The Arc of History Bends Toward Justice: A Triumph of Grassroots Activism Against Dire and Unspeakable Odds -- The Boxer Rebellion, January 6th, 2005

By ADVOCATE STAFF

A warm breeze filtered through the hallowed halls of Congress, and gathered itself into a heady rush of hot air in the well of the U.S. House of Representatives, as Republicans from all corners of the country rose in support of several vital constitutional principles, among them the following: that poor folks in the cities of the nation should wait fifteen to twenty times longer to vote than well-to-do folks in the suburbs; that the nation's electoral mechanism should be governed by antiquated technicalities involving the weight of a piece of paper and which street a voter happens to live on; that voting machines and other electronic voting equipment in America should be programmed with privately-held proprietary codes and not publicly-disseminated and easily-analyzed software; that such machines should record votes in an untraceable fashion, without even so much paper trail as an automatic-teller machine; that poor folks should make do with outdated, malfunction-prone voting equipment when their communities find they can't afford the top-of-the-line, nearly foolproof equipment purchased by well-to-do communities; that critical election decisions such as the placement of voting machines should be executed by high-ranking officials in the respective major parties' campaigns; and, above all, that the power to elect a President is not a vested right in America, but a privilege which can be lightly and easily lost through mistake, error, bias, prejudice, ignorance, or even willful deceit.

It was a great day to be an American.

It was an even greater day to be a Republican.

Unfortunately, mainstream media coverage of national Republicans' earnest pleas for unstandardized, unaccountable, untraceable voting systems was slight at best. The major television networks continued their usual programming of game shows and soap operas as Republican after Republican rose courageously to criticize a challenge to Ohio's Republican electors brought by two Democratic members of Congress, Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Nor did Congressional Democrats cooperate with Republicans' plans for a devastating counter-protest against the evils of federalized voting standards. While Republicans had carefully organized their canned, pre-written oratories to coincide with anticipated claims from progressives that George W. Bush had stolen the November presidential election, and/or had personally masterminded a nationwide electronic-fraud conspiracy to siphon votes from his more articulate and intelligent Democratic rival, in the final accounting only one or two Democrats alleged that election fraud had occurred on November 2nd, 2004, and that John F. Kerry was therefore the nation's rightful President. Most of the challengers simply submitted, instead, that the voting irregularities in Ohio's general election should be investigated -- and reforms to the national system of elections made, as such investigation should deem necessary.

Almost to a man, the Democratic challengers conceded that present evidence suggested Bush had won the November presidential contest -- while stating plainly that a lack of time and resources had made it impossible to reach a final conclusion on the matter.

All of which made Republican vitriol in the halls of Congress this afternoon a little -- awkward.

Republican Representative Tom DeLay, currently under investigation for multiple political corruption-related felonies, managed to -- in a single five-minute rant replete with righteous indignation -- term the relatively innocuous Democratic challenge, amongst other similarly delightful things, "noise," "a waste of time," "an assault against the institutions of our representative democracy," "a threat to democracy," "a crime," "a direct attack," "like crying wolf," "frivolous," "destructive," "dangerous," and, most heart-wrenchingly, "hurtful." His comments were met with wild applause from Republican House Representatives/voting-rights activists, who symbolically burned several hundred authentic U.S. ballots to graphically illustrate their like-mindedness.

Well, no, they didn't.

But their attempts on this day to block any and all meaningful discourse on election reform were only marginally less horrific.

For instance, while speaking of Democratic allegations that, as in the recent [over-turned] Ukrainian presidential election, the exit polls in the November election did not supply the necessary confidence in the U.S. presidential contest's raw vote total, a nearly-frothing Republican Representative from Georgia, Jack Kingston, stormed that "the only thing less realistic than exit polls are Godzilla movies!" [The Advocate hastens to note, at this juncture, that the preceding quote is not fictitious. The man said what the man is quoted as having said].

Joining in the right-wing lunacy was a Republican Representative from Florida, Ric Keller, who posited that independent film-maker Michael Moore had secretly guilt-tripped Senator Boxer into issuing her election challenge, specifically by playing upon (during, presumably, an illicit rendezvous with the Senator) the public shame Mrs. Boxer had endured while attending the premier of Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- which documentary revealed (gasp!) that just like her forty-three Democratic colleagues in the Senate, she failed to challenge Congressional certification the 2000 presidential election.

[A major conservative news outlet, "Human Events," immediately picked up the rumor --without even washing its grubby little hands, first].

