http://www.alternet.org/election04/20023/In the weeks remaining to us, prevention may be the best medicine, and all sorts of groups are gearing up to guard against a coup. Common Cause and People for the American Way, among others, are mobilizing to oppose touch screen voting and to increase the ranks of poll watchers. The Democratic Party has lined up 2,000 lawyers in case of dodgy-looking results and is bringing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor our election for the first time ever. Taking the foreign monitor theme one step further, the feisty folks at Global Exchange have invited their own 28 nonpartisan foreign observers. All over the country, local Democrats and citizens' groups like Count Every Vote 2004 are preparing for a heavy presence at the polls.
So we're on our own, folks – those of us who still hold to the idea that our leaders should be elected rather than perpetuated by fraud. In addition to all the poll monitoring, touch screen protesting, etc.,
we need two things. First, some agreed-upon group to declare the election fair or fraudulent. This may not be an easy or obvious call, according to my friend the political scientist Frances Fox Piven: "If this election is stolen, it will be stolen at the most local level, and we won't know right away." Maybe the OSCE can be relied on to pass judgment, or maybe the ACLU should be appointed to do the job, with MoveOn spreading the word.
Second, we need a plan of action for the all-too-likely event that the election is determined to be tainted. "Hitting the streets" sounds good, but if we each do it on our own, the neighbors will just conclude that we're taking out the recycling or assessing our leaf-raking issues. Asked what we should do, Linda Burnham, of Count Every Vote 2004, suggests people start planning now for local demonstrations at election boards. Piven recommends nationwide protests that are both "nonviolent and disruptive," possibly on inauguration day. John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, writes: "On Feb. 15, 2003, over ten million people in over 600 cities around the world took to the streets to say no to Bush's
Another stolen election will require coordinated efforts like this, on a larger and more sustained basis, until the stolen goods are returned. Mega-networks like United for Peace and Justice, which played a central role in Feb. 15 as well as the recent mass march at the Republican Convention, will need to retool so they can play a central role."
All this sounds good to me – local planning for local responses and national coordination by a trusted group like United for Peace and Justice. But we have to get started, well, last week. Democratic voters need to be assured that some of us won't take another coup lying down. And Republican dirty-tricksters need to start feeling the first shivers of fear. If all the people who are saying they're willing to hit the streets actually do so, there won't be a lot of people left indoors to wait tables, teach school, or pay taxes during W's second term.
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