I would like to begin this diary with a public apology to some of my fellow dKoss'ers who over the course of the past couple of days I may have repsonded to in a less than gentlemanly manner.
There has been much discussion over the past week regarding the strange voting irregularities that have been occuring across our land, and it is abundantly clear that a difference of opinion has existed over how to handle this problem as a collective entity.
Last week, I think most will admit was a very surreal experience. Many of us were aware well before the election, that the voting apparatus in place contained many vulnerabilities.
We had read Bev Harris's book about Black Box Voting, We had read Greg Palast's Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and we had watched Documentaries such as Unprecedented:the 2000 Presidential election and of course Fahrenheit 911
We knew the Republicans were engaging in Supression in the months and weeks right up to the election. We had heard that Florida Officials had misplaced 200,000 absentee ballots among many many other stories related to voter supression and fraud.
In fact on the day before the election, I recall someone here on Kos asking me if I thought the E-Voting machines would be a problem. My response to them was that
That Exit Polling would probably prevent anyone from attempting anything malicious that would cause the machines to stray to far from the Exit Poll results.
Well we all know what happened next.
The Exit Polls all showed Kerry running away with this thing. Everything was going according to plan, We were witnessing democracy in action and the self-cleaning system the Founding Fathers created was about to cough up the ugly hairball that had been obstructing it's voice for the past four years.
Then something happened. I don't have to tell you, you were there.
The Aftermath
After a long nap, some denial, bargaining, depression, anger and finally acceptance. I actully found peace. The race was finally over and the verdict was in. Bush would have to clean up his own mess. I was happy to move on and get back to the more important things in life.
But No
When it became apparent that computer glitches, missing ballots, machines counting backwards,and other highly suspicious things were occuring in Ohio and Florida and elsewhere, that all of the apparent errors seemed to be errors that favored George Bush, well it was almost too believable to be believed.
The fact that the reports were being ignored by the mainstream media completely, while the pundits could discuss little besides Bush's Mandate for the next four years, did not seem to help anyones overwhelming feeling that The nightmare had come true Democracy had ended.
This is where our split occured. Myself, I felt it was extremely important that we not just lie down and die, but rather get up and fight. I felt that we should all be out protesting in the streets, telling people to wake up, that we take some action. Then I realized that I have a job. And a wife. And three kids. And I'm lazy. Oh well, a massive email campaign would have to do.
So I did what I thought was a simple thing I could do to help.
I joined in with thousands of others, who decided to email every media outlet we could find about the massive irregularites that were occuring and demand that these problems recieve the coverage they deserved.
What I did not expect, was the major amount of opposition we were recieving from our fellow dKos'ers. At first it started with people saying things like, "drop it, we lost, get over it". and "You are still in denial".
We tried to explain that we realized that the race was over and that Kerry would not win, but that we thought that the irregularities needed to be highlighted in the media anyway, if only as a means to acheive election reform for the races in 2006.
Next we were told that we were hurting the cause for election reform. "They're all going to laugh at you" and such.
Apparently, the moderates were offended by our shrillness, which I understand. However I felt that if ever there was a time to be shrill it was then. To me it was important that we simply bombard the media with emails. Although I wrote some pretty impassioned emails, I never expected most of them to even be read. The content was less important than the space they took up in a journalists inbox was the way I saw it.
But the infighting got worse. I think it reached a fevered pitch yesterday when I actually told one of them who was taunting me with UFO photo's that I'd like to slap them. It was reactionary and I shouldn't have resorted to violent response, especially since it's impossible here in cyberspace to do so without sounding stupid.
( someone should put up an internet Mortal Kombat or something for this purpose )
So I'd just like call for unity one more time.
In my view, I don't think that either of our viewpoints are wrong and I think we have the same goal; election reform. I think we just got our wires crossed. We have four more years of Bush together so I think we sould think of ways to deal with issues like this in the future because we all know there is more to come.
STAGE ONE: RAPID RESPONSE TEAM. This stage is needed when an obvious case of civil libery violation has occurred and the media is ignoring it. This consists of many people doing one thing. Bombarding the media with emails. It does not matter so much in this stage what is said in the emails, though coherence should be the goal. The purpose here is to alert the media that the "blogosphere" ie:the people, have detected an injustice and they should look into it.
STAGE TWO:INVESTIGATION.This is where the more organized amongst us pores over the data, looking for inconsistincies and mistakes in logic.
This was done by many people extensively and thanklessly by many in the community over the past week and it was invaluable. It was great how we were able to police ourselves as a group and we even helped the jounalists who helped us, like Olbermann, avoid stepping in Rather-Holes leading to embarrassment.
STAGE THREE:DISCUSSION.This is where the Moderates will shine. Providing rational sane analasys on what has happened, downplaying the earlier hysteria and highlighting the real issues that need solutions. We will need impassioned thoughtful articles on the subjects that face us and this is a crucial and final stage of team Kos's work.
------------------------------------------
( cue Patriotic Trumpet Music )
So I am hoping that once we all calm down, we realize that even though we all have different ways of dealing with things, that it does not have to factionalize us. That we can organize ourselves into certain ways that make us more efficient and effective. I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks about this. I'd love someone to perfect this technique here better than I can.
We have some amazing people here with alot of smarts. If we are going to win in 2006 and beyond we need to find ways to work together. I am asking for everyones help in acheiving this goal.
Thank you and good night.