Republican reFRAMES Importance of ALL Citizens Defending The Vote=Democracy

(snippets)

I was talking to a dear friend of mine yesterday, and he asked me
what I had been up to. "This voting machine security thing" I told
him. "It looks really bad. I can't believe how insecure these
systems are and how easy they would be to Hack."

He chuckled and said to me, very sincerely, "Well, just as long as
they go Republican, right? Heh, heh."

There was an awkward moment of silence as I processed that.

*Now, I have always been a Republican and consider myself a
reasonably bright person, but what I can't understand is the
differences in the answer to what I think is a very simple question:

"If voter fraud is committed on behalf of your party, does the fact
that your party benefited from it make it OK?"

*What happens when the results of a corrupt voting system DON'T go
your way? What's going to happen when your side DOESN'T win? Will
you be able to put the fact that our system is so easily
manipulated behind you and just "get over it"?

As an American Voter, charged with the solemn duty of electing the
most powerful leaders in history, SHOULD you be able to?

Some other people are less disinterested and are more focused on
actively attempting to discredit those who are concerned about the
huge weaknesses in our Voting Infrastructure. For the life of me,
I just CANNOT figure out why ANY Honest person would resist efforts
to ensure that our voting system is secure and provides vote
integrity.

Now as for a DIShonest person, that's another matter. I can figure
THAT out just fine. More on that later.

*The simple fact is this: We can not have any sort of a real
Democracy when our voting infrastructure is weak and corrupt. The
only people who can win are the people who count the votes, and the
people who actually cast the votes have no say at all. This has
been known for quite some time, and in fact Josef Stalin weighed in
on the issue a while back when he said:

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the
votes decide everything."

*What if this company's Vote Tabulation Software were so poorly
designed that any Democratic election official, poll worker,
company insider, or Hacker activist could easily add, modify, or
delete hundreds of thousands of votes using Microsoft Office
without leaving a trace? What if the company knew about people
changing the votes database using this back door, and their own
internal memos reveal that they know about elections officials in
at least one county being "Famous for it"? And even though this
company makes ATM machines, they say it's too difficult to make
their voting machines "reliably" produce a paper trail? This makes
a full recount virtually impossible - would you accept that? What
if there were a Democratic Congressman from New York caught on
video with President Kerry before the results came in on election
day, saying "It's over! The election's over - we won. It's all
over but the counting, and we'll take care of the counting."

What if, given this voting system, John Kerry suddenly snatched
victory from the jaws of defeat, although the exit polls and
numerous other indicators predicted a strong victory for President
Bush? What if every single reported voting irregularity shows
gains for John Kerry? Every single one, including districts in
Ohio with 119% voter turnout suddenly favoring Kerry. And when
voting activists ask for Freedom of Information Act requests from
Volusia county, FL, they wind up finding the signed, dated
information they requested in the trash outside the building, while
the information they were given was unsigned and dated November 15?

*Would you be upset, or would you just "get over it" and fall into
line behind your new "leader"?

Given what you now know, does the fact that people are questioning
the results of the election sound a little more reasonable than it
did a few minutes ago?

*Honestly, before this information about our voting system was
presented to you, were you dismissing the people who tried to bring
up the subject of Election Fraud as "wack-jobs", "whiners", or
"sore losers"? It's OK. That HAS been our Party Line. Again, it
doesn't make you a Bad Person to support your party, and this
information hasn't exactly been on the Front Page. But now that
you know about it and hopefully have verified the facts yourself,
what you decide to do now is how history and your children will
remember what kind of person you really were.

* I know that eventually my fellow Republicans will do the right
thing and help to fix this flawed system, but to this point our
partisan politics have been blinding us decent conservative
Americans and preventing us from doing the right thing. I know
that once you see it, you, my fellow Republicans, will stand with
me and help us to fix this. I just know you'll do the right
thing...but I do have to admit that so far, the silence from the
Right has been deafening. Republicans have resisted listening to
the Democrat’s questions, and I think I know why.

So far, the Democrats have been asking the wrong questions:

*Here’s a quote from my open letter to the Democrats:

“It wouldn’t matter if George Bush bit the head off a puppy in
front of the UN - Republicans are not going to join in your fight
to overturn the election and inaugurate John Kerry. Conservatives
don’t want Kerry in office. For all of the reasons listed above,
plus a heavy dose of fear of Liberalism, most Conservatives will
not embrace the cause if the goal is to put Kerry in office,
regardless if there was fraud committed. You are missing the point
when you describe the problem as “Bush stole the election from
Kerry”, and Republicans are simply not going to get on board with
that.”

Was the election stolen? So what do we do?

*We need to take a look at the REAL problem and re-frame the issue.
The problem is not that John Kerry lost the election. That is
just a SYMPTOM of the real problem, which is that the electorate
may not be under the control of the American people. We need to
re-frame this debate under different terms that EVERY American can
understand and support.

