Draft Dean

As evidence mounts that this election was likely stolen, it becomes imperative that the unleashed outrage is channeled into effective political action. I submit that the most important next step for this work is to unify around a nationally-recognized and credible spokesperson who also has access to elite Democratic circles.

We owe a great deal to people like Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, who have led the charge to this point. She will be a key player as this scandal unfolds. But for the full power of the outrage to be harnessed, we need a political leader who is already established on the national stage, especially one with an organizational infrastructure that can be activated. I believe that person is Howard Dean.

I say this not because I supported him in the primaries (I backed Kucinich) but because he has exactly the right assets to turn the undirected outrage of the moment into an unstoppable movement. He ran as an outsider to the Washington establishment but he has access and respect within the halls of power. He effectively channeled the anti-war sentiment into a political force. He has a fighting spirit and balls of steel. He had the courage to air a national special on electronic voting with Bev Harris, so he knows how easily fraud can be accomplished. And he has a loyal base of support that can be re-activated.

Right now, the Democratic establishment is playing this issue very conservatively and that is unlikely to change until the movement reaches a certain level of power. That means the Kerry campaign structures and DNC are effectively out of play. They will be brought online once the movement reaches critical mass, but until that moment, we can’t utilize the vast infrastructure or money the Kerry campaign has at its disposal. We need to build momentum with an “outsider’s” structure until the “insider’s” structure feels safe enough to activate. That’s why we need to focus energy on drafting Dean – he’s the best bridge between the outsiders and the insiders.

Dean himself may start out resistant to the process, but that’s ok. Looking back, it as if the anti-war movement drafted Dean rather than Dean harnessing the anti-war movement. The massive sense of unrest about the war needed to find a focal point within the Democratic Party, a way to exert leverage. And, despite all the other ways that he didn’t carry a strongly progressive message, Dean was drafted for that duty, surprising everyone with the power of his run.

I believe that if we start a strong national movement to re-activate the Dean networks and put positive pressure on Dean himself, the election stealing issue will quickly become front-page news. It takes time to develop relationships of trust and accountability, which is why it is best to mobilize people who have already worked together and learned to become efficient. We don’t have time to cobble together a whole new infrastructure.

Other political leaders will play a role, of course. Representatives John Conyers of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida have all started an investigation into irregularities, although they say they are not seeking to overturn the election results (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65623,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2)
Ralph Nader has come out as a vociferous critic but his credibility is at a lifetime low. As momentum builds, many others will take a stand.

A few thoughts on effectively coalescing a movement:

1. Evidence gathering - We should channel our support for the legal groundwork to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, which is doing the largest filing for information under the Freedom of Information Act ever, demanding the computer logs from over 3,000 voting machines around the country. That effort can serve as an important legal wing of operations (www.blackboxvoting.org) as momentum builds
2. State Focus - We should focalize our energy on Ohio and Florida, because those two states are the key to overturning the election results and have some of the strongest evidence of vote stealing and manipulation. There is evidence emerging in many other states but Ohio and Florida are key to overturning the election itself.
3. Language – George Lakoff has written about how masterfully the right wing has used the framing of issues, a lesson we need to learn. Every time you refer to the election, I encourage you to use the word “stealing.” Stealing is more personal than fraud and hits people on a visceral level. It takes time for ideas to penetrate the dominant culture, so hammering away with the same terms is good strategy. Think of how the Bush campaign smeared Kerry with the term “flip-flopper” No one could escape it. Ideally, every time you refer to the election, refer to it as the “stolen election.” If you’re less sure, then phrase it as a question, as in, “Do you think the election could have been stolen?” Fraud is vague and impersonal; stealing is very personal.
4. Repetition – To build an idea in the public consciousness takes many, many exposures. The more times that people get information in their inbox and the more sources they hear something from, the more credible it becomes. Don’t be shy about sharing your suspicions and forwarding the best material.
5. Foreign media – One of the best ways that our allies in other countries can help is to put heavy pressure on their own media to cover the evidence that America’s election was likely stolen. As news reports build around the world, it will force American media to start covering. Right now, the American media is so compromised that I don’t think we should focus on it first. England might be the best place to start.

If people in this country rise up powerfully on this, we can create a historic victory. I want to make my prediction right now: this election’s results will not stand and Bush will not serve out four years.

Here are some resources to get you going. At the bottom, I’ve included an analysis by esteemed sociologist Paul Ray of how to go about building an airtight scientific case for fraud that I don’t believe is published anywhere:

Best 30-minute introduction: www.votergate.tv
Other good orgs: www.verifiedvotring.org, www.votewatch.us

Key articles:

Evidence Mounts that Vote was Hacked, by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy, by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm

Kerry Won by Greg Palast
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-36.htm


More In-depth Article List – Thanks to Prof. Hugh Urbana from Ohio State University for this list.

