The voice of experience
The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. article in Rolling Stone magazine, CNN’s subsequent interview with Kennedy, and finally the Star Tribune’s “Down for the Count on Election ’04″ (published June 18th) has finally brought to light the crisis of potential electoral fraud that we face as a nation. This was covered in detail by Representative John Conyers report, What went wrong in Ohio.
I was one of the nine people from Minnesota who actively participated in the Ohio recount. I still remember our group holding a press conference on the steps of the State Capitol building and having no media presence there at all. This has been one of the primary issues for our campaign for United States Senate, because the lessons and implications of Ohio are stunning.
Kennedy correctly points out the issues of caging minorities, voter intimidation/suppression, questionable “computer glitches,” closed source computer programs used in the counting process, no paper trails, and a host of other problems we experienced in Ohio.
Unfortunately, Kennedy misses in his article and analysis is the role of the Green Party and the lack of leadership exhibited by John Kerry and most other Democratic leaders in the recount effort. It is a fact that Kerry had 54 million dollars in his war chest, 18 million set aside specifically to fight back in case of fraud. It took the Green Party’s presidential candidate to mount the recount challenge and organize the resources, volunteers, and money to make it happen. It must be stated that it was our friends in Progressive Democrats of America who were instrumental in organizing this effort.
It is an undeniable truth that were it not for the Green Party standing for our right to vote and have our votes counted accurately, none of us would even be aware of the crisis we face.
Those of us who have been working on this issue for the past two years are delighted the media is finally making an issue of it. Thomas Jefferson stated that a free and independent media is the cornerstone of Democracy. The job of a free press, or what he called the fourth estate of democracy is to inform the public without fear or favor. It may be two years too late but better late than never. After all what is at risk is the integrity of our entire democracy.
