I was quite humbled by Voting Dem's
diary, asking if an "Ohio focused" writer such as myself should be granted front page status. Most of you know
where I stand on the issue. But I was intrigued by the use of the phrase "Ohio focused." I don't know why I seemed to have morphed into the "Ohio girl" on this forum. I guess it's because of my daily updates, since there are several other people who have been posting Ohio diaries on a daily basis. Mine just happen to make it to the top of the recommended list, and I guess that is why so many people associate Georgia10 with Ohio.
....
There are a host of other topics I would love to write on (my governor's attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, first-hand accounts I've heard of US violations in Afghan prisons, and, on the lighter side, my epic thesis
"Teresa v. Laura: Battle of the Bitches"). But, to be honest, I'm an overworked, overstressed, takes-on-too-much-responsibility - "did you have to join ANOTHER journal?"- type A- if-you-do-something-do-it-well type of person. So I'm holding off on wading in new waters until the Final Exam Gods take pity on me and release me from the bonds of Cramming Purgatory.
After KO's diary which gave birth to the 'Thread That Never Ends" (you think I'm kidding...people are still posting there!), I got to thinking about how polarizing Ohio has become.
OHIO IS SEXY
Poor Ohio. It never meant to be a wedge issue for Kossians, let alone liberals. But what is clear from KO's thread and the rebuttal diaries is that Ohio provokes strong but conflicting reactions in people. It's kind of like Adrien Brody. Some women are totally turned on by him, others can't give the guy a second glance. Like any attraction, you have to find something you connect to, something that draws you in. (Have I lost you guys yet with my ramblings? No?...good...let's dive right in. Stick with me...it'll be worth it. I promise.)
So, I got to thinking. Why am I so focused on the Ohio issues, when others seem to be completely disinterested? What about Ohio turns me on? (not literally of course. Only Olbermann can do that)...What is Ohio's Brodian quality, that which captivates me and turns me into a googling monkey every morning, searching for the slightest scintilla of news or progress?
As you may have noticed in my diaries, I've focused much on the procedural aspect of the election and the recount. The Ohio story is multifaceted - voter suppression, prima facie fraud, alleged fraud, the black hole that is electronic voting - but I find myself drawn more to the abuse of power exhibited by Ohio officials, and seemingly intentional divergence from Ohio recount procedures.
Reflecting upon that, I realized why I am so drawn to this story. Because I know how it feels to be screwed by the system.
CUE THE MELODRAMA...
I have been the victim of election fraud. Is this a metaphor for "all Americans are affected by Ohio?" Nah. I got screwed by the "rules" and by those "in power", albeit on a much localized level. Slander, libel, cops, corruption...these are the things that my undergrad years were made of.
As a eager, naïve, blindly optimistic undergrad, I joined the university newspaper in the hopes of seeking out the Truth. As a fledging reporter, I was assigned to the pigsty that is Student Government Politics. Have you watched C-SPAN? Imagine you've just had a huge turkey dinner, filled up on that blissful tryptophan, and have to watch C-SPAN for three hours at a time. Yep. Such is the reality of Student Government meetings. My eyes would glaze over as I nodded off, catching only the faint echo of so-and-so reporting on vending machines in the cafeteria or this-and-this student group reporting on their "totally awesome" cupcake sale.
At some point, I decided to pay attention (I don't think it was a conscious decision as much as I had to get interested lest I cram my sharpened #2 pencil into my brain). The more I paid attention at the meetings, though, the more I realized there was some shady business going on.
Let me set up the backdrop. The Student Government Association controlled a considerable amount of money in student fees (hundreds of thousands of dollars). The administration of the SGA at the time I was a reporter was controlled by a certain political group on campus. For the sake of anonymity, let's call them the DOP. :) Now, the more I investigated, poked around, the more I realized that the DOP was not only not following procedure as far as allocating the funds, but they were also using the funds for their own personal pleasure (trips, hotels, etc.) How did they get all the money appropriated? Well, the President ran with/appointed the majority of the Senate.
