Steve Cobble is an expert on a wide range of election and government issues and has served as a campaign advisor to many candidates, including Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader. He is currently a consultant on democracy issues with the Institute for Policy Studies.
Sometime very soon, it is extremely likely that the major media are finally going to demonstrate what most of us have known all along -- that the Florida vote count was a fraud; that President-Select Bush really lost both that state and the nation; that the voice of the people was gagged.
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How Shall We Respond?
When the results of the media recount are released in April or May, a coalition of groups -- including the Institue for Policy Studies (IPS), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Independent Progressive Politics Network (IPPN) -- are calling for National Days of Action. (Stay linked to www.ips-dc.org for details.)
Join the coalition at the Supreme Court when the results are announced, or at your local courthouse or favorite demonstration site. Call a press conference. Before then, wherever you live, gather people together to fight back. No justice, no mandate.
Get out your old armbands, to symbolize the thousands of African American voters falsely purged and abused by the Florida authorities. Put on a ribbon. Have a mock funeral for democracy.
Even better, use humor, as www.democrats.com and Citizens for Legitimate Government and many others are doing. (When the Nation magazine gets done with its naming contest for "His Illegitimacy," maybe we can have a slogan contest -- we need hundreds of thousands of tasteful, but funny, bumper stickers ... )
Pass on this essay, and the details about the National Days of Action to everyone on your e-mail list. Support real electoral reform, that counts every vote, and insures that every vote counts. Give your Senator and House member the support they need -- or the attention they fear -- to make sure they "just say no" to right-wing judges and retrograde public policies.
Mandela, Havel, Aquino, Walesa. Recent history is filled with examples of nations that won their democracies only because the masses of their people refused to give up when confronted with violations of voting rights, fraudulent elections, and illegitimate rulers.
They sat in. They took to the streets. They faced down dogs and fire hoses. They rallied in the town squares. They lit their candles, rang their bells, wrote and sang their songs, marched and picketed, until justice was won. Perhaps we can draw strength from their examples, as we try to revive our democratic rights.
So, wherever you live, whatever the group you're connected with, please send us your suggestions for actions. We'll post them, as a step in resisting the illegitimacy of this President-Select, and turning outrage into action.
-- Steve Cobble
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The question is -- how shall we respond? How will we collectively speak truth to power about "His Illegitimacy?"
Though the exact time is still undisclosed, in the coming days eight news organizations will complete their exhaustive review of the 180,000 Florida "undervotes" and "overvotes." One partial recount has already been released by the Miami Herald/USA Today, which only dealt with a select number of "undervotes" and had inconclusive results (depending on how hanging chads were counted, the results ranged from Bush winning by 1,655 votes to Gore winning by 393.)
The eight other news organizations -- the New York Times, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Palm Beach Post, St. Petersburg Times, the Tribune Co. (which owns the Los Angeles Times), and CNN -- are expected to release their results and initial analyses all on the same date. We should note that this is not the partial and biased count recently released by Judicial Watch, in an obvious attempt to undercut the media analyses.
The media may well underplay the conclusion that Bush really lost, since the current elite philosophy seems to be that it is important to build up the sitting President's legitimacy. Nevertheless, many expect that this major media review will demonstrate what all of us already know in our hearts -- that the will of the people was ignored, distorted, and subverted by the institutions that are supposed to protect American democracy.
If so, it means that the man in the White House is not the people's choice. It means that President-Select Bush really lost both the popular vote and the electoral vote. It means that the most basic right in a democracy -- the right to vote -- was corrupted by the Scalia 5 on the Supreme Court, after a successful disenfranchisement/disinformation/intimidation campaign carried out by the Bush brothers and their allies in Florida.
It means, in a literal definition of the phrase, that the United States of America has undergone a coup d'etat.
Compare the actual events of the Florida fiasco to this definition from our 1976 American Heritage Dictionary: "coup d'etat -- a sudden stroke of state policy involving deliberate violation of constitutional forms by a group of persons in authority."
(No doubt future versions will include: "see also -- George W. Bush, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Katherine Harris ... ")
Thus, a fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," has been violated.
The people's consent has never been given. The current rulers did not win a free and fair election, and so have no "just powers." They received no mandate from the voters.
Not for tax cuts for the rich. Not for drilling on wildlife refuges. Not for limiting freedom of choice. Not for infringing on workers' health and safety. Not for right wing judges. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
This is not really about Al Gore, though he should have won. At the core of this issue is an illegitimate re-ordering of America's national priorities. President-Select Bush ducked away from much of the platform he is currently attempting to impose on the American people. (See, for example: CO2, arsenic, compassionate conservative, bipartisanship, unifier not divider ... ) In addition, opinion polls make it clear that many of the policy positions which Bush did campaign on were not supported by a majority of the people. (See, for example, restricting freedom of choice, tax cuts for the top 1 percent, big oil over baby caribou ... )
Most importantly, Bush lost. He lost the national popular vote. And we will soon have mainstream proof that he really lost Florida and the electoral vote, too. This means he has no mandate.
Many of us, of course, believe that the inaccurate and sinister purges of falsely-accused ex-felons by the Secretary of State's office should be enough by itself to call the election's legitimacy into question. Not to mention the roadblocks and intimidation aimed at African American voters. Not to mention the "bourgeois riot," led by Congressional staff on the public payroll, that shut down the vote count. Not to mention the unprecedented -- in every sense of that word -- intervention of the Supreme Court. Not to mention the failure by Scalia and Thomas to recuse themselves from the Court deliberations, despite their obvious ethical conflicts-of-interest. Not to mention that the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach clearly violated the Florida statutes. Not to mention that most of the fancy computer equipment went to Republican-leaning counties and precincts. Not to mention that the original projection that Bush had won was made by his cousin at FOX (slogan -- "FOX News: We're just as fair as the Washington Times!"). Not to mention that hand counts are not only the normal way to resolve election disputes, they were the only way to count the votes for most of the history of this nation (e.g., Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, etc.)
Most significantly, since President-Select Bush holds office only because of a "deliberate violation of constitutional forms by a group of persons in authority" (could there be a more precise description of the Supreme Court's intervention in Bush v. Gore?), his mandate is missing.
Democracy requires the consent of the governed. That consent was never given. Our duty as activists, as citizens, as voters -- as Americans -- is to oppose illegitimate rule, to speak truth to power, to refuse to consent to public policy that has no mandate.
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