ARCHIVES: Voter Rights March, May 19, 2001, Lou Posner, Voter March Founder and Chair

Speech of Lou Posner, founder and chair of Voter March at the Voter Rights March to Restore Democracy
at the West Capitol Steps in Washington DC on May 19th at 1:00 pm:

What of ELECTION REFORM? The greatest democracy on earth has the most
antiquated and UNEQUAL voting machines in the Western world, and some of the
most unequal and unfair voting practices in the entire world! How can we
fail to address our duty to preserve the tools that ensure the principles of
our founding fathers that are the very bedrock of our democracy, the tools
and principles that make us CITIZENS in this world, citizens of a great
shining democracy and NOT subjects in a dark tyranny.

What of these? How can we fail to address this matter NOW?

For years, experts have decried the antiquated equipment and practices, they
and government agencies recommending reform, but our legislation has not
acted on those recommendations. What are we waiting for that we ignore these
sacred obligations to the constitution's most fundamental guarantee?

Today, let us look at "America," where a government is now disconnected with
its country. Look at what has happened to this so-called democracy, in our
recent presidential race. The high court stopped a legal hand recount and
substituted their own votes to replace those of the electorate, the bedrock
principle of ANY democracy. In other words, they canceled our democracy.
They declared their winner as THE winner, vacating the votes of millions
because of an alleged unfairness to only ONE citizen, who was only ONE
candidate, in a regional state governed with an iron hand by that one
candidate's brother. As a final insult, the Court told the people - not to
worry, this is a one-time only deal - it will not be repeated.

One might ask, if the decision is so good and fine, why can it not be
repeated? Now, the court knows it has created a precedent, yet it pretends
it will NOT be a precedent, as if this election and hand count were "sui
generis," when elections and hand counts go on and have gone on ALL THE TIME
IN THIS COUNTRY IN THE PAST IN ACCORDANCE WITH OUR OWN LAWS!
Indeed, the hand count is part of the WHOLE and NO LESS than the whole election. And all
the experts in many states know perfectly well that the hand recount is the
ONLY way to settle these things, being done routinely in the very state the
candidate hails from, signed into law by his own hand. Indeed, this
candidate, under the media radar, demanded and got a hand recount in another
state in the country, in a brazen example of hypocritical "privilege," and
"special rights." But the high court chose to ignore this inconsistency,
this inequality, and by so doing, gave aid and comfort to all the
irregularities and all the lawbreaking that accompanied this state's vote.
People who get away with committing crimes with impunity, passed over by the
highest court in the land, are only further emboldened to repeat them.

Ah, the beauty of possessing no conscience: Lie and then call your opponent
a liar. Demand hand recounts where they favor you and then call your
opponent a criminal for demanding hand recounts where they favor HIM. And
the final slap, GO AWOL and then accuse your opponent of despising the
military.

But the Court seems to ORDAIN that it will not happen again, providing a
balm to the masses, a false sense of security that their democracy is still
alive, unchanged and unmolested. But it is not, my friends. Judges may rule,
but they can never ORDAIN. They cannot project their decisions and their
orders into the future, onto future courts and what they will do. The Court,
comprised of mere mortals, have wrested from the "demos" the one power
granted directly to the people in the government scheme known as democracy.
That is a moral outrage no words can adequately convey.

Oh, but there were such difficulties, some say. It was messy. Yes, democracy
is messy, which is why laws are created to ensure fairness, laws this high
Court criminally ignored. It is not a fast buck made in a bubble economy. It
is, as Winston Churchill said, the worst form of government except for all
the other forms of government. A real democracy is hard work. It is patient
work.

It is NOT, as we have seen with our country, the perfect scam. Where we are
awash in evasions from officials who say, "I can't answer that, I refer you
to another official," and that official refers back to the first official,
or another official, or in the most egregious case, reporters are referred
to an outside, private company, which unilaterally disenfranchised thousands
of citizens of their right to vote, largely wrongly, it is later discovered,
but implemented without question in many areas of this one state. But when
some election supervisors, seeking to uphold their duty to the Constitution,
asked this company for information on their methodology and quality control,
they were told it was proprietary, commercial information and they couldn't
have it.

Think of that, my friends. The constitutional right to vote is outsourced to
a private company with no legal accountability. The privatization of a
citizen's right and duty to vote. It should strike fear in all our hearts at
the ease with which these "officials" dismiss this breach of government
trust and the social contract, as the state government refers you to the
company, but the company refers them back to the state, and in the end all
the accountability that an election is designed to be is lost forever in a
series of "I refer you to, I refer you to, I refer you to. . ." The perfect
scam. No democracy, no accountability, no blame. And all permitted to go
unpunished because of a high court's deliberate running out of an imaginary
and unnecessary clock, for the sake of "fairness" to only ONE of the
candidates, and to appoint that favored candidate a leader in a country
founded upon democratic principles.

WE MUST NEVER let this happen in our country.  A statement throwing down the
gauntlet, pledging that we will NOT let this illegality stand.   We will be
legitimately governed, but never ruled or overruled in this most important
of rights.  I used to fear the enemy, but today I fear my own corrupt
countrymen and their greed for power at the expense of people and democracy.

Elections are not merely a substitution of ballots for bullets, of this
candidate or that. An election in a Republic is the expression of the will
of it citizens; it is our franchise, our birthright, a viewpoint that is as
conservative as the Constitution itself. But in our country, it has been
trampled upon with mob actions by a party and pistol-whipped into
meaninglessness by a partisan court.

We must NEVER let this happen here. We cannot look away from our duty, in
constant need of recharging, to preserve the tools that ensure the
principles of our founding fathers that are the very bedrock of our
democracy and our republic, the tools and principles that make us CITIZENS
in this mortal world, citizens of a great shining democracy and NOT subjects
in a dark tyranny.