Fast forward. I knew someone had to stop this shit. And why not me? So I formed a political action group on campus, and me and my friends ran against the DOP in the elections. We ran on a platform of restoring order, transparency, and fairness in the SGA. But, like anyone who has tasted the sweetness of unbridled power, the DOP wasn't going to give up without a fight. They accused me of being a racist (their entire ticket was all Afircan American). The claim was ludicrous of course. I had the most diverse ticket ever (Polish Catholic, African American Jew, Greek Orthodox, Atheist White, Pakistani Muslim). Anyway, after exposing the DOP for the corrupt idiots they were, we won in a landslide. (and no, "idiots" is not a flame--trust me, if you knew these people...)
Fast forward a little more. We go to the SGA meeting to certify the election results. The place is packed with students, the media, and everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting to burst into applause. Except the Executive Board is late. Where are they? Suddenly, they waltz in! the Vice President (Speaker of the Senate) takes to the podium and says they had an "emergency meeting" with the Election Commission, and that they were unilaterally disqualifying our entire ticket because of "election complaints" filed against us. That's it. It was over in five minutes. Meeting adjourned.
You can imagine what I thought. WHAT. THE. FUCK. So many things....we never heard of these complaints or received copies of them (as required by the bylaws), we never got a hearing (as required by the bylaws), all Election Commission meetings are supposed to be public (as required by the bylaws). So all we could do was sit there, mouths agape, shocked, stunned, as the President re-appointed himself and his administration for a second term.
Fast forward again. We appealed to the President of the University, who turned out to be scared shitless the DOP was going to start a revolt on campus if they didn't get their way. We appealed to the Vice-President of Student Affairs, who didn't do shit because he was best friends with the SGA President (no, really. That's how crazy this all was). So we were told to "trust the process" : to file an appeal with the Student Supreme Court, and to let them deal with it.
Fine. I resolved to prove to the sell-out administration and the immoral DOP that they fucked with the wrong person. So, in the midst of balancing seven courses no less, I spent three weeks writing a brief, gathering evidence, and getting our case together. During that process, I found out about a sweet deal between the President and the Chair of the Election Commission, and I found out that the "complaints" against me were all filed by the same person, just ten minutes or so before we were disqualified. Somehow, I blinked and was now living in an existentialist play of sorts. With the President having appointed the entire court, I felt like there was no exit.
But they did overturn the results...they had to, it was such a blatant abuse of power. So I took office along with the rest of my administration, and the first thing I did was throw the SGA Constitution in the garbage. Literally.
I drafted a new constitution, one with a greater system of checks and balance, less power to the President, etc. I created new election procedures, new bylaws. Both passed unanimously. Those are two of my proudest accomplishments.
Ah, but the story doesn't end there! Since I was a senior, I could not run again. Back in comes the DOP, ready to retake their offices. They ran again, and won by a narrow margin. However, during the election, there were numerous complaints filed against them. The president fondled a female voter. He secretly recorded opposing candidate's conversations. His party was dragging students to the polls by their backpacks and blocking off doorways, siphoning off students from their classes and into the voting booth. These complaints were duly filed, and we gave him what he never gave us - a full hearing, complete with witnesses and testimony to defend himself. The Election Commission found that he violated so many rules, that he should be disqualified. He was informed at the conclusion of the hearing that he could appeal the decision to the Student Supreme Court.
But why follow the law when you got buddies at the top? He complained to his buddy the Vice President of the university, who stepped in and overturned the Commission's decisions and reinstated him as President. Apparently, only our party had to "trust the process." I found out after I left that one of the first things he did was spend about $40,000 to throw him and his friends a party on campus. Woo-fucking-hoo.
In short, this experience taught me two things. One, some people will never pass up an opportunity to screw you over, if it will advance their own interests. Two, procedures and law don't mean jack shit when you have such corruption at the highest echelons of power.
AND THE POINT OF THIS IS...
As you can tell, I was deeply affected by this experience. We throw around terms like "fraud" and "election irregularities" but unless you experienced them, it is hard to understand the effect they have not only on the people involved, but on the process as a whole.
