, for the central tabulators, AND for voter roll purges, which are going to be the new method of fraud--already are--that needs to be fought.) But the electronics are used as the foundation of stolen elections. I'm pretty sure that's what happened in 2004. They stole votes here and there all over the country, to manufacture Bush's popular majority, and then had the big dramatics in Ohio, which, to this day, I'm not sure the reason for--either because Kerry's win was so big that the machines couldn't handle it (maybe had to be preprogrammed and weren't so easy to change on election day), or as a big pre-written narrative to bring it down to a state where they had a highly corrupt Bushite machine in place, or maybe it was just gratuitous African-American bashing, because blacks vote 80% Democratic and they had the opportunity to smash them and they did. In any case, I think the confidence that this undetectable "thumb on the scales," with these secretly coded, Bushite-controlled machines, gives them, contributes to the other kinds of fraud. It is hubris--and immunity from any consequences.

It is the heart of the matter. NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting. It is outrageous. And almost anyone who learns about it agrees. And a lot of people think they have outwitted it by Absentee Ballot voting. They haven't really. (The AB votes are scanned right into the system, or are hand-entered--and are turned into electrons and disconnected from the evidence of the vote--just as optical scan votes are.) But I think the DESIRE to protest is what's important--AND the potential of this protest, if it gets really big. It is a rebellion.

And it's a rebellion that people can easily accomplish, whoever they are, wherever they are. And what if it got some leadership? A big campaign? With slogans: "Protest the Machines--Vote Absentee!" Or, "Make the Machines Obsolete--Vote Absentee!" (Another slogan: "Vote Absentee--and Make Them Count It!"). (And for anarchists: "Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee!").

A very dispersed protest. But potentially very effective. And if it developed leadership, there could be press releases about it--to focus the news media and alert them. I mean, they can't not cover it, if, say 70% of the people are refusing to vote on these machines.

And if we bust the electronics, we've got a revolution!

----------

I'm not at all saying, depend entirely on this. The polls and the election officials need to watched like hawks. But THIS protest--Absentee Ballot voting--is almost effortless. It engages EVERYBODY. And all its needs is some publicity, mostly word of mouth. It takes some forethought to vote Absentee. And it's easier in some places than others. (In Calif, you can deliver your AB vote to the polling place on election day; other places, you have to do it well in advance.) But it has the potential of a universal protest.

[kansasblue]

17. we're watching America Idol....

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. You're making the implicit assumption that protesting elections is good.

I think this is wrong. I *very* much hope that it is completely impossible for mass protests of any size to influence the outcome of the electoral protest in either the USA or Mexico. Consider what the implications of the alternative would be.

If you believe that an electoral process was flawed, the correct response is to mount a legal challenge, not to take to the streets.

Protest can and should influence both public opinion and the opinions of elected officials, but if it can influence an election or any other legal process then something is seriously wrong (this, incidentally, is why I think the American system of electing public prosecutors is inferior to the British one of having them appointed, but that's nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at stake).

[fearthem]

21. WSJ: "Mexico Is Ahead Of The US In Ensuring Its Elections Are Both Free..

And Accurate”...