THE ELECTION DISSENTERS HAVE ORGANIZED !
The Call to Boycott the 2012 Presidential Election is experiencing a spike in interest, enthusiasm, activity and actions. In this post I will provide for you some of the updates currently taking place with regard to the 2012 Presidential Election Boycott!
1. THE OFFICIAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WEBSITE IS UP AND EXPERIENCING HEAVY TRAFFIC!
The site is very comprehensive and expands daily as the movement grows with new actions. To learn more about the Boycott and to comment visit www.electionboycott2012.org
2. THE ELECTION BOYCOTT IN THE MEDIA!
LINH DINH author of the COUNTERPUNCH ARTICLE, “Time to Boycott the Election” http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/14/time-to-boycott-the-election/ presented the case to Boycott the Presiential Election on PRESS-TV, here : http://wwwwsonneteighteencom.blogspot.com/2012/08/americans-should-boycott-election.html
3. THE PROLETARIAN CENTER FOR RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND CULTURE HAS OFFICIALLY ENDORSED THE PREZ BOYCOTT! The blog post regarding the Boycott endorsement can be found here: http://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/boycott-the-2012-election/
4. CINDY SHEEHAN HOSTED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BOYCOTT NATIONAL CONFERENCE CALL ON HER SOAPBOX : “Thinking Outside the Ballot Box!” The audio to the program is here: https://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/cindy-sheehans-soapbox-thinking-outside-the-ballot-box/
And A-Infos Radio Project and others posted the audio, too: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62932
5. THE ELECTION BOYCOTT IS WORKING TO “BUILD A CULTURE OF RESISTANCE”
Some ask, ‘What will the Election Boycott DO?” “What will it accomplish?” This action, as with any action does not show a direct ‘result’. It not if we do A then that result in B. It’s not like that. A very important contribution of the Election Boycott is that it BUILDS A CULTURE OF RESISTANCE as per Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report: “… what we do need are organizations that are willng to confront power…willing to identify who the enemy is and to call them out… to make sense of emerging realities…. to involve as many people as possible in forceful and sustained opposition to those who do harm to the the people. A real movement builds a ‘culture of resistance’….a widely held belief that is it is right to resist…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUf6nSLl0a06. I WILL SPEAKING AT MAY DAY BOOKS IN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA TO DELIVER A TALK ON THE BOYCOTT ON OCTOBER 10th! The talk will be hosted by the group ‘Building Utopia’. Stay tuned for info and updates.
7. THE ELECTION BOYCOTT COMES TO NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY ON SEPTEMBER 25th
8. FORMER VOTERS ARE COLLECTIVELY FORMALLY PUTTING THE SYSTEM ON NOTICE!
Here is pdf of voter cancellation letter to formally denounce your participation of their fraudulent federal government.
9. ELECTION DISSENTERS BURNED THEIR VOTER ID CARDS AT OBAMA HEADQUARTERS IN CHICAGO DURING THE DNC CONVENTION! (Check out the fabulous pictures!)
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10. ELECTION BOYCOTTER TED RALL CREATED A SPECIAL BOYCOTT ‘TOON FOR US AS A GIFT TO THE BOYCOTT!
STILL NOT CONVINCED?
At both the DNC and the RNC Theatrical Convention Shows a public “vote” was cast. At each convention a party leader would go up to the podium and direct the audience to say ‘YAY’ if they were in favor of the item or ‘NAY’ if they were opposed. Whichever roar was the loudest indicated the selection of the voters.
However, the Ruling Class had something else in mind.
The teleprompter for each convention had a pre-written text for the speaker of the outcome of the ‘YAY’ or ‘NAY’ vote, which had been entered into the teleprompter prior to the audience’s response.
The Dems were challenged a bit more as the audience didn’t cooperate and so the speaker demanded a ‘do over’ until the audience response matched the pre-determined outcome.
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269 Comments
Hi Karl Rove! Your efforts to vote suppress are amazing!
But this diary is still complete bullshit.
Utter and Complete Bullshit.
Kelly! Long time no see! Enjoy the updates!
Vote third-party if you want to register your disgust with the two wings of the Uniparty.
Your non-vote will be interpreted as apathy and indifference and will please them immensely.
They Ruling Elites have devised and presented this contraption of the supposed (s)election of the POTUS deisgned with one thing in mind and one thing only: to protect, serve and expand their monied interests. Period. That’s what it’s designed to do and that’s what it does. The presidential ‘election’ is an theatrically delivered sham through and through that can never alter the institutional structures of capitalism. Capitalism wins every time and will remained fundamentally unaltered whether a either a D or an R sits in the Oval Office in January.
[THE HIDDEN WEALTH PRIMARY: THE MONIED ELITE VET THEIR CHOICE IN PRIVATE: https://www.facebook.com/notes/terri-lee/empty-the-theater-third-party-voting-vs-boycott-the-2012-presidential-election/10151079650026446?ref=notif¬if_t=note_comment#!/notes/terri-lee/how-the-ruling-class-conducts-its-hidden-wealth-primary-by-laurence-shoup-februa/10151006999896446
There is no way to alter this structure — which is the core of the problem — from within the voting booth no matter what you do in there.
To illustrate how ‘the voter’ is used as a meer prop for their self-serving Electoral Contraption at both the DNC and the RNC Theatrical Convention Election Show each party held what appeared to be — on the surface — a public ‘vote’ by the convention attendees. At each convention, aparty leader would go up to the podium and ask the audience to say ‘YAY’ if they agreed or ‘NAY’ if they opposed.
Whichever audience roar was ‘louder’ should have indicated the choice of the voters. Except the Ruling Elite has something else in mind.
The teleprompter at each convention had a pre-written the outcome of the YAY or NAY ‘vote’ before either audience responded.
Watch this very public act of deceit for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmaE2Aez_XYIn
It’s a bit more interesting at the DNC convention because the audience response does not align with the required pre-set outcome as written, in advance, by the teleprompter! The speaker noting that the audience did not respond ‘according to script’ — like a schoolchild — simply calls for a ‘do over’ in front of the entire audience and on national television.
This video makes it terribly clear that the voter is there for one purpose and one purpose only —to serve as a prop for the purpose of aiding the illusion that the public’ is ‘deciding’. I find it the whole thing offensive and insulting.
Every time — whether at the Conventions or on Novemer 6th — The Ruling Elite will deliver the ‘outcome’ of their own choosing. Our role is to serve as mere props in their antics exactly as the video illustrates. And should we ‘get it wrong’ and deliver to them the wrong choice — no problem! They will simply conduct a ‘do over’ until the intended results are delivered.
IT’S MORE PRODUCTIVE TO BUSY YOURSELF WITH EMBROIDERY THAN TO TOIL AWAY ON A LOSING THIRD PARTY CANDIDACY
Many on the left are busy scurring around this one or that one collecting signatures, obtaining electors, raising money, and trying to play in the Big Boys game. Everyone is busy, busy, busy swirling around ‘their candidate of choice’. It’s better ‘to vote your conscience’ and all that.
The reality is that all of the efforts for ‘ballot access’ and ‘winning states’ bears no fruit.
The System has guaranteed that no third party candidate — NONE — ever has even the slightest chance of getting near the heavily protected and guarded Oval Office. The Rulers have sealed this up…TIGHT. Those spinning around the Third Parties — and even the candidates themselves — know this. Yet it give a nice illusion of ‘electoral involvement’ as if we having something ‘electoral’ to get involved in too! This is the illusionary side-show off on a smaller, darker stage with only a few meandering about.
At least if you busy yourself with embroidery you have something to show for your time and efforts at the end.
HAVE YOUR BILLION DOLLAR SMOKE-AND-MIRRORS SHOW, EMPIRE: WE’RE NOT ATTENDING THIS YEAR
On November 7th 2012 the media will be all abuzz yapping about either Obama’s second term agenda or will be welcoming in the next Imperialist Murderer, Mitt Romney. We all know this.
Who will the Ruling Elite select to be the human face of Empire? Which one will best serve the interests of the Stockholders of USA, Inc.? Each corporate candidate has already been vetted in the Hidden Wealth Primary thus guaranteeing that Empire can’t lose. It will either have an actual Republican to serve them or a Reagan Loving Republican cloaked as a Democrat. Truly, either will do just fine.
Given these realities we have a choice on how to best respond to the offensive and insulting sham.
My choice is to remove myself and not even go near that oppressive, rigged, contraption where the winner is already written into the teleprompter.
To my mind, the wisest collective stance we can take is to Boycott the 2012 Presidential Election. May 2012 be the year to organize the non-voter. Together let’s defiantly reject, resist, and refuse participation.
The Call to Boycott is a way to expose the sham and there is integrity in that.
In effect, the Election Boycott declares:
“We see you and we know full well what you’re doing and what you’re about. We refuse to be props in your electoral theater sham. We have more dignity than that. We cannot stop your show, but we will not be attending. We are joining with one another standing tall and defiant. We are working to ‘build a culture of resistance’ and to carry on a ‘sustained opposition to those who do harm to the people’ (Glen Ford).”
Join us http://www.electionboycott2012.org
**** MARK E SMITH **** STARVE THE BEAST Suppose that the corporations spent ten to fifteen billion dollars on an election (they spent at least five billion on the last midterms, so that’s not unreasonable) and almost nobody voted. Do you think their boards of directors would let them do it again?
As one who is disenfranchised at the moment, I plan to take the papers with instructions about how to reinstate myself at the date that that becomes legally possible, and fill them out so that I can vote again. I am of the opinion that getting people not to vote is a goal for some people in power, and I don’t think the game is very much fun.
I disagree with this post wholeheartedly.
I say boycott the duopoly. Either vote for a someone other than the Ds or Rs or don’t vote.
I say boycott capitalist imperialism. Every voter knows that no matter who wins the sham “election,” the drone bombing of innocent children will continue. Therefore they also know that no matter who they vote for, they are consenting to genocide and will have the blood of innocent children on their hands.
Do feminists vote in elections where the only possible outcome is the continued bombing of innocent women and children? Do peace activists? Can people who vote in such elections call themselves liberals? Is it worth it to you to vote for the murder of innocent women and children in the hopes that you might derive some temporary personal benefits or minor reforms?
