Ernest Partridge: GOP Will Win In '06, Unless...

I have frequently been accused of being hopelessly optimistic. Perhaps so: that’s what keeps me going.

But now, for those who thrive on gloom and doom – it's your turn.

Here’s the very bad news: the Democrats will almost certainly lose in 2006 and again in 2008.

Three essential reasons: (a) the GOP and the Bush junta simply cannot afford to lose, (b) they can prevent their defeat no matter what the voters have to say about it (as they have in the last three elections), and (c) apparently the Democratic Party, the media, and law enforcement are unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it.

A GOP win in 2006 and 2008 seems simply inevitable: as "inevitable" as LBJ’s re-election, Nixon completing his second term, and the endurance of the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. By this I mean that all this would have come to pass but for some extraordinary and unforeseen developments. Nothing less will budge the GOP from the White House and the Congress. After all, their “private sector” supporters count and compile the votes with secret software – and do so with no official independent means of validation. These facts about voting in the United States are publicly known and undisputed. And yet, despite compelling and unrefuted evidence of voting fraud, no one, except some determined citizen groups and a small minority of members of Congress, appear to be bothered enough to take action.

So the GOP will win for “three essential reasons.” Let’s take them in order:

1) The GOP and Bush, Inc. cannot afford to lose.

If the Democrats take control of just one house of Congress in 2006, they will gain the powers of Congressional investigation – the right to issue subpoenas to witnesses and for essential documents, and the right to require witnesses to testify under oath, which carries with it the threat of criminal conviction for perjury. And be assured, that should the Democrats take charge of congressional investigations, chaired by such prosecutorial hawks as Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, the worm-cans would be opened.

To be sure, Congressional Democrats have recently held unofficial hearings on the 2004 voting irregularities in Ohio, on The Downing Street Memos, on media reform, and on the Plame-Wilson-CIA scandal. But these have all been rather toothless affairs, boycotted by the Republicans, with all testimony volunteered and none under oath. Official Congressional investigations would be a whole ‘nother story.

For there is good reason to suspect that the Bush Administration is less a government than it is a crime syndicate, which, thanks to a compliant Congress and Justice Department, has to date done its dirty work without fear of investigation or prosecution. Among the possible crimes that are crying for investigation: war profiteering, Congressional bribery and corruption, election fraud, war crimes, and of course the “outing” of a covert CIA operation -- and act which Bush's own father described as treasonous.

Accordingly, the loss of either house of Congress would not merely send the Busheviks back into private life: it might send many of them straight to federal prison. And the prospects for the GOP malefactors would be still worse if the Democrats reclaimed the White House in 2008, and with it the criminal investigation and prosecution powers of the Justice Department.

Nor is the threat of criminal prosecution the only concern. In addition, with a Democratic victory, the GOP oligarchs would have to give back the keys to the federal candy store. With a return to fiscal sanity, the super-wealthy might once again be required to pay a fair share of federal taxes. Legislation might be passed to cut back on corporate welfare, to further reform campaign financing, and to reduce the influence of the lobbyists. Furthermore, the corporate foxes would be chased out of the regulatory hen-houses – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, etc.-- thus restoring to these agencies their intended function of protecting the public interest.

In sum, from the point of view of the Republicans, continuing control of the Congress in 2006 and of the White House in 2008 is not simply “desirable” – it is absolutely mandatory.

2). The GOP can prevent their defeat, no matter what the voters have to say about it.

As things now stand, a Democratic win in 2006 is as likely as a vote for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty in the Soviet “elections” of 1930. And for the same reason: the party in power (more precisely its supporters in private business) counts the votes.

Evidence is abundant and compelling that the presidential election of 2004 and key congressional races in 2002 were stolen, primarily through the use of paperless “touch-screen” voting machines and the software that collected and totaled (“compiled”) incoming election returns. Though numerous private individuals and public-interest groups have presented this evidence, it is only through their initiatives that the issue remains alive. Because I have expressed my suspicions repeatedly and at some length, I will not repeat them here.