The Advocate thinks that the party of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Duke doth protest too much. Even MSNBC, one of the first major news outlets to call the November election for Bush, noted the "overzealousness [of Republicans] in rejecting the claims" of election irregularities in Ohio.

Were The Advocate in the political-consulting business, it would issue the following edict to those doe-eyed Republican voting-rights activists who showed such courage on the floor of Congress today: when a political party with a history of human-rights activism alleges that you condone voter intimidation, voter suppression, and election fraud, try to say at least something in response supporting the protection of voting rights in America. And when you anticipate that members of this same political party will assert your man stole a national election -- and, in the end, they really don't make that assertion -- ease off the conspiracy-theory talking points just a bit, maybe just a little down-throttle, that's all, sliding nicely from "simply nutty" to "aloof and ignorant."

On this historic day in the nation's capital, Republicans angered over the Tubbs-Jones/Boxer challenge spent more time talking about Democrats and the Democratic Party than Democrats did Republicans and/or the Republican Party; and they spent more time hatching conspiracy theories -- and wilder conspiracy theories, at that -- than any such theories ever devised or printed or spoken or advanced by any of the Democratic House and Senate challengers.

Indeed, at one point Representative DeLay, in a brief spasm of semi-coherence, asserted that the election challenge had been brought by the "'X-Files' wing of the Democratic Party," which wing asserted that (he claimed, eerily) President Bush was a "closet computer nerd" who had a "master computer" in the White House with which he, and/or another nefarious accomplice, undid and re-calculated the actual results of the November election. Representative Candice Miller (R-MI) seconded the claim, citing supposed Democratic theories that Karl Rove had a "secret computer" with which he "manipulated" nationwide election results on Election Day. [The Advocate again notes that these quotes are not fictitious: we submit that the Representatives are genuinely as emotionally disturbed as their prepared -- yes, prepared -- remarks on the floor of the U.S. House would seem to imply].

At the end of the day, The Advocate presumes there were few who truly appreciated the lack of gravitas in the Republican position on election reform -- which is, to not have any discernible or articulable position on election reform at all. Standardized voting equipment for federal elections, with a verifiable paper-audit, seems sensible, even elementary, to millions of Americans, Republican and Democrat alike, as well as to that eternal conservative boogeyman, Some Nations Which Are Not America. The Advocate cannot fathom how Republican opposition to meaningful and timely election reform is not treated with the same degree of contempt as would open Republican opposition to sunshine, marmalade, and night-time baseball.

Democratic Senators did little to aid Boxer and Tubbs-Jones's historic challenge. While ten Senators spoke in favor of the written challenge, not one of them were convinced enough by their own words to actually vote for it. Nevertheless, the final Senate vote on the challenge leaves American political history with an interesting footnote: less than 75% of the Senate actually voted to award George W. Bush sufficient votes to secure the Presidency.

The final vote on the Tubbs-Jones/Boxer challenge was 74-1, with only Boxer voting in support.

In the House, fully thirty-one Members voted in favor of the challenge, constituting 26% of the Democrats in attendance. [Eighty-seven Democrats voted against the challenge, and eighty did not vote; on the Republican side, The Advocate presumes that fear of DeLay's triple-forked tongue, withering schoolyard rebukes, and dexterity with common adjectives convinced the conservative caucus to vote unanimously against the challenge].

Below are links to stories on the election challenge. The Advocate notes that it is people like you -- the readers of this and similar on-line articles -- who made the above news story possible. You did it without substantial media coverage of any kind. You did it without having substantial numbers, substantial institutional inertia, or even substantial support from anyone with a megaphone large enough to stand up and be heard above the national din. Nevertheless, when the challenge came, your efforts saw their fruition heralded across a broad spectrum of worldwide and national media, from news services (e.g., Associated Press, Reuters, Scripps-Howard, Bloomberg) to major newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune) to mainstream television and radio (ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, and even -- albeit kicking and screaming and spinning like a liquored-up baby -- erstwhile Fox News).

According to The New York Times -- the international "paper of record" -- "the [election reform] debate came about because of the relentless efforts of a small group of third-party activists, liberal lawyers, Internet muckrakers and civil rights groups..."

Indeed! Moreover:

Your efforts led to a recount and a contest of election in Ohio.

Your efforts have led to an ongoing investigation into the November election by the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Your efforts led to an ongoing investigation by the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute.

Your efforts led to an ongoing investigation (with a one hundred-page report) by Members of the House Judiciary Committee -- and will lead to future bi-partisan hearings before that same Committee.