How can anyone close their eyes to the murder of innocent women and children by drone bombs, and still call themselves a liberal, a progressive, or a human being?
If you care about truth, read the essays in “Consent to Tyranny: Voting in the USA.” http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1431 Find out why changing the players can’t change the system, why your vote doesn’t count and may not even be counted, and the real reason that only a few million dollars are spent on voter suppression while BILLIONS of dollars are spent by Karl Rove and the corporate Republicans on getting out the vote. If Rove really wanted people not to vote, those proportions would be reversed and only a few million would be spent on political campaigns, while BILLIONS would be spent suppressing the vote.
You’re not a player because you vote, you’re being played.
Boycott 2012!
Basically agree. However, who is framing any vote for a 3rd party principally as a beginning “stage of growth” on the way to severely challenging, if not displacing, one of the two legacy parties? Who is using the election as an agent of acceleration, analogous to the way a rocket scientist will accelerate a satellite by ‘bouncing’ it off the gravitational field of a planet?
IMO, 3rd Party candidates should be judged on what they intend to do the day after an election day loss. I realize that it must be very exhausting, including emotionally, to run for office (particularly if you don’t have some minimal amount of cash). But if you’re serious about fixing problems that are generations in the making, why should I take you seriously – even if not doubting your good intentions?
It may be ‘traditional’ to project an air of uncompromising optimism regarding the current campaign, but who cares? I don’t consider that intelligent behavior.
should be:
My message is a simple one.
If you want to communicate your disgust with the duopoly, voting third party sends a clearer message than not voting at all.
They can attach any number of reasons to non-votes, none of which will be “they think we suck”.
Whereas, every third party vote clearly says “I think you suck”, and though they will still try to spin it, the truth will be there for all to see.
So, IMO, if your motivation is to send a message, voting for someone else sends a much clearer message than not voting at all, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t think I have a chance of changing the diarist’s mind, but my comments are aimed at those who read this far.
Personally, I’m voting third party not so much to send a message, but because I have to follow my conscience. It isn’t any deeper than that at the moment.
I think you should be down on your knees thanking the FDL editors for allowing such anti American, ill informed BULLSHIT as this post to stay up. You wanna boycott the vote? I invite you to move to fucking China. It pisses me off that apparently I served this country so that budding fascists like yourself to spew such ignorance. You should crawl back to the RNC and admit that your vote suppression efforts have met with scorn and disgust.
Flagged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ypRW5qoraTw#!
Thanks dak.
Very Fun!
The fact is that the only notice of who you voted for will be by the central tabulator that “counts” the votes when it flips your third party vote to one of the major candidates. More than 92% of U&S votes are completely unverifiable, so while you will know that you voted for a third party candidate, you won’t ever know which candidate your vote was actually counted for. I remember a video of a woman in Chicago complaining that she had voted for the Green Party candidate, David Cobb, in 2008, but her district’s results had shown zero votes for Cobb. In 2004, Ralph Nader asked supported the call for a recount because he had gotten a huge number of votes in a district where he had few if any supporters–he assumed that votes had been taken from one of the major candidates by the central tabulators and givento him so as to allow the other major candidate to show a majority.
Whoever wins, they will claim a mandate from the entire turnout, not just from those who voted for them. If 50% of the electorate votes, whoever wins, or whoever is selected by the Electoral College or the Supreme Court (as the popular vote does not determine the President–both Al Gore and John Kerry won the popular vote), will be able to claim that 50% of the electorate granted them the consent of the governed–had enough faith in the system to vote to authorize whoever won to do whatever they wished.
Your vote is not for the candidate you select, it is a vote to agree to consent to be governed by whoever wins, a demonstration of faith in the system so great that you believe that whoever wins will be suitable to govern the country. That’s probably not what you really believe.
Fascists vote, Margaret. Hitler was elected. If you want to call people fascists, you should use the term to describe people who vote to consent to a government that wages wars of aggression. I’d always wondered how anyone could have voted for Hitler, even after knowing that he was killing innocent men, women, and children. And then I saw people voting for Bush and Obama even after knowing that they were drone bombing innocent men, women and children.
Yes, genocide is totally American. That’s how this country was begun, with the genocide of Native Americans. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it. Many murderers have paid for them crimes and become rehabilitated members of society. You don’t have to be a mass murderer or a supporters of mass murder forever.
I saw many Democrats at peace rallies before Obama was elected. They were protesting wars of aggression by Bush. But once their man got in, they vanished and surveys have shown that they no longer oppose wars of aggression and drone bombing, they just want it to be done by a Democrat. Only fascist countries wage wars of aggression based on lies, and only fascists support those wars. As long as you’re the one supporting a baby-killer, you shouldn’t be calling other people fascist.
And by the way, you didn’t serve this country. You served the interests of the big corporations. Read General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket.” http://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of government with private business interests, and that’s exactly what you were serving.
Good post, no replies to it cause you can’t really dispute any of it!
BILL HICKS ON PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRykTpw1RQ&feature=youtu.be
David Cobb wasn’t on the ballot in Illinois in 2008.
Everyone knows that not voting does nothing to address the issues about which you claim to be concerned.
I agree with you that a third party vote sends a message. Everyone talks about Nader, Ross Perot, John Anderson years after they ran for office. No one ever talks about how many people didn’t vote.
There are additional reasons for voting third party.
If a third party candidate receives 5% of the total vote they become automatically eligible for federal funding in the next election.
Depending on state laws, getting a certain percentage of the vote can mean less time, money, and people need to be exhausted in gaining ballot access in the next election.
Third party organizing, fund raising, campaigning is part of movement building in general. We need much more than third party electoral politics to address the issues we face, but building a viable political party can be a component of building the movement we need.
that’s great!
Exactly. Thank you for this. A call to boycott the vote is absolutely ridiculous.
I am seriously wondering what the author is hoping to accomplish. The tone is insulting and flip. There are people around the world who gave their lives for the very simple basic right to choose and vote (Egypt comes to mind).
So. To the author: Are you advocating for abolition of democracy and embracing the concept of dictatorship where there are no elections? On this website?
You know what’s funny. You still get to choose NOT to vote. And that is more than what some people in America have at the moment.
In the 2008 Presidential election 101 million people of voting age, and 58 million registered voters didn’t vote. They accomplished nothing.
If you refrain from voting you may think you have “withheld consent to be governed” but, guess what, when you’re done not voting you, like the other 101 million, will still be governed. You too will have accomplished nothing.
Bringing about the vast and fundamental changes we need in this country and the world is a difficult process. It will require hard work and sacrifice and courage by many people. Voting for a third party Presidential candidate in 2012 can be a small part of this process, as can paying careful attention to state and local candidates and ballot initiatives where you can do some actual good for your community and help buy some time for that difficult process to occur.
If you are concerned about ballot counting fraud, which we all should be, work as a poll watcher or exit poller this year as part of your participation.
When you’re done doing whatever small good you can with your vote this year, go out and participate in and support some of the many social and political activism initiatives, which may include helping to build a stronger third party, that are trying to find ways to survive the current problems people are facing and to build something better for the future.
I oppose all efforts to disenfranchise voters and suppress democracy.
The right to vote is sacred and inviolate. Our commitment to nurture and protect it should be unwavering.
The 1% hate democracy and are determined to end it because it threatens their dominion and control over everyone else whom they regard as nothing more than warm bodies to exploit for fun and profit.
Anyone who participates in efforts to suppress voting, which necessarily includes the effort to boycott elections, is either fully on-board with the end game to end democracy or they are a tool being used by the 1%.
If you don’t like the two major candidates, and I despise both of them, vote third party.
We will never see any substantive changes for the better until we shatter the mirage of the two-party system and we will never shatter that mirage by voting for the lesser of two evils or not voting.
The solution is to get more people voting, not less.
The solution is to increase the number of people voting for third party candidates until the two major parties and their support for faux democracy wither and die.
I agree. However, I’d rather see people not vote at all if they feel they’ve been reduced to voting for Obama. That’s the only time I’d encourage not voting at all. Voting for Obama (obviously, Romney, too)is sending a message to the world that we support Obama’s murderous foreign policy.
Vote third party or don’t vote at all.
Turns out that Jill Stein had sent out an email the day before I posted this, pointing out that
This is spot on, though still falls short of my criteria for being smart about using campaigns for long-term organization building. AFAIK (not that I’ve paid close attention to her campaign; I could easily be wrong), this is the first time that Stein has presented the framing of calling for campaign support with the long-term financing of Green campaigns as a motivating reason. It baffles me why she couldn’t have done this, from the get-go.
It certainly gives me more motivation for voting for her if she’s thinking strategically about the future. Why would I want to vote for a person who can’t see past their own campaign? Especially when reform forces in the US are so lacking in organization, making a big, dramatic win for a 3rd party dark horse in the current election cycle unlikely?
If I was Stein, I’d be saying something like “A vote for me is like buying a savings bond for your future. You likely can’t profit on your investment this year, but if you care about your future, you’ll get your butt out on election day and vote for it. I’m not afraid to lose in the near term, so that we (including my children) have a shot at a better future. What about you?”
“Voting” is the LAST step in the “process”.
When voting is the ONLY portion of the electoral and political process which the people are REALLY permitted to engage in, then we must reasonably ask whether the conferring of “consent”, which is what a “vote” does”, that is, it ratifies the “platform” and “philosophy” of a “political party”, which is a PRIVATE entity which wishes to control public policy, given the “conditions” and “climate” of this election season is actually an informed and meaningful act?
Until all political parties may engage in the political process, especially the “debates”, and not merely the two legacy parties, and until there is a provision on every ballot for choosing “none of the above”, then it cannot be assumed that the vote is regarded as sacred and inviolate BY the controlling political parties.