But let’s suppose, despite all that evidence, that the 2002 and 2004 elections were entirely fair and accurate. If so, this was due solely to the civic-minded decision of the Republicans who built the machines and wrote the software (“source codes”), to “play it straight.” They faced little prospect of exposure if they chose to “fix” the vote totals. The machines produce no independent record of the votes and, as noted, the software is secret. In addition, as numerous public demonstrations have proven, the machines can be readily “hacked” leaving no trace of the tampering.

So it comes to this: whether or not the past elections were stolen, the voting technology is now in place (and expanding under the “Help America Vote Act”) that will allow its designers, the writers of its software, and whoever might have access to the “back door” hookups to produce any election result that they might desire. Short of a confession by a guilty culprit and absent an arithmetic or programming blunder, there is simply no way that fraud can be proven after the fact through an examination of the polling and compiling equipment and software.

To those who demand verification of election returns, there is only one answer: “trust us!” And to those who shout “fraud!” there is the familiar response: “don’t be paranoid.”

But while there are no direct means to validate paperless e-votes, statistical analyses of exit polling can provide external indications of election fraud. And in fact they have done just that as, for example, one such study has calculated the probability of Kerry's loss at less than one in a million. However, we all know how much impact these statistical studies have had on the final “official” results. Zilch!

And what is the Republican response to those troublesome exit polls? Former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie, has a straightforward answer: abolish the exit polls which, he claims, have been “proven unreliable” in the last three elections. In other words: “shoot the messenger.”

Then how about legislation requiring a paper record of each vote to provide validation? The Congressional Republicans won’t hear of it. Which causes one to wonder, doesn’t it? Is it just possible that they suspect (as I am convinced) that if we had a free and honest elections, the GOP would be burnt toast?

The bottom line: Will the Republicans cheat in order to prevent defeat in 2006? They can if they want to, and as we have noted above, their motivation to avoid defeat is extreme.

3) The Democratic Party, the media, and the law are unwilling to do anything about it.

The Democrats: As we all know, John Kerry, who promised to see to it that “every vote was counted,” threw in the towel a few hours after the last polls closed, even as an avalanche of reports of vote total anomalies, of voter intimidation, and of voting machine malfunctions were incoming. The Kerry Campaign, sitting on millions of dollars in their war chest, gave no support to the challenges of the Ohio returns – these challenges were pursued by the Libertarian and Green candidates.

The Democratic Party’s continuing refusal to face up to grim realities was made evident in the DNC’s investigation of the irregularities in the 2004 Ohio election – released just last month. As Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis of the admirable Columbus Free Press see it:

[The DNC report] is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and a party that still doesn't fully understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.

The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant in Ohio’s cities during the 2004 presidential election...

But the DNC reports says those factors do not mean John Kerry won the election, nor does it mean that the new electronic voting machines are unreliable – even though some of the precincts with the highest percentages of reported problems were outfitted with the new electronic voting machines...

The DNC was denied access to the voting machines and software, and to the tabulating computers in Ohio. Apparently on the assumption that what they cannot examine doesn’t exist, “the fraud factor” does not figure significantly into the DNC report.

And so the Democratic Party is cheerfully carrying on as if nothing has changed since Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996. They are looking hopefully to taking back the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, as they fire up “the base,” and solicit still more contributions. They uncritically assume that all they need to do is get more voters to the polls than the GOP, and that the voting machines and compilers will do the rest – reliably and automatically.

Those poor, naive, fools!

Like Charlie Brown, they just assume that if they run up to the football once again, Lucy won’t snatch it away this time. But of course, GOP-Lucy will do just that, thanks to the Democrats’ reliable gullibility.

Like the Brooklyn Dodger fans in the 1940s and 1950s, they keep saying “wait till next year.” And “next year” the “Bums” are creamed again by the Yankees.

