Ernest Partridge
On March 8, 1994, scarcely year into Bill Clinton’s
first term, The New York Times reporter, Jeff Gerth, “broke” the
infamous “Whitewater” story, claiming that the Clintons were involved in
some sort of cryptic land investment scandal. The story was fed to Gerth
by “The Arkansas Project,” a right-wing hit squad whose sole purpose was
to “get” Clinton by publicizing groundless accusations. The New York
Times, “the newspaper of historical record,” was somehow persuaded
that this news was “fit to print.”
The so-called “Whitewater
scandal” dogged Clinton throughout his Presidency, as hardly a week went by without the corporate media
“reporting” some allegedly “new” developments in the case.
Six and a half years and some $70 million taxpayers’ dollars later,
Whitewater Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, told the House Judiciary
Committee that he lacked the evidence to continue his investigation.
During those six plus years, the Washington Post published over 2000
articles about “Whitewater” (Media Matters,
Nexis search),
but neglected to give prominent space to Starr’s virtual exoneration of
the Clintons.
Now compare this extended media frenzy over what turned out to be a
non-story, with another story which, if true, strikes at the very heart
of our democracy. This is the substantial and unrebutted evidence that
the past two presidential elections, along with the intervening
congressional elections, were stolen and that, by implication, the
United States has, for the past six years, been ruled by an illegitimate
government.
Just last month, astonishing new evidence has come forth that in 2004
millions of Kerry votes were “switched” to Bush, and millions more
“graveyard votes” were added to Bush’s total. Mainstream media coverage?
Nada! Instead the source is the New Zealand website,
Scoop, and subsequently other
progressive websites. I will return to this remarkable report later in
this essay.
As noted, the mainstream media have been virtually silent about
the issue of election
fraud. The Democratic Party, the principle victim of the fraud
(apart, that is, from the American voters), won’t touch the issue, as
prominent Democratic politicians proclaim that their party lost these
elections “fair and square.” Instead, the issue has been kept alive
through the internet and the independent and self-financed efforts of a
few determined individuals and citizen-based organizations.
Their efforts have not been in vain. Last September,
a Zogby poll
reported that less than half of the American public was “very
confident,” and about a third “not at all confident,” that George Bush
won the 2004 election “fair and square.” Since then, still more evidence
has accumulated validating these suspicions, most recently the US
Attorneys scandal and Greg Palast’s purloined e-mails revealing a
coordinated GOP campaign to “purge” voting rolls of Democratic voters.
Congress now has bills before it that address the issue of electoral
integrity, albeit half-heartedly. In fact, many election reform
advocates claim that “the Holt Bill” now before the House (HR 811) will,
if anything,
make the situation worse.
The paperless electronic voting devices (“direct recording electronic,”
or DRE), used
to cast 39% of the votes in the 2006 election mocks the sanctity of
the franchise.
The
undisputed facts make this mockery clear.
-
The owners and managers of the leading DRE
manufacturers, Dieblold, ES&S and Sequoia, are all rock-ribbed,
right wing Republicans. One of these executives has been convicted
and has served time for computer fraud.
-
The “source codes” – the software that processes the
votes, and thus can alter the outcomes – is “proprietary” (i.e.,
secret). DRE companies will not operate in states such as North
Carolina, that require disclosure and examination of the source codes.
-
There is no independent method of auditing the totals
reported on DRE machines. “Recounts” are nothing more than exact repetitions
of the original tabulations.
-
DRE manufacturers will not allow independent experts to test
the reliability of the machines. However, “purloined” DRE machines have been
demonstrated to be highly vulnerable to hacking, leaving no evidence of the
tampering.
Bottom line: There is simply no way to directly validate the
fairness and accuracy of the DREs. To the citizens' demand for proof of accuracy,
the only possible answer by the Republican manufacturers and programmers is
“trust us.” However, indirect evidence, namely polling, indicates that in many
crucial contests, the DRE election returns have, in fact, been rigged in favor of
the GOP.
The statistical, circumstantial and anecdotal evidence add up to a compelling
case that in every national election of the new century, some election fraud has
frustrated the will of the American voters. Thus we have suffered through two
illegitimate administrations. Even in 2006, when the Democrats took control of
Congress, there is good reason to believe that several contests were rigged.
However, this time the collective will of the voters was too strong to be overcome by the "fixers."
Such bold assertions require evidence and an argument. Fortunately, because I
have offered both in abundance
in numerous
essays, I need not repeat them here. (See
“Why We Must Not
‘Get Over It,’”
“Has the Case for
Election Fraud been Refuted?,”
“In 2006, Election
Fraud is the Keystone Issue,” and
“Debunking the
Debunker”).