That some dare argue that either of the legacy parties is “owed” a “vote”, given the deliberate role BOTH of those parties have had in destroying this nation’s capacity to produce what it needs and requires as well as “off-shoring” the jobs which that “capacity” represents, the near-unanimous support of both of those parties’ members of Congress for HR 347, as well as their continuing support of endless wars, even those begun on the basis of lies … and the appeals to fear and unreason which always accompany those wars … as well as the “bipartisan” embrace of the use of torturer and drones, borders on the ludicrous and absurd. That they are harkened to is not merely depressing but evidence that the people do not fully know or understand what is daily being done in their names, secretly, as well as overtly and blatantly.
Frankly, to vote for either legacy party, today, is both to condone (not merely consent “to”) and “own” the consequences.
That a diary such as this cannot be respectfully disagreed with, cannot be tolerated as not being a THREAT, but simply as someone’s opinion, despite the allegations of conspiracy and destructive intent, is most revealing.
And it stinks to high heaven of fear, of intellectual timidity, social hubris, and of a failure to understand that honest discussion must include viewpoints with which one may well not agree … but views which deserve to be acknowledged and rationally responded to, nonetheless …
If voting does not include the ability to effect the issues of life and death, of health and well-being, of whether there is or is not a functioning rule of law and a means by which the people may protect themselves from destruction from within the nation, as well have all witnessed, again and again, for decades, that is, that the people must have meaningful access to means and methods of protecting themselves and their society from predation and impoverishment, then “voting” is but empty gesture, a play-acting of ritual, a pretense of substance, a cynical mockery of actual and real democratic participation.
Now, while I have reached the point where I am convinced that the primary value of “the vote”, now, is to register, officially, one’s unwillingness to put up with “more of the same” by voting for a third party, I appreciate this diary, Terri, and recommend that everyone at FDL take a few moments to read it and to comment upon it contents and the comments which it has elicited.
Recommended.
DW
Great diary Terri, i hope this one doesn’t get disappeared since this is an important subject. I’m still a bit surprised that many here can’t grasp the elegance of a boycott and respond with reactionary and confused attacks.
I wonder if this has something to do with age since this movement has a lot of support among younger people. It seems that those who resist new ideas have given up any real hope of changing the system and are desperately clinging to false hopes of electing some Savior. I thought that the election of Obama had finally driven a stake through the heart of that delusion.
Indeed, the true measure of the third-party candidates and the parties themselves will become evident AFTER election day, metamars …
The only one, so far, whom I have heard address that issue is Jill Stein, and I suspect that you would appreciate her response. Can’t locate the link at the moment, if I do find it, then I will post it, here.
DW
If the boycott was combined with a nationwide work stoppage and protest, I think we could make the statement that our “choices” are not acceptable. Otherwise, we leave our non-vote open to deliberate misinterpretation.
I thank the writer and FDL for the opportunity to think about and discuss this and all other options, but after reading and thinking about it, I am choosing to cast my vote for Jill Stein, in order to make an unambiguous statement.
Recommended.
That was great. Will pass it on.
Speaking only for myself here, I strongly and respectfully disagree with the post because for one thing its logic seems to contradict they very concept it opposes, and for another thing I believe that not voting is just exactly what the powers that the author purports to despise want.
Boycotting the vote will result in the what? As far as I can tell, a 100% boycott would have the exact same result as 100% forced disenfranchisement. In either theoretical scenario, 100% of the electorate votes for nobody. And THAT, if anything, will more likely than not, open the door to other means of putting a person in charge. It can be up to the imagination what those ‘other means’ might be. One thing is for sure: John or Jane Doe Public will have no say in the matter.
This post, while I respect the right to free speech, runs counter to all of the historical efforts at suffrage, including efforts of women and people of color, and it makes no sense to me.
Why not go ahead and boycott the rest of the rights we have struggled for and abandon citizenship all together?
If nothing else, one can write in the name of someone they want on the ballot. Some people (not including the forcefully disenfranchised, of course) still enjoy the right and freedom to do that much, at least.
If *NOT* voting was such an effective tool for progressives, why would the RNC be spending so much time and energy to purge voter rolls and create modern versions of a poll tax?
No, boycotting the elections will give our political elites yet another bit of “evidence” that the country is heavily right leaning.
I’m kind of suprised that someone who lives out of dumpsters would support a system that keeps you diving for survival.
If you go to the Boycott site you will see a picture of a dumpster with Vote Here painted on it, how appropriate.
This is not about giving up your right to vote, it is a Boycott which if it works means that people return to vote for real Peoples candidates in real verifiable elections.
As long as you continue to view our system as Left vs Right insted of Top vs Bottom you will remain trapped in the Box and led to the slaughter.
You peons are just toooo stupid to see the benefits and glory of our new system of CORPORATE COMMUNISM (snark)since the votes are not verifiable why get up tight????
I’m not trapped in a box…I’m pointing out that *NOT* voting is exactly what Karl Rove &Co. have been spending time and untold resources to accomplish. I refuse to contribute to those efforts.
Here in NC, a load of people spent a load of effort to get paper ballots across the state. In 2004, one county ‘lost’ over 4000 electronic votes and threw a couple of close state races into question. It took a couple of years, but we got the electronic machines without a paper ballot or paper receipt (mostly paper ballots).
It was a lot of work. Nothing compared to the efforts to be ALLOWED to vote in this country, however. Women and minorities went to jail or were beaten or KILLED to stop them from voting. If voting had no power, why would they bother to stop them? If voting had no power, why would there be such voter suppression going on today?
I can think of NO examples where not voting increased anyone’s power or voice.
Early in September, Black Agenda Report had a post up that contained a declaration from W.E.B. Dubois entitled, “Why I Won’t Vote”, including the statement:
“No ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names.”
He made his case well, of course, and it has echoed forward in history until some people are making the same case, not just a ‘similar’ case.
I have to say that the purpose of this forum is for is to engage in the war of competing ideas and opinions, as well as presenting our different takes on events, history, science, policy, etc.
Even though I don’t agree with the idea, partially because not enough groundwork has been laid over a longer period of time. But the notion certainly doesn’t offend me. I reckon the math of it will be extremely hidden, so showing up *as a voter* and either voting for a Presidential third party candidate, or not voting for a Presidential candidate (or any federal office) would be *mathematically* a clearer indicator.
Having said that, having any faith in our votes being actually tabulated fairly is fairly hard by now.
My vote is for the candidate I select (and I make sure I vote for a QUALIFIED candidate) because I worked hard to make sure there are paper ballots in my state, and I work for the local Board of Elections to make sure the machine counting of those paper ballots are CORRECT. And they have been for years now, with the only ballots the machines misreading being the ballots where the stupid people make and “X” instead of filling in the circle. But there are only a few of them that do that.
However, right now, Jill Stein is not a QUALIFIED candidate in North Carolina. And that is because the local Green Party did not get 500 voters to sign a petition to get her on the ballot and hand them in on time. I was someone collecting the signatures, and I was told the wrong date to hand them in. I believe this was human error, but it also reflects the lack of organization of the NC Green Party.
Allegedly “boycotting” the election and refusing to vote results in nothing. Such a “boycott” would only be potentially – and that’s a big “IF – when combined with some other actions, such as strikes and protests. That, in itself, is “iffy” bc our corp-owned media will do its damnedest to black out any real info about alleged “boycott” strikes and protests.
Hence, all that happens is that citizens have self-selected to disinfranchise themselves, and there simply is NO message that’s “sent” to anyone (except maybe to you, yourself: big whoop).
Citizens have always had the “right” to refuse to vote, and frankly, it inures to the benefit of the 1% and the PTB to have LESS citizens voting, rather than more. Why? Bc when LESS vote, there’s shenanigans that the PTB have to do to “fix” the “election.”
Choose not to vote, if that’s your wish. You can do what you want.
If you want to attempt to “send” any kind of “message,” then vote Third Party, which DOES, actually, have some affect on the process. As someone pointed out previously, we STILL at least discuss Ross Perot, John Anderson & Ralph Nadar. Had the citizens who chose to vote for those 3rd Party candidates simply decided to “boycott the vote,” those third party candidates would not have garnered as many votes and made as many headlines.
Vote Third Party is the *much more effective* way to send any kind of “message.” And yeah: it’s true that our votes are often “gamed” and “jimmied with.” Well, I can’t do much about that, and neither can anyone else. But at least by voting third party, *some* of those votes are counted correctly.
If you want to work towards improving the voting system, that’s a different story/process than what this blog proposes, imo.
I guess i shouldn’t be suprised at how people cling to the Matrix like illusion that we have a functioning democracy in Amerika.
What will it take for people to wake up from this dream state and face reality.
The people of the ME and elsewhere see this reality daily as the Drones circle and the Hellfire decends on their children. The Drones they are sending to the Homeland may not have warheads yet but the message they are sending is the same.
Please tell us how voting for any of these worthy Third Party candidites has altered the Arch of Empire in the last 40 yrs.
Talk is cheap and a message is worthless if no one in power listens.
To assume that touching an icon on a touch-screen device owned, operated, programmed, secured, and certified by the same entities that give you rendition, torture, no-bid contracts, and immunity from oversight and prosecution is pretty foolish.
Margaret and everyone who served/s to protect the right to vote (not to mention those who literally died for it during the civil rights and suffragette struggles) should put that “too scary to speak about” FACT in their fucking pipes and smoke it.
Voting means NOTHING if the process is not legitimate. Furthermore, it’s not anyone’s job to prove the process IS illegitimate. When even the government can’t see how it works, that fact is obvious.
So if I choose to call up my local registrar and tell them I’m not voting because its a giant scam, don’t call me unamerican, call yourself a chump.
I do not support any such system, wayoutwest, because I have been forcefully disenfranchised. I have no rights whatsoever to vote, and no rights whatsoever to support any system.
Love the fire and the reasoning, hotdog.
In addition, I have a question. Suppose 100% of the electorate followed the boycott advice and declined to vote.
Who do you think would be in charge?
I agree with your reasoning but not necessarily with the potential outcome. In other words, color me unrealistic, but I believe that at the very minimum least, having the American right to chose whether or not to vote, is better than not having that right.
Put another way: boycott IS casting a vote.
What is really sad about this discussion is that how rapidly so called progressives become reactionaries when someone questions their illusions.
It seems that people are so defeated that anyone who offers a real possible solution must be attacked because it might work.