Pre-Nov. 2 articles warning of the possibility of Electronic voting fraud and other problems:

Computer Voting is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html

Black Box Voting Blues (Newsweek)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3339650/

How They Could Steal the Election this Time (The Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

Twelve Ways Bush is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810

Voter Fraud and Disenfranchisement
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/31/192155/73

See also http://blackboxvoting.org/

Evidence of Voting problems in the Nov. 2 Election

Massive Voter Suppression and Corruption in Ohio (Global Research, Canada)
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SOL411A.html

Russian Observer Shocked by U.S. Election Procedures
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/11/03/russianobserver.shtml

Black Box Voting declares 2004 Election a Fraud
http://blackboxvoting.org/

Voting Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes (NBC)
http://www.nbc4i.com/politics/3894867/detail.html

Michael Moore's Election Watch, 2004, with reports of fraud from every state
http://www.michaelmoore.com/electionwatch/

Evidence Mounts that Vote was Hacked
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

Florida Rigged the Optical Scanners
http://blog.democrats.com/florida

Votes Lost and Extras Counted in E-voting Errors
http://www.thestandard.com/internetnews/000563.php

Kerry margins: Exit Poll vs. Actual Vote
http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
http://www.rense.com/general59/wastheohioelectionhonest.htm

Exit Polls and Actual Polls Don't Match
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388

Fixed: The Stealing of Another Election
http://www.rense.com/general59/steI.HTM

Voting Machine Controversy
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

Lists of other articles on the subject:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/archives/cat_vote_fraud.html

Insights from Paul Ray, Ph.D., sociologist and author of The Cultural Creatives

We don't need an impossible vote recount from no-paper-trail-machines
to show that the vote was probably stolen. There's another way--and
it's not even hard.

Odds are very high the election was stolen, judging from just the
initial "evidence" being offered all over the internet. I say this as
a social scientist who has done innumerable surveys. I have a Ph.D.
in sociology, and I have done statistical modelling for over 30
years, and I say this is an easy research design to make a convincing
case.

Your best rhetoric should be to use "the odds" to set up a legally
binding re-examination of the vote in the swing states: Having really
objective researchers calling voters to see who they voted for. Even
the dumbest mouth-breather can get the idea that the election might
have been stolen, and that experts can give the odds that it was.

The best thing you can do to advance the progressive cause is to
participate in the detailed examination of the discrepancy in
percentage vote between exit polls and recorded vote. Exit polls are
remarkably accurate, historically in the US, and elsewhere, say in
Germany. Hire some top experts in political science methodology RIGHT
NOW and put them to work on this.

It simply takes a 2-stage strategy to set up the third and final
stage of a challenge to the election, i.e., legally binding
contacting of those who are listed as voting:
1) Do an initial analysis, state by state, and precinct by by
precinct of the publicly listed discrepancy between exit polls and
the recorded vote. Not just for Kerry vs. Bush, but also for
contested Congressional seats. That will tell you if you have
something suspicious. There's lots of yelling going on on the
internet, and some of it is very suggestive. This stage would say if
it's worthwhile going on.

2) Do a random sampling of people listed as having voted in those
counties you detected as having suspiciously large discrepancies in
key states. Ask who they voted for, for Congress and President. You
need a good survey house, like Zogby, to do this right. It will take
a big sample size, so it won't be cheap. Doing this quickly may
overwhelm single firms, so you may need to hire several, with a
single political scientist controlled methodology giving them
directions.
(Note: A lot of the polling firms will want to rescue their damaged
reputations, and may be glad to participate for reduced profits.)

For both stage 1 and stage 2 your researchers are looking for two
kinds of discrepancies, not one:
A) Electronic Vote Recording Fraud: in the swing states, all you have
to fund is studies comparing that discrepancy for districts where
there was electronic voting without a paper trail to where there was.
Any competent statistical program will give you the odds whether the
result appeared by chance.
We can mobilize Democrats and progressives around voting fraud.
Here's how to set it up so scientifically that it supports a legal
case for a full blown challenge:

If it is true, as it now appears, that "exit poll failures" occurred
mostly where there's no paper trail, then there's a prima facie case
that the recorded voters need to be systematically polled by phone
and by mail, by truly impartial researchers to say who they voted
for, for congress and for president.

B) Spoiled Ballots and Ballots Never Recorded: For example: It
appears that Blackwell in Ohio is refusing to give the legally
required spoilage numbers. Odds are high that too many votes were
thrown away, simply unrecorded. Greg Palast is claiming loudly that
this happened in a number of states, and was done systematically by
Republicans. This was once the norm in the South, and may simply have
come back in more sophisticated form. This can be detected
statistically from examining exit polls as well, though it's probably
a little more complicated.

Notice that the statistical tables are only a little more complex if
both vote spoilage and electronic voting machine fraud were going on
simultaneously. You simply have to control for both kinds of
tampering, and compare a good sample of what people say they did with
the outcome. It's a big sample size, but it will set up the later,
full count.

Again, the second stage will say whether you have a good basis for
Stage 3: to go to court to demand a full and complete recontact of
people who are listed as voting.

Kerry has $45 million for legal challenges. We need to persuade him to use it.
We also need to contact major donors to the Dems, who should want to
protect their investment.

Best regards,

Paul H. Ray, Ph.D.