People are still reeling from the sweet shock of Obama's victory--and it's completely understandable, considering what was at stake. There was, of course, the vast symbolic value of an African-American becoming president. (So much for "the Bradley effect"!) And it is certainly a staggering relief that John McCain (and then Sarah Palin) won't be sitting in the Oval Office, variously hastening the End of Days.
And, more specifically, a lot of people also feel like dancing in the streets because this presidential contest wasn't stolen. The millions who went out and voted early, and the millions more who voted absentee, were mostly hoping that such measures might prevent the GOP from disappearing their votes on Election Day. The fear of yet another grand theft also drove a massive push to monitor the polls, with many groups and countless
voters watching with unprecedented vigilance. And now the media too (at last) reported on the vote suppression methods of the GOP, with CNN and others taking note of the defunct machines, the too-long lines, the sly strokes to intimidate or disinform.
All such preventive steps, and the gigantic turnout, have made Barack Obama our next president. (And there was, as well, Karl Rove's abrupt decision not to try to rig the outcome: a reversal that he signaled Monday evening, when he suddenly foretold "an electoral landslide" for Obama--just hours after Mike Connell, his longtime IT fixer, had been forced to answer questions, under oath, in an Ohio courtroom.) It is indeed a heady moment, and we have surely earned the right to savor it, and feel the novel joy of having all been spared--of having spared ourselves--the horrible alternative.
And yet we can't just float away in this new surge of happiness; for it would be ironic--and a very dangerous mistake--to feel so blithe at having dodged
a bullet that we all forget the bullets whizzing past us still. Obama's victory does not mean we can now relax about America's election system, and the reclamation of our voting rights: on the contrary.
First of all, the GOP, although defeated (at the moment) on the presidential front, is fighting hard to steal as many posts as possible on every other front. They are particularly desperate not to let the Democrats amass the 60 Senate seats that would allow them to break filibusters. And so there are suspicious races in a number of states. In Georgia, according to the Savannah Daily News, it seems that some 2 million votes are missing, and the early voting has not been counted; and there was enormous vote suppression throughout Georgia's Democratic precincts, with waits as long as eight hours in some places and poll workers ferociously obstructing voters. In Alaska, Ted Stevens magically maintained the same slim lead--around 3,300 votes--throughout Election Night, even as returns kept coming in; and, as fivethirtyeight.com has noted, there appear to be a rather high proportion of "questionable ballots" cast by Democrats.
And in Minnesota, where Al Franken now trails Norm Coleman by just 337
votes, it turns out that the ES&S machines used in the race had failed their
accuracy tests, as Jason Leopold has reported.
And there are also other iffy races coast to coast: the Senate race in Oregon; the House races in CA 4, NJ 3, VA 5, MD 1 and Washington State; the gubernatorial race in Washington State (a bitter rematch between Dem incumbent Christine Gregoire and Repub Dino Rossi: who, in fact, stole some 3,000 votes in the last election, through the Sequoia machines used in Snohomish County--a fact never mentioned by the Democrats); and the Secretary of State contest in Montana, among others. (For more details, please check out http://www.NoVoterLeftBehind.net.)
So the current situation gives us every reason not to be complacent since Obama's victory. And, in the long term, there's another reason, too, which is the Democrats' own lousy record on the issue of election fraud, and the need for sweeping and immediate reform. This is the case with Obama himself; with his first appointees, Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta; the Democratic National Committee; Pelosi, Reid, Schumer and the rest of the Congressional leadership; and many other bigwigs in the party. I'll follow up with more specifics in my next long email on this subject.
MCM