I guess this shows how effective our Overloards have been at limiting the options that they think are what we should accept. This is a perfect Stockholm Syndrome and guarantees the status quo.
The right to be played is not really a right at all, is it?
Nobody cares that Wyle Labs, ESS, CACI, Diebold and untold numbers of other defense contractors are the ones collecting our votes and
tabulatingmanipulating them behind the scenes with proprietary processes that are hidden from inspection.NOBODY cares. Just keep watching the bullshit on TV and get all wrapped up in the R vs. D hoopla, and be happy when Ronald Reagan in Kenyan sheep-herders clothing gets the MIC press-secretary job based out of the oval office again.
I’m going to refuse to participate this time around. That’s not unamerican, that’s admitting the emporer isn’t the one without clothes, it’s us.
(((Crane-Station)))
You I will hug. Over and over.
As Ruth reminded me this morning, there’s a reason to call this silly season.
I think you are beginning to see the real power of the non-vote CS. If enough people boycotted the system the government would lose it’s mandate and it’s right to rule. What would happen then is a huge question because we would no longer have a legal government.
I believe they would show their true colors and rule by fiat which they actually are doing now under the cover of elections.
I respect that totally, hotdog. We (Mason and I) have had many talks about manipulation and machines. What a mess. I certainly have no answers. I guess what I am saying is that there is a difference between voluntary choice not to vote and forced non-choice not to vote. My fear of a boycott, and maybe it is unwarranted, is that the end result will be removal all together of any choice in the matter for the individuals. That would mean that, by default, we turned the decision-making over to someone else.
What ever happened to paper ballots that were counted, each one, by eyeballs?
Well, the what-would-happen is way beyond my ability to guess, that’s for sure!
The Help America to Vote Act of 2002 did the same thing for voting machine contractors that the Affordable Care Act did for the insurance companies, it gave them a lock on a lucrative market.
That was a reply to C-S.
I doubt that adding more voters to the ranks of non-voters will have any impact. However, if you believe that it will unleash the unfettered power of the state, and don’t have a plan (and an organization, and structures, and provisions to deal with that, then your proposal is irresponsible and cruel.
Your statement completely undermines any credibility this “movement” tries to claim. It would, it seems to me, take people of immense personal privilege, and confidence in the security of their own privilege, to tell other people to forfeit their rights and their agency in return for nothing more than “a huge question.”
Strange days here at The Lake, this meme went from being censored to the recommended list. What are we to make of that?
How much “agency” is there really, in putting your vote in a black box?
Anybody here other than me old enough to remember Robert Packwood? He was a philandering senator whose re-election advisers advised him to go so negative that it would chase voters away to boost his chances of winning the majority of votes cast. So it began and so it goes.
Those of you planning to boycott are falling right into the honey trap.
I dare you to go and try to vote.
Not voting is not voting. It is nothing else. It is not a statement. It is silent acquiescence. Votes that are not cast are not counted. (the fact that you suspect miscounting of cast votes does not change the fact that votes that are not cast are not counted at all)
Not voting is exactly what the Romney campaign would like from everyone reading this.
I dare you to go and try to vote.
Unless you are happy being a citizen whose vote doesn’t count for anything at all, vote.
I dare you to try.
Thank you for doing the actual hard work necessary to address problems in our voting system. As a Jill Stein supporter, I’m sad to hear of her campaign’s issues in NC, but I’m glad to know that you and others have worked to ensure the quality of the vote counting process.
I can understand that real change is frightening to many people Marym but you have to decide if you want to live under a safe dictatorship or the anarchy of a true democracy.
This is why so many so called progressives will denounce those who resist and even support their dictator’s bloody rule to maintain that illusion of safety.
I think many of us here at FDL realize the “matrix-like” illusion of what’s laughingly called “democracy” in Team USA. I’m probably way more cynical that most about the absurdity of the Kabuki Show called “National Elections,” and most of my posts at FDL put “win” in quotes bc I don’t think that the POTUS, anymore, is actually “elected” by what’s putatively a “popular vote” (putting aside the Electoral College for the moment).
However, I think it’s specious to sneer at people who chose to vote Third Party as if that’s just a load of tripe & baloney as well. Sneer if you will. As others have pointed out, should a Third Party candidate garner (I believe) 5% of the vote, there’s potential to keep building from there. Mock & point at that as if I’m some dumb-bunny idiot: fine.
It’s but ONE way to “do” something. Is it utterly ineffective: perhaps, but perhaps it MAY do some good.
I don’t see choosing to simply not vote – unless it’s in context of a really big national strike or protest of some sort – as some great big giant wild-fire way of “making a difference” either.
I think it would be useful for those who post on this site to limit their derision and condescension for the PTB, rather than other citizens in the 99% who are pondering how to truly make a difference.
Spoken as someone who’s been volunteering, picketing, protesting, marching, engaging in GOTV in various ways for DECADES. Don’t condescend to lecture me, please. Have some respect, thanks.
“It is silent acquiescence.”
No, walking away from the voting booth thinking you’ve done something when you have no confirmation your vote is properly counted is acquiescence.
The Election Dissenters are now organizing — huge difference.
Thank you! It’s growing rapidly as you can see!
The point is to delegitimize the government.
OH THANK YOU FDL!!! THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!! (How was that? )
Visit the website — it’s chock full of info!
http://www.electionboycott2012.org
Nothing strange about it. The original censoring was discussed (at length and uncensored) and the community determined that the free exchange of ideas was more important than the particular merits or demerits of this issue. The community found this approach preferable to “withholding our consent” by not blogging/commenting/reading at FDL.
Well, you could make a paper airplane, or a a flower…anything origami.
Actually, I’ve been watching this thread on and off since very early this morning, and I never saw it censored, but, I’m not all-knowing.
Boycotting the election serves no purpose but to assist the powerful in rigging the outcome in favor of its preferred candidates. The more people who vote, the more difficult it is to control whom people will vote for. That is why there is such concerted effort to suppress the right of the people to vote, especially poor people.
What you are really saying by not voting is that complain as you might, you are perfectly content to let the powerful have their way. Those who do vote will most assuredly lend legitimacy to what in any other nation would be rejected as a sham.
But imagine what would happen if every person who is eligible to vote were to cast a ballot. Imagine if the voting rate were between 80 and 90%. Imagine that enough of those voters turned out to cast their ballots for a third party candidate like Stewart Alexander or Jill Stein. Why, the result would be undeniable! And unless the powerful are prepared to openly defy the outcome, with all the totalitarian police state brutality that defiance requires, what can they really do about it? Except crap their pants.
The key to sending the message you want is to turn out in large numbers to vote third party. By not voting you are handing the corrupt system yet another in a long line of victories.
Amazing the number of people willing to intentionally miss the point. Do you think our electoral system is legitimate? If not, perhaps you should at least consider the argument that voting and driving down the participation in this system to an absurdly low level is one of few things WE can actually DO to underline that lack of legitimacy. If you disagree, fine. If you can’t part with the act of voting, fine. But please stop projecting your own insecurity at trying anything novel in order to change things by saying this is a Karl Rove plot, this is a part of voter suppression, etc., etc.
Full disclosure: I’ve not really decided now, still registered and all and I may either stay home or vote 3rd party. The problem I have with a 3rd party vote as a means to highlight lack of legitimacy is that the votes will be scattered.
I’m very disappointed to see how easily a lot of regulars here move to shut down discussion of tactics they don’t agree with or by which they are intimidated.
This place is becoming a cesspool anyway. I mean, the nabobs here are now throwing around the phrase “anti-Americanism”? Rah, rah, go team USA! USA! USA! We’re #1.
Apparently. Nice echo chamber. I’m out.
Thank you for the reply, hotdog, I got it, and good point.
Voting does nothing to address the issues, unless you call delegating the power to make your decisions for you to people you can’t hold accountable, doing something.
Not voting, on the other hand, shows that you will not blindly consent to give others the power to make all the important decisions that govern your life.
Voting is nothing more than the act of declaring yourself incompetent and designating guardians to manage your affairs. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the elections weren’t rigged so that only the biggest crooks and liars can win.
Sorry. That was 2004.
I get the point but think the strategy is flawed.
Of course the reason third parties run in a system where they know they can’t win, is to get a share of federal election funding. That’s how the capitalist system works. If you want to build a capitalist movement within a capitalist system, you have to have money. Thanks for coming right out and admitting it.
Nobody gave their life for the right to an uncounted vote for a corporate candidate. The Egyptian elections resulted only in a continuation of the military dictatorship, but gave it the fig leaf of an “elected civilian government” to hide behind. That fig leaf slipped when the military junta dissolved the elected Parliament.
What we have here in the US is a dictatorship. The President can declare war without consulting Congress, no less consulting the US public, and both the Bush and Obama administrations stated clearly that they would not allow public opinion to influence policy decisions. That’s what a dictatorship is, when public opinion cannot influence policy decisions.
LOL, I’ll see you the Robert Packwood memory and raise you this: I remember when Wayne Morse lost his re-election bid to Packwood in 1968, because, stay with me here: The third grade playground kids at the time were pretty politically aware. Many of us disagreed with the Vietnam War, for example. I took the position that Wayne Morse deserved to be elected and chanted “Morse, Morse, he’s our man…Packwood belongs in the gar-bage can.” This chant was countered with the inverse version, of course, all during recess right there between the swings and the merry-go-round.
Granted, I did not know about that strategy to suppress the vote turnout, but still. Thanks for the memory!
Agree. See my prior posts. Unless “walking away from the ballot box” is combined with other efforts, that step is pretty useless. It doesn’t send a “message” to anyone, other than to indicate how few citizens feel like participating in the voting process, no matter how rigged, gamed, illegitimate, stupid, or whatever, that the system is.
Set up a Boycott the Vote in such a way that it garners a HUGE GIANT amount of attention with HUGE numbers of citizens protesting? OK, I can maybe go along with that. That said, EVEN IF such an effort garnered a TON of media attention, and EVEN IF *millions* of citizens participated in it… do you REALLY think that will “make a difference”??? Really?