2002 and 2004 were “next year” for the Democrats. So too 2006 and 2008.

By refusing to face up to the fact that they’ve been had by the GOP voting machines and software, the Democratic Party is setting itself up for certain defeat in 2006 and 2008.

The Media. A week after the 2004 election, actor Peter Coyote reported:
I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS--I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse--far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified--every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her to speak out, ... [and] to "spread" the word...
Regardless of the reliability of Peter Coyote’s report, it is easy enough to tell if the MSM has put an embargo on the election fraud issue. Just try to find any treatment of the issue on the MSM (Keith Olberman honorably excepted). If there is any such mention, more than likely it is to dismiss accusations of election fraud as “kookery” and “conspiracy theory” – beyond the pale of “respectable” public opinion.

Thus, what may be the greatest political crime in the history of the American Republic is deemed by the MSM as unworthy of their attention. Maybe there was no such crime. But given the unmistakable indication that there might have been, isn’t at least an investigation by the media in order? Say, something on the order of an investigation of the (ultimately innocent) Whitewater land deal by the Clintons?

Law Enforcement. The greatest vulnerability of the e-voting companies might be a rigorous application of state and municipal voting fraud laws. Though I keep a close and steady eye on the issue of electoral integrity, I have heard of no criminal investigations in progress. Have you? If so, please report them to me. (Crisispapers@hotmail.com). Of course, if such investigations are in their early stages, the public is unlikely to hear of them. So some good news just might be “in the pipeline.”

Is there any hope?

Not if things continue as they are.

There may have to be a dramatic disruption in the flow of events. And there is no guarantee that this disruption won’t have horrible consequences. For example, if Al Qaeda manages to slip a nuclear device into a shipping container and it goes off in one of our ports, all bets are off. Martial Law is a distinct probability, and American Democracy will be a goner.

As it happens, Bush’s Department of Homeland Security has done precious little to intercept such horrors. And who knows, Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert operation just might have been able to intercept it – had she been allowed to stay on the job.

Hopefully, if a different kind of “dramatic disruption” comes around, it will work to our favor. For all we know, it may even now be in its early stages: the Rove/Plame/CIA scandal may be at the “third-rate burglary” phase, with the analogs to “the cancer on the Presidency” and the White House tapes still to come. The new “deep throat” may yet enter the stage.

Tomorrow, some state Attorney General or municipal District Attorney might open an investigation of voting fraud. In the United States, elections are administered on the state and municipal level. So if paperless machines were used in said AG’s or DA’s jurisdiction, Diebold and ES&S executives and technicians could be subpoenaed and required to testify under oath. If in fact these companies cooperated in the stealing of a Presidential election, “the truth is out there” to be gathered and exposed by an aggressive prosecutor.

Would that kind of news be just too much to be ignored by the MSM? Who knows?

If that “truth” is that the conduct of all recent elections was 100% copasetic, then the GOP should welcome such investigations. It may be noteworthy that the GOP does not seem to be encouraging such investigations.

Is the mainstream media united and unmovable in its determination to spare the American public the discomfort of reading or hearing bad news about its government and its President? The credibility and audience of the MSM is falling alongside the public opinion scores of G. W. Bush. Will one or two mainstream TV networks or print publications defect from the pack and try to do journalism for a change? Will others follow? Or will the MSM become irrelevant as alternative and independent media and the internet become the primary public sources of news? (The “Pravda/Samizdat solution”).

Is the CIA going to sit still for this? After all, that’s in their charter – stay out of US politics. But of this much we can be confident; the rank and file of the CIA is super-pissed-off. One of their own has been trashed, her operation demolished, and dozens (?) of agents and operatives put in grave danger. Possibly some have been killed. Nor is that all. The CIA has been asked to take the fall for the Iraq fiasco – the result of “flawed intelligence” the Bushistas tell us. The motto on the floor at Langley, “The Truth Shall Make Your Free,” has been effectively supplanted with “The Truth Shall Get You Canned.”

