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o-o-o-o important. It's hard to keep up with everything. I didn't know that much about the OH and Minn. efforts. Wow!
I think, multiple posts of this article, maybe each post with a specific focus on one of the candidates---giving their web sites, quotes, donation info, other news articles, whatever. This needs lots of attention NOW. People need to stop crying, stop being utterly appalled, start understanding the mechanism that the fascist junta is using this time, and GET ON IT.
These are brilliant candidates, aimed right at the dirty rotten heart of the coup. I am so encouraged by their willingness to stand up there with the entire spying/blackmail/secret torture dungeons/secret elections apparatus of the Bush junta intent upon destroying them! They are going to take a full blast of swiftboating, we can be sure. What do you think about organizing something here at DU--fundraising? spin control? educating voters in those states? encouraging/helping to organize poll watchers? what do we do best? To my mind, there are no more important races in the country--and possibly no more important political development, period, than the election reform movement. This is the "long term thinking" that I've been including in my "practical suggestions for the immediate future" (Resources for American Revolution II). They WILL steal more elections--possibly a renewed junta majority in Congress this year. What do we do THEN? Strong election reformers like Bowen, Bonifaz, Ritchie and Brunner won't take it lying down, nor should we. Gather evidence, make the case, and put CONTINUED and unrelenting pressure at the state/local level for transparent elections. We need to support these champions now, and put them into a position to cry foul if their own elections are stolen, and to continue the publicity and pressure, no matter what happens. And if they can win in these circumstances, all the better. The reform will be facilitated and move faster. And we'll have to be watching their backs for a long time. We can't let them be Shelleyed!
I've been thinking all these thoughts about Bowen. Now I'm thinking them about all four (and there may be others we don't know about yet). I tend to think Calif is the most important, not because I live here, but because of the obvious bushwhacking of Shelley, and installation of McPherson to get Diebold touchscreens re-certified and to stop Shelley's reform activities. And the Schwarz coup (with 125 candidates on the "Recall" ballot--jeez.) The junta is hellbent, here. Bowen's candidacy will help alert Californians. Californians will do the rest, whether they Diebold her or not. In Massachusetts, they've got 'Boston Harbor' right there, to throw the machines into. Ohio is so corrupt, I don't know if Brunner has any chance. (That's where they flipped the 60/40 vote on the election reform initiatives last year--biggest flipped vote we've seen--and barely a ripple about it from anybody.) Minnesota, that once great Liberal state, has likely not changed its coloration at all--only the voting system has changed, now in the control of Bushites. I trust that Minnesotans will respond, but I don't think Minnesota has the clout--the population, the Electoral votes--to spark nationwide reform. California does. (That's WHY they targeted Shelley.)
So, let's think what we can do here at DU to help these candidates.
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