At this point, the PTB are gonna do what they’re gonna do, unless or until the whole system falls apart.
The so-called “Arab Spring” really didn’t do very much for the citizens across NA, despite a huge amount of world-wide attention. I don’t fault what happened there, and best of luck to the 99%ers in Egypt and elsewhere, but… thinking that not voting will somehow quickly result in “de-legitimizing” the USG is not really valid, or at least no more valid than an effort to have Third Parties have more representation in our very flawed and corrupt system.
There’s arguments/pros & cons that can be made for a lot of changes. No ONE WAY is THE ONLY WAY to making a change.
I agree. It’s too bad union leadership has become as corrupt as our political leadership, or we would have made some real progress toward making a general strike happen.
I do understand calls for an election boycott. It’s sort of a take off of the old anti-war idea, only with voting:
“What if they held an election and nobody came?”
I’m even fine with people boycotting the election now, and it would even better if they spread the word, so that Obama knows his deception and lies in 2008 resulted in a vote boycott in 2012.
What I’m not fine with is the people who vote for Obama out of fear. I have no sympathy for any informed individual who is such a mental coward, he/she will support murder and assassination.
Also recommended and my thanks, too, to the writer and FDL.
I don’t think i was sneering at anyone i was just reflecting on the illusions that most people including myself have lived under for decades.
I was shot, beaten and jailed trying to stop the madness that is Amerika and held my nose and voted for years hoping for real change.
It hasn’t worked and we have been fooled into believing that staying inside the system is our only choice.
Third Party voting is a dead end in our present system and i think most people know this but hope that a protest vote will be heard. The PTB are not listening and even if a Third Party could gain real support it would be crushed, just look at what has been done to silence them even though they are no real threat.
It is not the right to vote that is sacred and inviolate, but the right to a voice in government.
Several years ago I asked election integrity activists, people who were very concerned about observing the polls (as if it were possible to see inside the central tabulators to ascertain how they are programmed to manipulate the results), if they would still vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet. The results were so astonishing that I repeated the poll on a liberal website, but got the same result. About 50% of respondent just laughed and said that of course they wouldn’t vote if their votes were just flushed down a toilet. But the other 50% were irate about protecting their sacred and inviolate right to vote and insisted that they would sill vote even if their votes were just flushed down a toilet.
People who don’t understand the difference between a vote that doesn’t even have to be counted and isn’t verifiable, for candidates who cannot be held accountable during their terms of office, the only time that they are needed to represent their constituents, and a real voice in government, would vote if the only candidates on the ballot were Hitler and Stalin and all votes were automatically incinerated before being counted. They’ve made a graven idol out of something that should be a cherished principle. People fought and died for a voice in government, not for a “vote” that isn’t a voice.
Recommended. I am voting Jill but I can easily see not voting in this thoroughly corrupted system.
I think we’re mostly on the same page, but you may wish to consider how you express yourself. It’s been my experience that most of the most “vocal” bloggers are in the contingency of citizens who’ve actually been pretty active in the political process in one way or the other.
I’m not in total disagreement about your analysis of the “usefulness” or not of Third Parties and the potential, at least, of Third Parties to be co-opted by the “system.” Quite likely you’re right.
Does voting send a message to the PTB or do they scoff and mock? Who knows? I think the PTB will do what they’re gonna do until things fall apart, but questionable, even so, how “falling apart” will happen and when.
Until such time… our options are limited.
You have no idea what you are talking about and Edited by Moderator!
My wife and I have been fighting this system our entire lives and we have the scars to prove it.
Who the hell are you to presume to tell us anything about how unfair and screwed up this system is?
You are Edited by Moderator.
Not voting is a stupid, immature, irresponsible and childish response and you should know that.
Grow up, roll up your sleeves and do something responsible for a change.
Terri’s origonal diary a few weeks ago was censored and another diary was posted challenging the censorship. Terri’s origonal diary was never reinstated so this is a major evolution for FDL.
This idea suffers from a condition that the American philosopher Ron White sagely observed is not fixable.
While you may be in one of the fewer than 9% of voting districts in the US where votes are verifiable, the final tallies for the Presidental election in 2012 will be done by the computers of a private corporation in Spain which you cannot oversee and over which you have no control.
Moreover, just because a candidate wins a US Presidential election doesn’t mean the Supreme Court will allow that candidate to take office.
I’m glad you’ve found an enjoyable hobby. I was active in the election integrity movement myself for six years, during which time I also worked at the polls, observed at the polls, filed Public Records Requests, and even brought a lawsuit on my own initiative to force the local Registrar of Voters to abide by the Election codes of my state. But then I learned that it was impossible to have honest elections in the US because the Constitution of the United States, written to ensure that those who owned the country would always run it, made sure that the popular vote didn’t even have to be counted and would never be the final say.
It looks like i caught you on a bad Astrology day Mason why don’t you go back to your charts for some enlightenment.
Don’t push me, Edited by Moderator.
Whoul would be in charge if nobody voted?
Let me tell you a true story, Crane.
Some years ago I went to my very first Zapatista demonstration, a protest in front of the Mexican consulate. I joined a bunch of people with signs, chanting and singing. Then a cop car pulled up, a police officer got out, walked over to us, and asked, “Who’s in charge here?”
Everyone except me, since it was my very first protest, replied in unison, “The people are in charge!”
My eyes opened wide. I looked around and indeed the people were in charge. We had no leader. We had all responded to an email announcing the time and day of the demonstration, and had come together for a cause we believed in.
The officer looked around in confusion, mumbled something about keeping the sidewalk clear for pedestrian traffic, which we were doing, and walked away.
I know that many are afraid that without elections, extremists might take over. A few years ago a local newspaper ran a poll asking voters what their top priority was. They’d expected people to say things like guns, gays, god, abortion, and other hot-button issues. But the overwhelming response from all shades of the political spectrum was that the top priority of voters in this large city was to get the potholes fixed. It seems that everyone, liberal, moderate, or regressive, needs to shop, take their kids to school, and get to work. So if there was no local government in our way, the first thing that would happen here is that we’d all go out and fix the potholes. It may not be the most green and progressive thing, but I decided that I could live with that. It doesn’t frighten me at all–how about you?
I choose neither of course. I choose building a political and social movement that includes mechanisms for surviving the terrible hardships many people face today, designing and building structures for the future, and planning for the difficult and dangerous response by the elites to any serious movement for change. Some of this may include voting within an imperfect system, for whatever small good it can do at the local level, and as a vehicle for building the political side of the movement.
You seem to be suggesting that not voting will unleash a very unsafe dictatorship, while not changing the distribution of power, wealth, military and police forces, and access to resources. Yet you somehow expect this will magically result in “democratic anarchy” and seem to have no plan for survival, no way to execute that plan, and no resources with which to survive the upheaval, and to build the future.
David Cobb wasn’t on the ballot in IL in 2004 either.
I believe i should apologise to Mason for my cheap shot in response to his cheap shot. I guess i am as succeptable to a reactionary response as the next guy, i must be human.
I do think i have the right to comment on dumpster diving since i dine on dumpster fare myself and i had my right to vote suspended also so i believe i can comment on that.
One of the few benefits of old age is that i don’t have to suffer fools anymore and i will retain that prerogative however harmless that fool may be.
Love Ron. What would George Carlin say, OG?
My thoughts? Well, for one thing, we (in this country) are a huge group, of course, so I think it would be difficult to take the incident that you describe, which is a wonderful and inspiring story by the way, and apply it to the whole country. That said, I’ll tell you one thought I have had for a while that I have only shared with my husband. I think that this country is actually three or maybe even four different countries, trying to make the ‘one’ work. Your example reminds me a bit of rural farming in Europe where people are sick less because the food is produced locally.
Maybe that is not a very good analogy, but I see many problems with a country trying to masquerade as some sort of a united front when there are so many different standards for different people and when there is so much division in philosophy and thinking.
The divisions become magnified during election season, I think, which is a shame because we lose constructive debate focus to emotion. We need more discussions like yours!
This is one of the reasons that I supported Ralph Nader over the wimp-oid Gore. Nader wants real elections. The RepubliCrats are only concerned abut the bottom line for themselves.
I recently saw footage of Gore arriving in Florida late Nov 2000 to “cheer on” those activists trying to get the ballots recounted. He looked like he would have much rather have been somewhere else. I think since he grew up in a political family, he knew that should he have gotten the Highest Office, the PTB would hurt him badly. For instance, when Nine Eleven happened, the RW and its media would have seen to it that the American people hated him for letting it happen.
All i can say is that neither do you. The path you suggest is just more of the same failed incremental hope for better leaders and institutions that hasn’t worked before. In fact it has helped to get us to the nightmare that we face now.
Even if many people don’t want to believe it we already live under and Authoritarian Regime it will never allow the People to reform it so what are our options? We can continue to live on our knees begging for our masters to hear our pleas or we can stand up and do something to destroy that Regime. It must be destroyed it cannot be reformed.
Whatever can be built after this destruction will require much more involvement than voting every 2 to 4 years.
I’m not optimistic that the cowed people of this country can get off of their knees and really resist but i must maintain some hope.
You are telling us two very great stories.
I especially like the one about the policeman in Mexico.
Thank you.
I am happy with every word you’ re stating. Especially the idea that people should disagree politely. We have lost that ability. Everyone is totally over-reactive to everyone else. This means we cannot avoid large scale war, as if you cannot even hear out yr neighbors differing political opinions, how can we avoid a large scale war with people who dress, worship eat and speak differently than us?
I don’t demonize anyone. I even like many of the RW Christians I know – as they helped us out big time when my spouse was ill. The rich Dems I knew were all – “You should have put away more of the money you made,” though they always have love in their hearts for any newly arrived immigrant.
I know you are correct, and yet, I am drawn to the flame, like moth.
I’m more able to be circumspect some time more than others.
(thank you for your patience, good soul, you.) :)
I think about 30% have been ‘boycotting’ elections for a long time. Don’t know what difference it has made.
Hate to break the bad news, but your in a political culture that ignores non-participation. This system couldn’t care less if you don’t want to play in election games or not. We stuck in the reality of now.