You can talk about "voter suppression" with pretty graphs and pictures of long lines, but unless you were there -- drenched from standing in the rain for seven hours waiting to cast a vote on a machine that might not count your vote after all -- you can't appreciate the full weight of the situation.
You can cite statistics about absentee and provisional ballots until you're blue in the face, but unless you were there to witness your ballot being discarded or your registration form being shredded, you can never fully value what it feels like to be raped of your right to vote.
It is for those people, those not only in Ohio, but those throughout the nation who experienced such tragedy, that us "Ohio" people keep investigating the issue. It's not about President Kerry. It's about Joe Blow, about all the ordinary citizens who could be next (if they escaped being victimized this time around).
Did fraud occur? Abso-fucking-lutely. How do I know this? Because the Presidential election was not conducted by some fool-proof AI androids. It was executed by humans. By tens of thousands of humans across the country, as poll workers, ballot counters, GOTVers. And the one thing I know (as I stated above) is that humans in a position of power, as finite as that sense of power may be, will be tempted to abuse it.
The SGA election involved a few hundred thousands dollars, a few dozen people, and control over a university with about 10,000 students. Despite those seemingly small benefits, fraud and corruption occurred in every single element of the election. That is how strong the desire was to maintain their hegemony in the senate, to keep drinking from that cup of power and feasting on the funds. Does anyone honestly believe that, with a national election, where there are billions more at stake, where the power to be gained is near absolute, that the frailty of human nature will not expose itself?
It is too tempting. For those who want the prize of victory with every fiber of their being, it is too tempting - almost natural - to cheat and fix the odds to make that dream of victory a reality.
Does this mean I believe there was a large-scale Rovian conspiracy to commit fraud? No. The evidence to date is insufficient to support such a conclusion. Yet I know that it is inevitable a poll worker here and there fudged a ballot, or absentee ballots were mysteriously "lost," or the rules were bent to prevent legitimate voters from voting...there are countless of little ways man showed his nature in this election.
What is that nature? It is that little part of us that we largely ignore, that cowers in a corner under the foreboding presence of our conscience. It's the ugly side of each of us, that side that sometimes just wants the easy way out, even if it means breaking the rules (anyone who's taken off the stickers from a Rubick's cube will get my drift). For most of us, the warning of our conscience is enough to drown out that little voice that hisses "just do it, no one will know..."
But for many, that is not the case. For too many - and most importantly, for too many in positions of power - the desire to win is so strong, it fills their head with a deafening roar; so loud, such a cacophony of greed and pride, that is their conscience now that cowers in the corner, beaten, ignored, defeated.
I wish I could say that everyone participating in the 2004 election was a person of conscience. I wish I could say the poll workers, the Triad reps, the Diebold employees, the pubic officials, the campaigns - I wish I could sit before you now and say "I trust in the goodness of my fellow humans to uphold the law and the integrity of the process." But I can't do that. My experiences, my heart and my mind, won't let me do that.
Thus, I acknowledge that incontrovertible principle that to err is to be human. Consequently, I have felt drawn to exposing just how much we erred in this election. It is necessary we do so, so that we enact safeguards to prevent such mistakes or abuses of power from happening again.
We can never get rid of that propensity to subvert the system; all we can do, as citizen warriors in this fight to maintain our democracy, is to expose the system's weakness and put in place barriers that will prevent those who are overzealous from exploiting it.
In my eyes, using Ohio as a case study in the failure of electronic voting is a crucial step in this process. Only by knowing the full extent of human taint in the counting process can we make a forceful case for reforming the way we cast our votes.
So the next time you see an "Ohio" diary, even if you aren't attracted to the title, even if you find the subject a turn-off, pop in periodically and read what us who are so passionate about the issue are saying, what we are uncovering. Observe our passion, our experiences, and encourage us as we face this daunting task.
Because all of use here are in the same fight. All of us are seeking to shape this nation into that which we know it can be. Each of us makes a difference, whether we're wearing a tin hat or not ;)
Thanks to everyone on all the threads for their hard work and their support. I truly appreciate it.