Moving On Is Hard To Do

Dennis Kucinich was on CNN last night, discussing the Iraq War. He proudly accepted the label “liberal” and stated boldly that he has always been against this war and has even voted against funding it all along. As he was speaking, the bottom of the screen read, “Rep. Dennis Kucinich D-Ohio." I turned to Man of American Dissent and said, “Ohio voters keep sending Kucinich to Congress and I’m supposed to believe that Ohio went for Bush in ’04? Puh-lease.”

All these years later, and I’m still not over it. I’ve still not read or seen anything that has changed my mind about what happened in Ohio in 2004. In fact, evidence continues to drip out that supports the argument that George Bush is an illegitimate president and that his campaign, along with Bush loyalists in key positions, with malice of forethought, rigged the election in his favor.

I remember reading reports of Ken Blackwell, in the months leading up to the election, purging the voter rolls of hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters. I remember him creating arbitrary rules about voter registration and the weight paper it must be printed on. I remember the long lines of mostly black voters in Ohio on Election Day. I remember the mysterious lock down by Homeland Security of the building in Warren County where the last of the votes were tallied. I remember the bizarre numbers coming out of Ohio in the days after the election, numbers that varied wildly from the exit polls. I remember being frightened by what had been revealed, and even more frightened by the silence of traditional media. It was a black time to say the least.

During the following weeks, I poured over election results, county by county, and none of it made any sense. I followed the re-count as it moved forward, out of the spotlight, the result of hard work and diligence by activists not willing to sit down and shut up about the possible thwarting of the democratic process. At that time, I still had hope that the truth would be revealed, and that a hand recount of the ballots would show that there was something rotten in Ohio. How naïve I was. Of course they rigged the recount too.

The silence of the media and the indifference of the Democratic Party forced this, possibly the biggest story of our lifetime, underground where it remains today. Perhaps it’s just too frightening to contemplate, too difficult to accept and the implications too great. But ignoring the continuing saga only puts us at greater risk of a repeat performance. It can happen here, and it has. Why wouldn’t it happen again?

The reason I bring this up now is because the firing of US Attorneys across the country is likely connected to this same rotten scheme. There’s no denying the electoral significance of the states that were targeted by Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department. I was glad to see Robert Reich actually utter the suggestion on television this weekend that this White House wants to make it harder for Americans to vote. That is the real story behind the Attorney purge. It really is that simple.

I’m also rehashing this story because so much is left unrevealed and what is coming out is not widely reported. How many people know that the recount in Ohio was fixed? How many people know that election workers have been convicted of rigging that recount? Mainstream news reports of the conviction make sure to suggest that their actions did nothing to alter the outcome of the election, but that’s just ass covering. We will never know if the vote totals in Cuyahoga County were manipulated, and that is because these elections officials made sure that there would never be a hand recount. I don’t care what their motivations were, democracy was thwarted and the truth was buried.

How many people know that the 2006 election was riddled with “inconsistencies” as well? Who knows what the Rove machine is setting up for 2008? One election turning out right does not mean everything’s okay, it just means enough people voted to override any plan in place to thwart the will of the people. We still have voting machines that are vulnerable to manipulation. We still have a Republican crusade to make voting more difficult. We still have a media that is not at all interested in pursuing the story. The ballots in Ohio have never been counted so we don’t know for sure what happened in 2004, but the circumstantial evidence is enough to convict in the court of public opinion. Well, it would be if more people knew about it.

You can call me a conspiracy theorist and dismiss my concerns as the result of the overactive imagination of a hyperventilating liberal that can’t stand losing. You can, but you’d be wrong. I’m willing to accept that Bush legitimately won the election, I just want the glaring discrepancies and secrecy explained. I accept that enough Americans voted for Bush in 2004 to make it a close election, even if I have a hard time understanding why. I accept that he could have won, but what I know of that election and the amazing things (unexplained glitches, literally unbelievable vote counts and inconsistencies in exit polling) that occurred that have yet to be explained, I just don’t believe that he did. The fact that the Bush administration continues to manipulate any and all information relating to the integrity of our elections, is a good indicator that they’ve got something to hide. Again, it’s circumstantial, but criminals have been convicted on less.