A year and a half ago, President Bush signed the "Help Americans Vote Act". (N.B.: For examples of how accurate Republican names for laws are, look up the "Contract With America", the "Defense of Marriage Act" and the "U.S.A. Patriot Act".) This bill was supposed to be designed to correct a host of voting problems, including those that led to the 2000 Florida fiasco. When he signed the bill, President Bush said, "When problems arise in the administration of elections we have a responsibility to fix them. Every registered voter deserves to have confidence that the system is fair and elections are honest, that every vote is recorded, and that the rules are consistently applied."But then the time came to provide the money that President Bush promised, and he and his Republican friends in Congress failed to follow through. As a result, 41 states have requested extensions - 41 states are subject to the same voting disaster this fall that Florida had to deal with four years ago.
The Republicans aren't just refusing to provide the money needed to fix our electoral system, they also refuse to talk about it. When the bipartisan Commission on Civil Rights put together a panel to deal with the problem, the Republicans walked out.
It comes down to a simple equation: Democrats want everyone to be able to vote, and Republicans don't. And since the Republicans control the money, we won't have free, open and fair elections this fall.
The problems in Florida went far beyond the "hanging chad" mess. Thousands of law-abiding voters were listed as convicted felons and denied their right to vote. Secretary of State Katherine Harris (now a Republican member of the House of Representatives) hired a private company to remove these law-abiding people from the voting rolls. If they had been allowed to vote - as they should have been - there would have been no doubt on election night that Al Gore had won the election.
Now, the Republican "fix" for the problems Florida faced is a machine designed by a major Republican supporter. The CEO of Diebold stated that he planned to deliver Ohio for Bush in 2004. Make no mistake - this machine was programmed to cheat. In fact, the Diebold machine had software so blatantly hackable that the state of California has outlawed its use.
Clearly, after stealing one election, the Republicans are gearing up to steal the next one.
So after stealing two consecutive Presidential elections, what will the Republicans do next?
During this term, the Republicans:
- Gave huge tax windfalls to rich people.
- Ignored or changed environmental protection laws so rich people could pollute more.
- Raised lots and lots of money from rich people.
- Sent (mostly) poor people into a war to die for no legitimate reason so that rich people could get no-bid, war-profiteering contracts.
- Put poor people in dungeons, without charges, without lawyers, and without any constitutional rights at all.
And they're just getting started.
After stealing a second election, what other "destroy America first" actions will the Republicans take? One shudders to think. Perhaps a "flat tax", in which the tax burden on poor and middle class Americans will double while rich people get still more windfalls. Perhaps new laws allowing rich companies to pollute anything they want, destroying the health of poor children. Perhaps the atrocities being committed in Iraqi prisons will become standard practice in American prisons (despite all the rhetoric, George W. Bush has never actually apologized for that).
Don't believe me? Look at the history of every country where one small group of people gets to run things for a long time without a chance of being deposed. If George W. Bush and the Republicans are allowed to steal another election, it may be the last election in America.
Of course, if you're already rich it probably won't be too bad.
Copyright 2004, Dan Jacoby
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