Pick something or someone on the damn machine and ignore the rest of the choices.
The folks that make their living in the election industry do pay attention to the implied dissatisfaction of incomplete ballots, lots of analysis by both parties; allot more than the normal fully complete ones, the straight tickets, or someone who didn’t even vote.
If these partial players would organize, they could sell an issue or two onto a platform of the major players. At least each could get a couple hundred raffle tickets as compensation from the PACs that are spending a ton in the swing states wooing the undecided.
We should organize an undecided party.
Note to “outside the box” thinkers: dumbassery can also be considered “thinking outside the box” and the difference is not always obvious to the thinker.
Oh, “they have organized” have they? A website does not an organization make, Terri – but thanks for playin’.
And in case you’re not sure what the commenter at 92 is referring to as “unfixable” – it’s “stupid.”
I couldn’t boycott the election because there are other issues to be voted on, like a governor,judges and legalizing pot. I’m more inclined towards a write-in vote for president.
Speaking of dumbassery, Obama, the puppet of choice, will be our presididn’t again. That’s a no-brainer.
The genius of the whole system is that you’ll be celebrating your “win” over the bad guys and feeling all un-stupid for supporting the guy who’ll continue to rip you off and fuck you over. Yay.
Stands on chair clapping! Thank you, DWBartoo.
I will not vote because the whole system is corrupt.
The votes are not verifiable (someone commented that only 9% of the votes are verifiable, would love to get the link to that) and IMO the voting process is completely corrupt thus useless. (IMO!!!)
However, I don’t tell others what to do. If someone wants to vote for a third party candidate, then wonderful, go at it. Your choice. As I have mine.
Heck, if someone wants to vote for D or R, it’s their choice, NOT MINE!
I am thankful that even in the deluge of reactionary vitriol, there are voices of rational discourse (from ANY perspective, vote or not). Because that’s what I came here for – the thoughtful and rational exchange of ideas, even the ones I may disagree with.
Peace.
BTW, do you have the link for the 9% stat of verifiable voting.
Or point in the correct direction. I would like to have a reference for my own use. Thanks.
Dumbasses often use the word “you” when they should use the word “they.”
“Outside the box thinkers” in this case should apply to people who won’t pay homage to a fucked up system by participating in it. So your comment @108 seems to be aimed at them/us/me. If it wasn’t, your vitriol is clouding your ability to write clearly.
This strategy totally does not make sense. Yes, don’t vote for Obama or Romney. But do vote Green, vote Jill Stein, vote Third Party, to boost the third parties vote. It is a completely WRONG strategy to ask the “left” NOT to vote for Third Parties, or vote for Obama or do not vote at all. Is this an Obama strategy to undermine the Greens etc.?
It seems third parties protest votes are much, much higher than in 2008, and you want that third party vote in 2013 to be as high as possible and to be noticed. Support for Jill Stein is now 2%. And all third parties amount to a total of 5% or something. By comparison, in 2008, the third party vote was something like only 0.08% or something. Vote third party!
When Rush Limbaugh is promoting the boycott to his audience, I’ll believe that it is more than a symbolic gesture that will wind up hurting a lot of people. Otherwise, it’s “you progressives boycott while evangelical and Tea Party types” hold their noses and vote for Mitt.
And regardless of what you do on the presidential level, there are likely at least one or two very critical items on the ballot that deserve a vote.
…X 2 …well composed and stated…thank you DWB
elise–
X2.
You say: “I don’t demonize anyone. I even like many of the RW Christians I know – as they helped us out big time when my spouse was ill. The rich Dems I knew were all – “You should have put away more of the money you made,” though they always have love in their hearts for any newly arrived immigrant.”
And, we all know why they feel that way. They reflect the fact that the Democratic Party is the corporatist, “fiscal conservative” party–with the “screw the “little guy, help the 1% economic policies.” Does anyone here not realize that the Democratic Party’s support of undocumented immigrants is rooted in their aim to please “business, large and small” by aiding them drive down wages, for millions of lower-skilled Americans (of all colors). At least Republicans are “somewhat” honest about their goals and convictions, despicable as they are.
The Democratic Party has gotten “the art of lying and deception” (when it comes to economic and foreign policies) down to an art. Look at how artfully they manage to NEVER address, much less “discuss” Bowles-Simpson, in spite of the President commissioning a panel, and the hundreds of articles that have been written, revealing their true plans.
Blue
…X 2
…on same page with these thoughts and need to see/know consequences
Yes, they would be ecstatic! corporate money rules more the less the people register their concerns and opinions.
As long as one person votes there will be an election and a winner.
There is no way to “win” a boycott, staying home is what the conglomeration wants you to do.
Vote to reign in corporate control, vote for human power, vote Green Party.
GP candidates take no corporste or lobbyist money.
jillstein.org
gp.org
One party takes no corporate donations; gp.org
I did not know this. I came across this post linked to by an angry commenter stating how they were shocked this post was allowed on the sacred FDL grounds. The claim was it was pure voter suppression. I dissented on that thread and was shredded mercilessly simply for stating that “voter supperssion” and “boycotting” were completely different things and to claim Terri’s article was simply a Rovian voter supression scheme was simply wrong to the core. They were ready to pillage me simply for stating the obvious. that boycotting and voter suppression were almost exact opposites. It was discouraging to say the least. I am pleased to see this commentary thread has taken a better track and your contributions are fantastic.
I write clearly enough for non-dumbasses. I was noting that “outside the box” thinking does not always provide any kind of a solution to a problem, especially when wielded by infallible know-it-alls who claim to see future events with cocksure certitude. I will not be voting for Obama; nor will I commit suicide (ie, not participate in the system of life) so that the 1%ers have no one to rule over. I will also not claim that my understanding and actions are perfect. I will invite you to attempt to insult someone less sympathetic to your goals.
Thanks for the support Scrambler, i seem to have violated some peoples sacred cows which can lead to the flaiming pyre. If we can’t find a way out of this stinking cat-box we are surely doomed.
thanks!
No blog could pass that test. LOL
In the end, it’s a tough thing. Voting for either of the two “evils” will get the same result and arguments for both have been made. Regardless, Mitt and Obama will both rain hellfire down on innocent middle eastern children, both will make a mess of Iran, both will benefit the financial industry, both will harm the poor and middle class. That is inarguable, which leaves third party and boycotting. I see arguments for both of those as laudable and not much different. It’s taken me nearly all of my closing in on 50 years but I fully realize my matrix like existence now. I’ve still got kids I need to get places though, have a pre-existing condition, and have to participate in the circus to some extent.
Let me clarify, I support the Dream Act, etc. My point was that multi-millionaires like Reid, Pelosi, Feinstein, Kerry, Warner, etc., etc., are not supporting these folks out of true compassion. (Which I think the economic policies of the Democratic Party for the past thirty plus years, have demonstrated).
Blue
The day after elections, Green Party candidates will still not be taking money from corporations.
That’s the plan, the whole plan, and only the plan.
Our platform is possible, and believable, because we take no money from lobbies or corporations. gp.org/platform
If this ever ceases to be the case, most of us will probably start another party so there will always be a unconglomerated option, for the only other real option is war, and there will always be a portion of us not fit to fight.
jillstein.org
With that comment, today you earned your keep. LOL.
Vote to build a permanent not for profit alternative, vote green.
Note: there’s more on a presidential election ballot than just voting for president. I live in a small community where there will be numerous ballot items that affect me and my neighbors. “Not voting” is not an option for most of my neighbors. Dissatisfied with the current crop of presidential candidates? Write in the name of someone with whom you are satisfied.
Anyone comparing these times to any times in the past is living in an illusion, or maybe it’s this time that the illusion we were living in the past has been exposed.
Not voting sounds good to me. That means you are aware of the bullshit that’s going on. “We”, those of us who voted for Barack Obama have been defrauded. “We” know that Mit and Barack work for the same people, and “We” are not going to participate in this charade called an election.
Eventually “We” will become united, and when that happens, real change will occur.
Scrambler, left my thoughts at #33, but wanted to tell you that I thought you conducted yourself well this morning.
“boycotting and voter suppression were almost exact opposites”
Thank you, it’s been bugging me, even though I disagree, but I didn’t know how to put it.
Just for starters, one should always have the right not to vote, even if it costs one money (see Australia), but no one should have the right to suppress the vote of another.
I may disagree fervently and vocally with this article, and the sentiment that a “real” anark would not work for a political party; but I am a hard core believer in the inviobility of one’s right to express political opinion on collective decision making to as large a degree as one has desire to participate in.
Giving up my vote may have the same exact result, from where I sit, as not being “allowed” to vote, but opposite is a good word for these causes’ relation to one another.
One of the points of polling is so that the public majority understands it’s opinions are that of the majority. Everthing about our elections militates against this.
The big open secret of democracy is that any significant majority can enforce it’s will in any number of ways besides just elections and government, but first it must know it is in the majority to begin with.
The fact is the majority agree with Occupy and the GP, and a great clue to that (besides the almost nonexistant polling that is fair to both conglomeration and it’s opposition) is that the Democratic party keeps moving it’s platform in that direction. But, the Dems do not deliver what the conglomeration opposition needs, although it at least makes token attempts when it is also a member of the political opposition.
The tea party is not a party, it is taking the Repuglickin Party right where the owners are paying it to go. The same place the Demokin Party is going, even if the path varies in it’s current details.
A separate party that refuses to be owned is the only short term or permanent solution. Whether it wins, or even succeeds in office, or not, a permanent widely known option (last week’s phone polls show 18% of us know who Jill Stein is) to the conglomerate adgenda is needed, if only to point out what the corporate agenda is.
The most red blooded American thing about this article is it’s intellectual laziness.
It makes an important point, about the views of very many real people, and needs to be discussed, but nonvoting is not a finished thought until a viable option to voting for representatives is put into action.
Boycotting the vote advances conglomeration at least as well as suppressing the vote, the only difference is the illusion one is making a choice (for the majority of nonvoters, to make a choice would be to vote).
A low turnout will make a point clearly to those citizens paying attention, but it will make a louder point to those who think they are piloting this wreck.