About that new evidence:
On June 13, the New Zealand based website,
Scoop, published Michael Collins’
“Election 2004: The Urban Legend.” In that election, eleven million
more votes were cast than in the 2000 election. Of these additional votes, eight
million were for Bush, and three million were for Kerry.
By comparing the 2000 and 2004 totals from five distinct geographical regions –
rural, small towns, suburbs, medium cities, and big cities – Collins has
discovered that Bush’s support in the rural areas was unchanged, that he lost
support in the small towns, and remained essentially even in the suburbs. These
regions were the locations of most of Bush’s “base,” and this net decline
indicated a landslide loss in the election.
How, then, did Bush win? We are expected to believe that he did so through an astonishing and totally
inexplicable “surge” of support in the medium and large cities. In those big
cities, Bush's support increased from 26 percent of the vote in 2000, to 39 percent in 2004,
and from 2.3
million votes in 2000, to 5.4 million in 2004 – an increase of 153 percent. This
“surge” of Bush-support encompassed urban whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other
minorities, whose enthusiasm for Bush was utterly inconspicuous and unanticipated
in the pre-election polling. So great was this enthusiasm, that the vote totals,
in many urban precincts, exceeded the voter registration. In addition, there
were apparently more than a few posthumous votes as well.
This “urban surge” took place, despite the fact that Bush and Cheney did
relatively little campaigning in the cities, and that the Bush-Cheney issues
(“gays, guns and God”) failed, by and large, to excite the interest of urban
voters.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Collins concludes,
After four years of national struggle and focus overseas,
inner city Americans came to the polls in record numbers, voted more
Republican than before or since, and gave George Bush the necessary votes
for his victory in 2004!
Is this Pattern Plausible or even Possible?
Accepting this strange event requires accepting that an election without any
precedent occurred. The Democrats have seen retreats in urban turnout and
vote share but these have never been accompanied by retreats in the
Republican base area. The two phenomena just don’t happen in the same
election. Democrats increased their votes in a diminished rural voting
block, significantly improved performance in the small towns, and held close
in the suburbs. They were taking three out of every five new voters around
the country - but then we are expected to believe that they lost the
election in the big cities after taking a similar beating in the smaller
cities. This combination of events has never happened before in American
history. It is unprecedented… and unbelievable.
If these numbers are genuinely unbelievable, as they most
assuredly are, we are left with only one possible explanation: wholesale
ballot-shifting and ballot box stuffing. In a word: the election was stolen.
Read
Collin's article, where you will encounter the numbers, the supporting
argument, and extensive documentation. But don’t expect to find any of this it in the
mainstream media.
The accumulated evidence that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen is, I
submit, more than adequate to convince an impartial jury – “proof beyond
reasonable doubt.”
Yet the thieves are secure in their purloined offices. How is this possible?
The silence of the media and the paralysis of the Democrats goes a long way
toward explaining this. Even so, the secret is “out,” as Zogby tells us that
more than half of the population smells a rat.
I once believed that when this crime against our body politic was exposed,
as with Nixon and the “smoking gun” tapes, the House of Bush would surely fall
and that the GOP would be relegated to minority status for a full generation.
What I did not count on was the possibility that the crime would be unpunished
despite exposure. Yet that is what has happened.
As Senator Dole used to ask,
“Where’s the outrage?!”
One theory is that both the Democrats and the Republicans, along with the
mainstream media, have agreed to a vow
of silence, lest public knowledge of the crime destroy our “democratic” form of
government.
What this excuse fails to acknowledge is that the fraud has accomplished just
that: it has abolished our democracy. The government of the United States no
longer “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The task before us is not simply to preserve our democracy, it is to restore our
democracy. The founders of our Republic articulated the remedy: “whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of [life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness], it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
The first step toward that end is for the citizens to acknowledge the crime
against the people and their Constitution, and then to demand impeachment,
conviction and punishment of the criminals.
Not long ago, such an outcome seemed impossible, as it still does to most
members of Congress. But with the decline of Bush’s approval ratings and the
growing irrelevance of the mainstream media, the demand and the feasibility of
impeachment grows.
The Congressional hearings will continue to disclose the crimes of the Bush
regime, the economy
will continue to decline, shrinking the middle class, the national debt will
continue to grow, the dead and wounded will continue to return home from the
Bush and Cheney wars, the international community of nations will continue
to isolate and shun the United States.
We simply can’t go on like this. Something’s gotta give.
My greatest fear is of what the desperate Busheviks might attempt
in order to avoid their
day of reckoning, following January, 2009.
Better we the people act, than be acted upon.
Copyright 2007 by Ernest Partridge