Pissing-off the CIA can be a very dangerous business These folks are very good at overthrowing governments. What does it take to get them to bring these skills home? I’m not talking about tanks surrounding the White House. Just the usual bag of behind the scenes spook-tricks: bribery, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation – you know, the sort of stuff that Karl Rove uses to perfection. If I were Bush, I’d be afraid – very afraid.

What about the Republicans? To date, they are a solid block. In the entire GOP Congressional delegation, not a single Senator or Congressperson has stood up to denounce and deplore Plamegate. What does it take for at least some Republicans to face up to their conflict of loyalties between the Republican Party and the United States Constitution, to which they all swore an oath of allegiance? Where is today’s Howard Baker, now that the country so desperately needs him? Might it be Voinovich? Chaffee? Snowe? Collins? Lugar? McCain? Maybe Chuck Hagel, who has a lot to tell us about e-voting. When will just a few Republicans come to appreciate that, as in Watergate, if the President goes down he could take the party down with him – to avoid which, they may have to cut him loose? When a few start to defect, who will follow?

Then there’s the economy. A sudden downturn would surely get the public’s attention. How long will China and Japan continue to support our deficit spending? As middle class incomes continue to decline, consumer debt expands, and interest rates rise, when does the retail market collapse? With China, Japan and India entering the market and production at a peak, oil and gas prices can only go up. Most informed economists outside of Bush’s reservation are pessimistic. Clearly, the US economy can not go on like this, and yet Bush is determined to “stay the course” – all the way to and over the precipice.

“Something’s gotta give” – and when it does, if the Democrats are smart, resourceful and bold they will seize the moment. But if they sit by and ponder, as they’ve been inclined to do of late, then they, and we, are done for.

What to Do?

So can the GOP be beaten in 2006 and 2008? As we said, not if things continue as they are.

So do we give up? Not on your life! We do our utmost to determine that things do not “continue as they are.”

Here are some suggestions (and send me some of your own):

If you live in a state or a district that uses paperless voting machines, and if there is statistical or other evidence of voting fraud, contact your state Attorney General or your local District Attorney and demand a criminal investigation.

As the 2006 election approaches, join the determined effort to abolish e-voting and to use paper ballots instead. Failing that, demand paper receipts from the e-voting machines. If, as is likely, e-voting and computer compilation remains in place, it is still possible to institute safeguards – e.g., double-balloting, random inspection of touch-screen machines, and parallel compilation of regional votes. (For more details, see my "What Can We The People Do About Election Fraud?).

Insist on exit polling. If the RNC tries to put the exit polling companies out of business, set up alternative exit polls. Same with pre-election polls. It is not unlikely that established organizations such as Gallup will be corrupted and will put out fake figures. In that case, support and publicize the remaining honest polling organizations such as (presumably) Zogby.

A simple majority may not suffice in your district or state. Work relentlessly for a super-majority. If sufficiently large, the “fixers” might not dare to steal the election. Suppose, for example, that the imminently defeatable Rick Santorum were behind in the late polls by 65% to 35%. How would a “surprise” Santorum victory go down? Add this to several more “surprises,” resulting in continuing GOP control of Congress. Might it finally dawn on the US public that their trips to the polls are a waste of time, and that the election results are simply what the GOP want them to be? And might that public finally begin to see the 2002 and 2004 elections in a new light?

In general: Be on the alert for the aforementioned “dramatic disruption of events” and be prepared to exploit it quickly, decisively and intelligently. Better still, work to create that “dramatic disruption.”

Above all, remember: if things continue as they are, we’re cooked. The GOP will not be stopped. They count the votes. Simple as that.

We must see to it that things don’t continue as they are.

Bio Tag: Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" ( www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" ( www.crisispapers.org). Send comments to: crisispapers@hotmail.com.

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