Reply #17: Excited to be going -- proud that my name is on the program ... [View All]

[Fly by night]

... with lots of folks I have gotten to know, in person and in our virtual reality. And lots of patriotic people who I've always wanted to meet.

I do hope folks have energy and interest enough on Sunday morning to be there for my presentation: "Thinking Patriotically, Acting Locally (and NOW)". The program is still fluid and I do hope Marybeth and I have the chance to speak together about state actions and strategies, and not so much opposite each other. Here's a BIG taste of what my speech outline looked like a few weeks ago. I'm obviously going to have to edit it to include constitutional challenges in court (our Memphis lawsuit will be filed this week.)
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Thinking Patriotically, Acting Locally (and NOW)
Bernard H. Ellis, Jr., MA, MPH, Organizer
Gathering To Save Our Democracy (Tennessee)

For election reform to be successful (particularly at this point in our
history), it must be done "in your own backyards". This is both because
the conduct of elections is essentially a local or state decision and
because the current political party in power is blocking all efforts to
reform our voting process through amendments to the Help America Vote
Act (HAVA).

There are many useful models of local and state-level reform movements
to protect our votes and rescue our democracy. In Tennessee, our
nine-month organization (Gathering To Save Our Democracy) is one such
example. Created as a response to the 51 Capitals March grassroots
effort to bring attention to the 2004 election theft, the Gathering
focused its early attention on educating the public and increasing media
attention to the evidence for the multi-state election fraud that
characterized the last election. This early activity resulted in 33
public Gatherings across the state, considerable media attention and
direct actions at the offices of our Congressional representatives and
our Federal courthouses across the state. This early activity helped us
build an email database including hundreds of Tennesseans (representing
six different political parties) who were concerned about the integrity
of our election process. It also allowed us to host the (first) National
Election Reform Conference in Nashville in April, which brought voting
rights activists from 30 states to review the evidence for the stolen
election and to share strategies for protecting our votes in the future.

With this groundwork and a host of early successes and momentum-building
activities, the Gathering has now launched itself fully into election
reform here in Tennessee and is recognized as the major player in
supporting voter-verified paper ballots and mandatory random manual
recounts. The timing in Tennessee (and in all states) is critical
because decisions on how to spend our $56 million in HAVA funds to
"upgrade" our voting systems are being made now. My presentation will
review some of the critical steps that we believe have been important in
building a successful and respected voice for election reform in the
Orange State, including the following:

1) Establishing a nonpartisan platform for action - Everyone who
believes in the "consent of the governed" has a stake in free, fair and
verifiable elections. In Tennessee, that has meant visible support from
members of six political parties.

2) Coalition building - We forged alliances with Common Cause, NAACP,
Urban League, Tennessee Disabled Voters and a host of progressive
organizations. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, we have grounded our
activity in the proud history of voting rights activism for which our
state is known.

3) Making friends with the disabled voter community - Many states have
experienced an uneasy tension between the accessibility concerns of
disabled voters and the accountability concerns of election reformers.
Here, we have worked to educate ourselves and to support both issues, as
do our allies within the disabled voter community.

4) Education for action - We continuously provide both issue-oriented
educational updates and opportunities for activism to our membership on
the local, state and national levels. We are known as rational and
informed advocates.

5) Learning the process - We have delved deeply into the different
voting systems in place in our 95 counties and learned the process
whereby changes in those systems would occur. In the process, we have
found natural allies.

6) Legislative action - Through a series of lobbying activities with our
legislature, we have made friends and cultivated supporters on both
sides of the aisle, resulting in growing bipartisan support for VVPB/MRMR.

7) Framing "election reform" as part of "ethics reform" - Our
legislature has received national attention for its lax ethical
behavior. We are working to make election reform the foundation from
which all other ethics reform springs.

8) Befriending county/state election commissioners and administrators -
This has included making our presence known at local/state election
commission meetings and playing a visible role at the statewide election
officials convention.

9) Staying on top of the issue - There are many online election reform
communities with which we are familiar and within which we are
recognized as competent "players" in this newest generation of the
voting rights movement.

10) Being a "trusted servant" - We are now used regularly as a model by
activists across the country in their own efforts to build similar
grassroots movements. We are also considered an informational "ready
response" team

My presentation will flesh out these Gathering activities within the
constraints of the available time-frame and format. We trust that our
experiences will be informative to other states which are launching or
refining their own reform approaches.

Bernard H. Ellis, Jr., MA, MPH: Mr. Ellis is the organizer for the
Tennessee grassroots organization, Gathering To Save Our Democracy. This
ad-hoc, nonpartisan group has worked to educate Tennesseans about the
evidence for voter intimidation and disenfranchisement -- and other
elements of election fraud -- that occurred in the 2004 election (and
before), and to inform and mobilize Tennesseans to support the reforms
necessary to prevent such abuses of our franchise in the future. Mr.
Ellis is a public health epidemiologist (and a farmer and community
leader) with over 30 years of research and program management experience
at the tribal, state, national and international levels. He did his
undergraduate study at Vanderbilt, and his graduate work at Vanderbilt,
Texas, Stanford and UC-Berkeley.
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So guys, let's all meet in Portland and chew the salmon in person. Now to get back to kicking ass and taking names, here in the Orange State.

Fly by night