There appears that there was definitely a grab for power, but it
was not the Republicans stealing power from the Democrats. If it
happened, then a small group of Republicans stole the power from
the American People as a whole.

*The reason that we Republicans haven’t seen it stems from the fact
that it is not as obvious to us Republicans as it is the Democrats,
since the pendulum of power moved in the way we wanted it to.
We’re less likely to see the problem, since we tried to push the
pendulum to the right, and the pendulum dutifully moved to the
right. What we’re missing is the fact that maybe WE didn’t move it
any more than a surfer moves the wave he rides in on by pointing
his board towards the beach. Just because we pointed our board
that way doesn’t mean that we’re the ones controlling the tide.
What if we’re not in charge anymore, but most of us don’t really
know it yet? Instead, we’re a lot like a dog sticking his head out
of a pickup truck’s window – he feels like the fastest dog in the
world, never realizing that he’s not the one pushing himself so
quickly through the wind. This allows us to make out like bandits
in the short term, since our goals are at least temporarily aligned
with those actually providing the motion. For now, we can ride
happily along, wind whipping through our ears, feeling great and in
control. The problems don’t start until we try to get out of the
truck, or worse, cross the street in front of it. Then it becomes
painfully obvious who really has the power, versus who was just
along for the ride.

One of the great and fundamental aspects of our Democracy is that
the pendulum of power is designed to swing back and forth, with
each party having control for a while, and then after a while
control changes as the pendulum swings the other direction, pushed
by the will of the American Voter. Think about it – Carter, then
Reagan / Bush, then Clinton, and then Bush, and then by most
accounts, the pendulum was apparently supposed to swing to Kerry.
But it didn’t. Why? What if rather than the will of the American
voter driving the direction of the pendulum, a small group has
figured out how to keep the pendulum from moving away from them and
towards the opposition. I’m going to quote Stalin again, since
apparently a small group of people figured out that what he said so
long ago really is true – “Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything”. The cold cunning
behind those words gives me chills sometimes.

*NeoCons call "Check" on Democracy - Mate in Four?

Since the only thing that holds our Representatives accountable to
us is the power of our votes, if that disappears, so does their
accountability. Why do you think that Karl Rove is predicting a
Republican Dynasty for the next 40 years? Because he may have
figured out how to freeze the pendulum of power, and he thinks that
we are either a) too stupid to see the massive consolidation of
power into the hands of a mighty few, or b) too weak and divided to
do anything about it.The incredible power of our American nation
is contained solely within the American people’s votes, and by not
returning that power to us they are able to quite literally Rule
the World.
The world has never seen a group as powerful as those
in control right now, and to think that they are operating with
nearly total impunity should frighten all of us to the very core of
our beings.

This power is not rightfully theirs, however. It is ours, and they
are supposed to borrow it for 2, 4, or 6 years (depending on their
office) so that they can represent us and our interests. When that
time is up, the system is designed to return that power to us, and
then WE decide whether to give it back to that same person or give
it to someone else who we think will do a better job. But here’s
the new twist; what happens if they simply decide not to give that
power back? Who are they accountable to then? In that case, they
are accountable to no one but themselves, and what the American
Public wants does not matter anymore. Our interests are
irrelevant, and they are free to do what they want with our power,
our money, our Armed Forces, and our lives.

Yes, it appears that the pieces are in place to steal a great deal
of power, but not from the Democrats. It will be (or has been)
stolen from ALL of us, and that is what the American people need to
know. The great unknown right now is whether we still have enough
power left to get it back, and it is critical for the survival of
our Country that we do everything possible with the power that we
still have within ourselves to try and do so.

*Ask yourself if we can ever come together and really make the
world a better place if we keep following the path that we're on.
Based on what you find in your research, ask yourself "if our votes
haven't been stolen yet, do you have any reason to believe that
they won't be?" It's not going to cost you anything, and nobody
will think less of you afterward regardless of what you decide, as
long as you have an informed opinion. Just stop and think about it
for a minute, and then decide what would be the right thing for you
to do, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an American
Citizen.

Then, just take the next logical step, and do it.

Chuck

great idea to expand support=
http://www.chuckherrin.com/ConservativeEmpathy.htm

*****
GREAT EDUCATIONAL FILMSTRIP FOR YOUR FRIENDS WHO WOULD LIKE TO
STAND UP FOR EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS AND SAVE OUR LEGITIMACY AND
TRUST AROUND THE WORLD, KEEPING UP THE FIGHT FOR VITALITY IN
dEMOCRACY, IS A WAY TO STAY SAFE AND OWN UP TO OUR STATED
PRINCIPLES, CAUSE.

Great overview presentation= www.electionFraud2004.org

spacebuddy008 at YR. service
Resisting the privatizing of Truth
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