Am I alone on the left, or are there others that are just sick and tired of the incessant complaints about Diebold and how our elections were stolen in November?
Now I'm sure there is election fraud going on in places, and that electronic voting machines aren't all that secure (which is why I'm all for the paper trail receipts, which are proposed by some REPUBLICAN members of the Georgia Assembly). But come on...constantly whining about how the election was stolen does nothing but alienate us further from the voters we are trying to reach. It makes us sound like sore losers...and who would want to vote for a sore loser?
My entire state elections are run on Diebold machines without a paper trail, and somehow I pretty much have full confidence that the results of the 02 and 04 elections are pretty much right on the money here in Georgia. It annoyed me to no end to see stories about Georgia's historic shift from Dem to GOP in 02 as proof that the vote tally was changed, from people who didn't live in Georgia and didn't see what was happening in our state. It wasn't the machines; it was a long overdue redefinition of political parties in the South.
Complaining that the only way we could have lost was vote fraud helps put out that "liberal elitist" view, which loses us elections. By saying that the result of the election could only be due to fraud, we put out the message to the masses that they either didn't know who they were voting for or that there's no way they could have voted for x candidate. And if Kerry was elected, and there was a big hoopla from the right about election fraud...wouldn't you be a tad pissed at their condescending attitude? Claiming voter fraud, even if its true, can only help the other side and motivate them to show the other side that it wasn't fraud, but the will of the people. (Take a look at Bush's jump form 00 to 04...I think part of that is from the motivation of the volunteers/donors for there not to be another repeat of 00 and they wanted to win clearly in 04.)
I remember during the Kucinich campaign there was one person who would come to our meetings and events with petitions for paper trail voting. Yet I can't recall her actually volunteering for the candidate. I remember her out at Peace marches with her petitions but not actually marching. If the "voter fraud" activists would focus their time and effort on candidates...I think that the margin would be so overwhelming that even a little voter fraud wouldn't matter.
Does the electoral system need to change? Absolutely. Do we need paper trails? Of course. But neither of those are going to happen by harassing our neighbors and our current politicians (who, after all, are in power in possible part to voter fraud...so why in the hell should they listen to us?) Voter fraud is not an issue we can ride into the hearts and minds of the moderates in the country to sway them to our side.