It’s a shame that the Anti-Boycott faction can’t come up with anything substantial to support their view. First it was a Rovian conspiracy and now it’s critical that you get to choose your dogcatcher. If you must you can still vote for dogcatcher and boycott the presidential election.
The main reason the Dems should not give other parties a hard time about presenting another option:
When I go to the polls to vote for Jill, I will also be voting for other candidates, none of these will be Republicans, and many local choices are not partisan.
If I didn’t have Jill Stein to vote for, I would probably stay home, that would cost some Dems, and some nonpartisans supported by a lot of Dems, my vote.
Does this also mean that in 2010 the Green Party will field 435 House candidates and 33 Senate candidates? How about state legislative candidates, county commissioners, city councils, and maybe some statewide offices?
One candidate for one office with an effort that pops up once every four years is not a party. What progressives, and Greens as well, have lacked is continuity of political action and geographical breadth.
One-time feel-good measures will not do squat to change the system.
This election is so irrelevant to the political culture that even boycotting it is irrelevant. There is much harder and important work that needs to be done.
And the day after the election the Green Party will still be just like Fusion power, 40 years in the future maybe. I support everything the Greens stand for but i’m sane enough to know that our System will keep them 40 yrs in the future forever.
So long as the guy driving the cart and holding the carrot in front of you, the donkey, also holds the whip you never get the carrot.
Cool. You might consider making such into a diary.
I’ve no problem with that!
You’re quite incorrect about this. And thankfully so. See Comments #2 and #7 in Jill Stein Calls for a Vote for the Future
Unfortunately, I’m still not seeing enough long term thinking out of Stein/Honkala to get excited about their strategic smarts. I’m just one voter, but what about millions of other Americans?
Hopefully, I will annoy Stein/Honkala, or their supporters, enough so that they at least put my claim to the test (via polling) about whether prioritizing party building within their campaigns would not only snag them more worker bees for after the election, but would also inspire more voters to show up for them, during the current election.
The Dems are certainly no less honest about goals than the Reps.
The even expect you to believe it when their operatives tell you what Obama’s plans are.
One party decieves about goal priorities, the other lies about their own goals, and the goals of everyone else, in addition, they lie not about their own actions, as such, but attribute their own effects to others, their results to others’ actions, and propose to repeat the cause as solution… over and pover again, until it is obvious as the nose on your face. Naoimi Klien named it, Disaster Capitalism, jails too full? build more!
One is for just enough obfuscation to continue profiteering, the “other” seeks complete obfuscation, a culture where even the wisest contemplate who should be completely in charge.
We have arrived at a place that more than ever is in an echo chamber bubble, where nothing “we” talk about has any correlation to observed and recorded as reproduced reality, just what someone decides the chorus will tell you.
Go ahead, vote for NO THINKING NEEDED! stay home,
or go pull a lever for the conglomerate guy you think is most cool.
Doing same thing, this time is different, expecting same results.
Crying wolf while being eaten by dragons can no longer be taken seriously.
Now there’s an idea! Howzabout a boycott of the boycott of the boycott of the boycott of the boycott of the boycott of the boycott of the boycott? Now THAT is some “out of the box” thinking right there. This should be good news for all know-it-all loudmouths.
Crying Wolf while being eaten by Dragons, great line Monte do you mind if i steal that one?
At some point we must choose or someone else will choose for us. I would love to vote for Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson but either Obama or Romney will become the next POTUS. It comes down to the lesser evil.
Do we vote for the candidate that wants to cut taxes, medicare, SSI, etc or the candidate that wants to cut taxes, medicare, SSI, etc just a little less while convincing America that no President could do better, it’s not his fault, and “he” killed Osama bin Laden?
You choose, but Mitt Romney(lesser evil) has this Democrats’ vote.
I understand many Liberals/Progressives can’t vote for Mitt. In that case voting third party is better than not voting. The winners write the history books, and I assure you that your not voting will be misinterpreted. However, boycotting is better than another mindless vote for Obama or these “Democrats”.
The reactionary right is pouring huge resources into suppressing the vote.
Let’s decide to….not vote!
That’ll show the bastards.
Maybe she’d cast a write-in vote for Cobb. All I know is that in the video, she was extremely upset that there had been no votes for Cobb in her district when she knew darned well that she’d voted for Cobb.
Yea!
Lets vote for Obama again. – “Change you can’t believe in”.
Your argument fall apart as long as Obama is the “Democratic” nominee.
Not a word about about Obama in my comment.
But I’m with you! Let’s expand on the idea!
Gas is at four bucks a gallon. I say we protest and pay 8 bucks instead.
I don’t know what the rules were in IL in 2004 or 2008, whenever you say she said she tried to vote. However, at this time it’s clearly stated that write-in votes will be counted only if the candidate has filed paperwork stating that he/she intends to be a write-in candidate.
Whatever you think of these rules, if they were in place when she voted, just writing in a name would not qualify her vote to be counted, but it wouldn’t have been as a result of fraudulent vote counting.
This type of rule also exists in other states. This year Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson have taken the necessary steps to be write-in candidates in several states.
You are making the classic mistake of predicting the future – immediate and long term. Neither you nor I know the unintended consequences of our vote. In 2008, I wouldn’t have predicted that the GOP would take back the House in 2010. I didn’t know Obama would continue GWB’s war polices, extend GWB’s tax cuts, keep GITMO open, continue GWB’s NSA wiretapping, etc, etc. Basically, no one could have predicted the complete Republican failure that Obama has governed as.
I disagree with Romney’s “proposed” policies but I’ve been around long enough to know most won’t become law, and a Romney presidency will probably stop Obama from cutting another bad deal with the Republicans.
BTW, the “Democrats” will take back Congress in 2014 if and only if Romney is elected.
Speaking just for myself, I’m about to gargle with Drano.
Can anyone talk me down?
………
Anyway, i don’t why you’re give me a hard time. I’m with you.
In fact, here’s another idea – there are all these foreclosures going on. I say we protest by getting people to vacate their homes and turn the keys over to the bank!
Think of the message it will send!
That depends. Are you voting for Obama?
LOL!
Oh, right. I forgot how much more important pot is than the lives of the innocent kids the US government is drone-bombing. Why, without pot, how would you be able to stop thinking about the babies you voted to kill?
Some will vote to kill babies in the hopes they might get legal pot, not that the feds will stop busting people for pot just because a state legalizes it, some will vote to kill babies in hopes their guy might get elected and might get a Supreme Court appointment and might appoint somebody who might turn out to be a swing vote on reproductive rights–there are all sorts of selfish reasons for voting to kill innocent babies.
But there is not a single voter in this country, not even the stupidest and most ignorant, who doesn’t know right now that no matter who wins, the results of the 2012 election will be the continuing murder by drone bombs of innocent babies. The good Germans of Hitler’s time claimed that they didn’t know what he was doing. We live in an age of mass media–there is nobody in the country who can claim they don’t know.
The thing about voters is they don’t care. They have a lot more important things to be concerned about. Killing innocent babies is just collateral damage and voters are much too apathetic to care about it. So what if another million innocent babies are killed if it might mean the hopes of a few temporary reforms for voters? Voters have priorities: Themselves, their political party, and their precious right to cast their uncounted votes.
The only way to vote against the Money Party is to vote for non-Money Party candidates. No Dems, no Republicans, nowhere on the ticket.
Not being invisible, and uncounted, and unimportant.
And if there are no 3rd party/Independent candidates for a position, write one in! Write in Albert Pujols or Jenna Jameson or Ryan Seacrest, but register that you were there, you voted…AND you rejected the Republicans and Democrats alike. (In Nevada, the NOTA option works fine for this.)
Silence nods assent. Register your dissent.
Lol!
I respect you, and I’m certainly *rooting* for Mitt to pull out a miracle…but I’m not going to endorse him with my vote. He’s the lesser evil (unless he’s also been murdering American citizens and nobody has noticed), but evil is still evil.
I don’t have the link, Tambershall, but I think it may have come from BradBlog. It is the percentage of US voting districts where the votes are counted by those easily hacked, totally unverifiable central tabulators.
Not giving you a hard time. I was like you 4 years ago. Screaming at those “idiots” that vote third party or not at all. Those “idiots” were those of us that got fooled by Obama.
After four years of Obama, never again. All I know that is Obama must be defeated. Romney is a small price to pay to oust the Manchurian Republican.
Again, nothing in my comment about Obama.
But, yet another new way to protest. Student debt – huge problem. I say we protest by sending every student down to the local payday lender!
This is fantastic – it completely changes the face of protest!
@ Scrambler @ 124. “They were ready to pillage me simply for stating the obvious. that boycotting and voter suppression were almost exact opposites.” On what planet? A vote is a vote, a non-vote is a non-vote. Nobody but you will ever know the difference.
@ wayoutwest @ 55: If. Man isn’t that the key word? Your idea will not even cause a blip in any meaningful stats. Wishful thinking is not a good excuse for fail. Fail. FAIL!
I’m with you in spirit but you are over thinking it, all we need to do is withdraw our money from the bank big banks. Move it to a local bank, credit union, or under the mattress for 30 days. Then, watch the fireworks.
Great.
Organize it
Now there’s a concept! Elect Governor Etch-a-Sketch so we can cause a catastrophy. Which will lead, we presume, to a real revolution. Will I see you on the barricades?
Yes, Monte, as long as one person votes, there is an election and a winner.
But if I held an election and was voted Supreme Overlord of FireDogLake because only one person voted (everybody else thought it was a stupid election and didn’t bother to vote), my closest friend, and he voted for me, would you take it seriously? Would you then grant me the respect due to a true Supreme Overload of FireDogLake? Of course not! You’d laugh yourself silly.
If you had read the links I posted, you’d have seen that was exactly what happened in South Africa. After their successful election boycott when only 7% of the people voted, the government went right ahead and installed the winners in office, even if they’d only gotten a handful of votes. But nobody respected them. Nobody took them seriously. And the United States, which had, up until then, claimed to abhor Apartheid but supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa because it was the legitimate government, had to stop supporting Apartheid because without the consent of the governed, the Apartheid regime was no longer able to plausibly claim to be a legitimate government.
