[Mb-civic] Carter/Baker Report Can't Face How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and Is Rigging 2008

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092005G.shtml

Carter/Baker Report Can't Face How the GOP Stole
America's 2004 Election and Is Rigging 2008
    By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman 
    The Free Press

    Tuesday 20 September 2005

    The stolen elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004
are nowhere to be found in the milquetoast
Carter-Baker Report now passing for wisdom on
America's broken electoral system.

    And unless the public is ready to face the
reality that we no longer live in a nation with
credible elections, the 2008 balloting is all but
over.

    As investigative reporters and registered
voters living in central Ohio, we witnessed
firsthand the outright theft of the 2004
election. We also endured the unwillingness of
the Democratic Party to face up to a carefully
choreographed "do everything" strategy that gave
the presidency to George W. Bush for a second
time, and which could make all elections to come
virtually moot.

    The just-issued report of a special
commission headed by former President Jimmy
Carter and Bush family consigliore Jim Baker is
of little real value.

    The report warns that public confidence in
the electoral system is disappearing. But it
fails to point out the most obvious cause: in
both 2000 and 2004, the presidency was stolen,
and the Republican Party made a mockery of those
who took the time and effort to vote. It did the
same in Georgia in 2002, when it overrode the
public will to install a Republican US Senator
and Governor. The US Senate races that year in
Minnesota and Colorado are also suspect, to say
the least.

    Much controversy surrounds the Carter-Baker
report over its recommendation that photo IDs be
required of all voters. This is the electoral
equivalent of blaming the people of New Orleans
for Hurricane Katrina (which, of course, this
administration has essentially done).

    A wide range of critics have pointed out that
this requirement is racist and repressive. It is
the equivalent of a poll tax and discriminates
against people of color, the poor, the elderly,
and civil libertarians who object on principle to
a national identification card.

    The report also recommends that officials who
run elections should not be aggressive partisans.
But the horse is already out of the barn on that
one. Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were administered
by co-chairs of the state Bush-Cheney campaigns.
Secretaries of State Katherine Harris and J.
Kenneth Blackwell were both extremely outspoken
Republican advocates allegedly running
non-partisan elections. It's now clear that their
fraudulent, illegal vote fixing twice gave George
W. Bush the White House.

    Among the panel's 87 recommendations is also
a warning that electronic voting machines must
have verifiable paper trails. On paper this is
important. But there are many ways to use
electronic voting machines to steal elections,
even with a paper trail, if the likes of Karl
Rove and Dick Cheney are running the show.

    In the most laughable Carter/Baker punch
line, the commission warns that "had the margin
of victory for the [2004] presidential contest
been narrower, the lengthy dispute that followed
the 2000 election could have been repeated."

    In fact, in our own preliminary report, we
have unearthed more than 180 bullet points
dealing with exactly how the GOP did steal the
presidency in Ohio. A "do everything" Republican
assault on democracy used intimidation, fraud,
vote theft, computer rigging, machine
distribution manipulation, a fake Homeland
security alert, trashing of provisional ballots,
denial of a recount and dozens more "dirty
tricks" to produce a 118,775 "official" margin
for Bush that was an utter fiction.

    Exit polls in nine swing states showed Kerry
a clear winner as late as 12:21 am on election
night. Nationwide exit polls showed him with a
1.5 million vote margin in the popular vote.

    But somehow, against all statistical
probability, Bush wound up with a popular vote
victory of nearly 3.5 million. And somehow,
against all statistical probability, he carried
Ohio and three other states (Iowa, Nevada and New
Mexico) where he had been the clear loser in the
exit polls. Ohio alone was sufficient to give him
a second term, just as Florida had been in 2000.

    Such an outcome is beyond implausible -
unless you saw how the Rove-Blackwell machine
stole the vote.

    The tactics the GOP perfected in Ohio 2004
are now being honed for re-use in 2008. Neither
Al Gore nor John Kerry nor the core of the
Democratic Party has been willing to face the
reality that elections in the United States are
all but over. This latest wimp report from the
Carter-Baker whitewash commission does no better.

    Unless our electoral system gets a total
top-to-bottom revamp by an informed public
willing to deal with the systematic poisoning of
American democracy, there is no reason to bother
printing the ballots or plugging in the voting
machines in 2008.

    Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis are
co-authors of How the GOP Stole America's 2004
Election & Is Rigging 2008, now available in a
special release at FreePress.org and HarveyWasserman.com.