Your efforts led Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to publicly voice support today for a constitutional amendment making voting -- and having one's vote counted -- an enumerated U.S. Constitutional right (which it is not currently, as few are aware).

Your efforts led Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) to promise on the floor of the U.S. Senate that the broken/yet-to-implemented Help America Vote Act will be fixed.

Your efforts led Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to forge an agreement today with Senator Boxer (D-CA) to re-introduce legislation in the Senate requiring a paper-audit for all electronic voting machines currently in service in the United States.

Your efforts have led Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to sponsor a bill proposing the abolition of the Electoral College -- a bill now supported by at least one Republican Senator, Lincoln Chafee (R-RI).

Your efforts will force Senator Kerry (D-MA) to spend much of the next four years delivering the "election reform" he recently promised his 59 million supporters.

Your efforts, finally, have made history, with the Tubbs-Jones/Boxer election challenge marking only the second time in one-hundred twenty-seven years -- since the inception of the concept in 1877 -- that both houses of Congress have been forced to debate an entire slate of electors. As such, your efforts have convinced the world, and, just as importantly, your fellow U.S. progressives, that grassroots activism is alive and kicking in the nation which currently leads the free world.

And what is most amazing to The Advocate -- it took you only nine weeks to do everything you did.

Imagine what you'll do in the next four years.

See Related Stories:

("The Ohio Objection," The San Francisco Chronicle [Editorial], 1/7/05)

Editorial


("Keeping Our Democracy Alive: Did Voters Really Count in U.S. Election?", The San Francisco Chronicle, Steve Freeman, 1/7/05)

Article


("First Read," MSNBC.com, Elizabeth Wilner, Mark Murray, and Huma Zaidi, 1/7/05)

Article


("Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge," The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and James Dao, 1/7/05)

Article


("Making Waves Nothing New for Senator Boxer," The Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press, Erica Werner, 1/6/05)

Article


("Democrats Force Debate on Ohio Election Problems," The New York Times, Brian Knowlton, 1/6/05)

Article


("Democrats to Force Debate on Ohio Election," The Washington Post and The Associated Press, Alan Fram, 1/6/05)

Article


("Democratic Lawmakers Object to Ohio Results," Bloomberg News, Catherine Dodge, 1/6/05)

Article


("Keep Objecting," The Nation, John Nichols, 1/6/05)

Article


("Congress to Certify Bush Win Amid Protests Over Vote," Reuters, Joanne Kenen, 1/6/05)

Article


("Boxer to Challenge Presidential Certification," National Public Radio [Audio Report], Andrew Seabrook, 1/6/05)

Audio


("Bush Carries Electoral College After Delay: Democrats Challenge Ohio Vote, Push Back Official Certification," CNN, Ted Barrett, 1/6/05)

Article


("Bush Certified As Election Winner After a Protest," Scripps-Howard News Service, Michael Collins, 1/6/05)

Article


("Pelosi: Today's Debate About Election Reform, Not an Election Result," U.S. Newswire, Nancy Pelosi, 1/6/05)

Press Release


("Congresswoman Tubbs-Jones Objects to Certification of Ohio Electoral Votes," P.R. Newswire, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, 1/6/05)

Press Release


("Progressive Democrats of America Say Grassroots Support Is Resulting in an Historic Debate on Voting Irregularities in the 2004 Presidential Election," Business Wire, Tim Carpenter, 1/6/05)

Press Release


("Today Was a Good Day: List of House Members Who Voted 'Yea,'" Truthout.org, William Rivers Pitt, 1/6/05)

Article


("Ten Senators Speak Out in Support for Senator Boxer in Electoral Challenge," The Raw Story, John Byrne, 1/6/05)

Article


("Senator Boxer's Statement on Her Objection to the Certification of Ohio's Electoral Votes," [Courtesy of] BuzzFlash.com, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), 1/6/05)

Statement


("Ohio Votes Will Be Challenged," The Cincinnati Inquirer, Carl Weiser, 1/6/05)

Article


("Letter from U.S. Representative John T. Conyers [D-MI] to Senator Barbara Boxer [D-CA] and Members of Congress," [Courtesy of] BuzzFlash.com, Rep. John T. Conyers, et. al., 1/6/05)

Letter


("Private Letter from the Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell to Supporters," The Raw Story, John Byrne, 1/6/05)

Article


("Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio," Staff Report of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, Rep. John T. Conyers, et. al, 1/6/05)

Report


("Democrat Lays Out Case Against Bush Win," The Guardian [UK] and The Associated Press, Malia Rulon, 1/6/05)

Article


("Challengers Are Go," MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, 1/5/05)

Article