Ned Lamont's diary of today asserted that "We cannot bring about change until we are willing to take up arms for a cause we believe in . . ."
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Ned, this is going to be a dirty election year and the Republicans are already smugly scheming to cancel the voice of the electorates by fraudulently stealing elections outright, in your election and others. To the degree that Republicans are in charge, they are already ginning up their phone bank jamming machines, Diebold computer patches, and "Don't Count the Vote" appeals to the Republican courts.
So I have to ask whether your suggestion that we need to be willing to "take up arms for a cause we believe in" is merely a rhetorical flourish, or whether you agree with me that the threat of chaos and civil strife in the absence of democracy is the principal reason and guarantor of democracy itself. Candidates who agree with this proposition, (and I say this to readers as much as to the candidate himself), must be prepared to defend their victories in the face of election fraud.
As you said in your diary of today, "it would take an entire movement" to ensure that all votes are fairly counted. In mobilizing Democratic voters to defend their victories, the candidate's roll is crucial. The candidate's public insistence BEFORE the vote that the vote be free and fair warns the Republicans that we are not going to stand for their Dirty Tricks and Watergate break-ins. Candidates need to speak out now, warning Democratic voters in Connecticut and across of the country that democracy is only as strong as our insistence on transparent and fair elections, where all of the voting booths are opened at the same time, not just those in precincts that have supported Bush in the past.
We can only fight for candidates who are willing to fight for themselves and for voters. Although it is not the candidate's roll to personally plan and implement strategies of civil disobedience against election fraud, yet the candidate must legitimize expressions of public outrage by publicly calling them the natural and predictable result of stolen elections. Candidates should warn in advance that the electorate will be angry and will not stand for electoral frauds that steal their votes.
The public cannot be expected to observe legalistic definitions of voter fraud nor wait for the Republican Supreme Court to announce its verdict. When individual voters are turned away at the polls, or sacks of votes mysteriosly disappear, frustrated voters will not wait passively for CBS and NBC to announce the results of other people's exercise of the franchise. ALL votes must be counted in the defense of democracy.
Democracy's formal promise - that we can turn out incumbents out on election day by force of votes - serves to dissuade us from attempting to turn them out today by force of arms. The promise of free and fair elections in the future is the only guarantee of civil cohesion in the present. But that guarantee - our consent to be governed - is only as strong as our belief that we are governed according to popular consent. When that belief is tested, the restraints on chaos and anarchy are tested as well.
When the public engages in civil disobedience UNRELATED to elections, its protests are peaceful and lawful, because future elections are democracy's principal opportunity for expression of public discontent. However, when the public engages in disobedience AGAINST FRAUDULENT ELECTION RESULTS, its anger is swift and implacable, precisely because the very opportunity to express dissent peacefully has been stolen along with the "hanging chads".
If election booths in Black neighborhoods are closed on election day, the voters will not go home to watch others' votes be counted on television. Instead, frustrated voters might well go to city clerks' offices and STAY THERE with increasing impatience until their votes have been cast and counted. Our lawyers may be inside negotiating, but the streets will be full of angry voters. Such a result will not be the result of spontaneous happenstance; it will have been carefully planned by those who value American democracy and soberly recognize the very real threats to its continued existence. Where electoral fraud acts occurs with impunity, there IS NO electoral democracy. A campaign without an anti-fraud campaign is no campaign at all.
In Connecticut, in your eventual election or the election of one of your opponents, the public will consent to be governed. But that consent must be - it can only be obtained - in utter transparency and fairness, with a complete lack of Republican election fraud.
The public knows when it has been cheated and will immediately and unreservedly call a liar a liar. Once the public is in the streets for Election Day, it will only return home peacefully when all of the votes have been counted transparently and fairly. Election fraud, on the other hand, is an invitation to chaos.
In the face of anecdotal evidence that even one precinct's votes are in jeopardy, Democratic campaigns will quickly realize that the legitimacy of the entire election and of government itself is in play. They must speak and act decisively and implacably, lest their passivity be misconstrued as the ratification of a fraudulent result.
When important values like the authority to make war and peace hang in the balance, blunt denunciations of election fraud, made before, during and after elections, are like "signing statements" that let the government know exactly what weight and authority should be given to the electoral results and subsequent governance. The victor's mandate is only as great as the evidence that his victory was achieved without resort to fraud. These indicia of fairness and the absence of fraud are essential to prevent civil strife and anarchy. This is Vote Fairness and it is also, as a matter of fact, the essence and precondition of national cohesion and civil peace in an electoral democracy.
Best wishes to Ted Lamont and the Democrats of 2006 and 2008.