The only thing that allows torture, secret prisons, indefinite dentention without due process, wars of aggression based on lies, toxic pharmaceuticals, genetically modified “food,” environmental destruction, etc., is the consent of the governed. The votes of people who are too apathetic to care about what their votes grant legitimacy to. Sure, there are always a few who want those things, but they are a tiny minority–most are concerned with more important things like pot, abortions, jobs, or similar issues–you know–things so important that they are worth destroying millions of innocent lives and our only habitable planet for.
I understand. Do what ever you can.
The reactionary right is pouring thousands of times as much money into financing election campaigns and getting out the vote, as they are spending on voter suppression.
So, since the far right is spending billions of dollars getting out the vote, and both carties are competing for those same billions of corporate dollars by demonstrating how cravenly they’ll cater to big corporations, big banks, and the military, you certainly wouldn’t want that money to be wasted by people who didn’t vote, right?
The reactionary right donated more money to Obama than to McCain in 2008, so anyone who looked at the donations to both campaigns by Goldman Sachs, Lockheed-Martin, and other forces of regression, could have seen who was their favorite candidate. Not by much of course, as they consider that money an investment, so they hedge their bets by donating in almost equal amounts to both parties.
And then they spend a mere pittance on voter suppression, to try to make the gullible think that even if their votes aren’t counted, they must be valuable because somebody is trying to take it away from them.
Fortunately, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, and fewer and fewer people are still gullible enough to think that an uncounted vote must have value if somebody tries to take it away.
I sure hope you never find a homeless person scavenging through your garbage, RFShunt, as then you’d probably think it was of immense value and take it back indoors, treasure it, and never let it go.
See response #154.
“…without the consent of the governed, the Apartheid regime was no longer able to plausibly claim to be a legitimate government.”
True.
Who do you nominate to adjudge the legitimacy of the US Government? South Africa? Puh-lease. Worse yet you can’t even achieve a seven percent reduction in votes, much less reduce the vote by a noteworth percent of previous years.
Your idea is in effect an new angle on voter suppression.
Thanks.
If it is clearly stated this year, it probably wasn’t in previous years.
But since the Supreme Court found, when it stopped the vote count in 2000, that there is no Constitutional requirement that the popular vote be counted at all, it is a minor detail as to who can vote for whom in elections where the votes don’t have to be counted.
I’ll take tha under advisement.
Not analogous.
An analogous comparison would be a general rent and mortage strike, where people simply stopped paying rent and mortgages.
A home has value. It is a basic survival need called shelter. A vote that isn’t counted, has no value.
How about “likely won’t do what you think it will.”
Again, not a word in my comment about Obama.
However, in the interim, I’ve found yet another application for this novel method of protest. CO2 emissions are way to high so…smudge pots! Let’s burn thousands of smudge pots!
You show a good grasp of history that matters, but on this one common fallacy:
If you try hard enough, it isn’t that easy, to track that quote down, you will find it to be the first working academic definition of Fascism. It’s not even really an open question in academia.
Both Mussolini and Hitler went out of their way NOT to define Fascism or Nazisim.
When pressed, Benito would only say it came from the heart, the viscera, was based on moral principle, ethics, and the public good, i.e. what felt right.
So, outside it’s actions, one can only really gauge the goals from their effects.
Fascism is doing what feels right, ardently, jingoisticly, and ultimately, racistly…
It’s a weak correlation anyway, unless the aristocracy owns, profits from, and runs the the corps(es).
Of course, one may well argue we have every bit as much an aristocracy in the US, just of more recent descent.
Great.
Organize it.
Bin Q. I’ve considered and I feel that if Mitt Romney is elected he (we) will invade Iran. In which case, I have no real reason to presume that there will even be an election in 2014.
Can you provide links to South Africsn history showing that it was people not voting in one elction and the US acknowledging that the govt did not have consent of the governed that ended apartheid in S. Africa? The only link I remember seeing from you on this was just a link to you quoting some unnamed person saying this was true.
There was of course massive resistance, peaceful and violent,by people of all races, people went to jail, were beaten and tortured, a world-wide boycott and divest movement, legal challenges, interim government measures, etc. for decades.Please provide a link to how it was an election boycott that made the difference.
And what makes you think Obama won’t invade Iran, Canada, or Alabama?
So you think that US votes are visible, counted, and important?
Spend a few years in the election integrity movement, as I have, and get back to me on that.
More than 92% of votes cast in the US are counted by central tabulators. These were banned, along with all other electronic devices, from being used in Germany’s elections by their Supreme Court on the grounds that they conceal the electoral process from the public eye and are therefore incompatible with democracy. Their votes are visible, ours are not.
The US Supreme Court stopped the vote count in 2000 and found that there is no Constitutional requirement that the popular vote be counted. Was your vote counted in 2000? Can you prove it? What about 2004? Did you donate to a guy who promised to ensure that every vote would be counted and then changed his mind?
How important is a vote for somebody who will be able to make your decisions for you without consulting you? How important is it to you that somebody will be able to start wars in your name without bothering to ask you first?
Voting is consent. If you don’t consent, don’t vote.
Good point. But, there is a steady drumbeat for an invasion of Iran from the right. Don’t hear much about invading Canada. Invading Alabama seems like a good idea to me, but it might get some opposition in Congress.
No, I couldn’t achieve a huge reduction in votes. Fortunately, the two major party candidates have done that for me.
2012 will be the first Presidential election in US history with a lower turnout than in a midterm election.
That will be noticed and commented upon all over the world.
If you are worried they will steal your vote, that’s another reason to vote Green or Lib. jillstein.org
You provide an anecdote based on a video you say that you saw of someone saying that something happened. You’re incorrect about the year the event supposedly took place, don’t appear to have looked into the ballot status of the candidate, whether or not the person wrote in the candidate, or the rules about write-in votes in IL. But you feel comfortable saying that something that is currently published “probably wasn’t in previous years.” Do you see that you may have a credibility problem?
Every Obama vote they flip puts them 2 votes ahead of him, so they have less motive to flip “third” party votes.
The boycott is recounted in a book called The Mind of South Africa by Allister Sparks. The rest is common sense. Since decades of violence had not changed the determination of the United States to support what it called the legitimate government of South Africa, even if it was an abhorrent Apartheid regime, only the delegitimization of that regime could have brought about an end to US support. That was accomplished by the election boycott. To understand how an election boycott delegitimizes a government, you need only recall the words from the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments demonstrate that consent by holding elections. If people don’t vote, they no longer have the consent of the governed and are no longer legitimate.
It isn’t in a textbook. You have to be able to think and to put two and two together.
Thanks but no thanks for the invitation.
The system of life? Get off the merry-go-round, you’re getting dizzy.
Not voting is largely taken as consent.
Unless one pursues an alternate course to collective power (I recommend direct electronic democracy with the right to delegate one’s vote, by category or issue, to those they trust more to make some decisions) there is nothing but consent for the status quo in not voting.
What about refferenda? they are direct democracy.
replying to UCT1 @125
The central tabulators are programmed to allocate the votes by percentages.
The winning candidates gets a certain percentage, the runner up gets a lower percentage, and any votes remaining are apportioned among the third party candidates. Since most US votes are unverifiable, most people can know who they voted for, but cannot know who their vote was counted for.
The reason for percentages is that so that no matter how many people vote, the proportions will remain the same.
Ralph Nader was honest enough to admit that it was impossible for him to have gotten as many votes as he did in a district where he had no known supporters. Sometimes the central calculators have to move votes from a major candidate to a third party candidate to make the percentages come out right.
Why vote third party when you can just let the central tabulators do it for you?
The government does not need your help towards it’s delegitimation.
As long as the money calls the tune, and kleptocracy is allowed to prevail, the state is not legitimate.
When the majority don’t vote, the state is already illegitimate.
You don’t have to feel you are contributing to it’s legitimacy unless you want to, your refusing to give up the right to vote does not change a thing outside of your own head.
You have the right to feel however you want about it, no one else cares.
A wildcat general strike on election day?
That may well be better than voting for a nonconglomerate candidate, but you could do both.
No nonclomerate candidate for you? or your area? consider running!
Just looked up the book on Amazon. It was published in April 1991. Apartheid didn’t end for years after that, and blacks didn’t have the vote until 1994. I have seen a reference to a boycott of an election in 1983, by colored and Indan South Africans, after some interim measures had given them the vote. But that hardly marked the end of apartheid, if that’s the election to which you are refering.
I don’t have a credibility problem, marym.
I have no credibility.
I’m not an academic, a journalist, a government official, or other person of authority. I have no credentials, nor do I want any.
All I have is logic and common sense. You can respect that or you can respect authority. The choice is up to you. If you respect authority, nothing in the world will ever convince you to stop voting people into positions of authority, because without them you’d have nothing to believe in and respect.
A respect for authority is necessary to make good people do evil things, as Philip Zimbardo explains in his book, The Lucifer Effect. Respect for authority makes some people perpetrate evil and makes others submit to evil. It can make otherwise sane people become a danger to themselves and others.
I’m an anarchist. I don’t expect to have any credibility among statists, certainly not the sort of credibility that proven liars like major political candidates and elected officials have. If that ever happened to me, I’d probably join econobuzz in gargling with drano.
Third-parties have absolutely NO chance of winning. If I’m not mistaken, all the third-party candidates put together in 2008 only got barely 1% of the vote. The entire system is completely corrupt. I, for one, don’t want to elect anyone to represent me as part of this criminal empire. We need to work to bring the empire down, not join it! The U.S. is the most powerful evil empire the world has ever seen. The Soviet Union was an angel, or at least merely an amateur, at the game of empire in comparison to the U.S. I will do everything I can to NOT be complicit in its crimes. Loudly and proudly boycotting the election is the least one can do.
I don’t know much about anarchism, but I wouldn’t have thought it was incompatible with facts.
Yes, that’s the election, and it is on page 330 of that book. It happened in 1983. I never said it marked the end of apartheid. I said it marked the beginning of the delegitimization of the apartheid regime.
Delegitimizing a government doesn’t oust it or overthrow it. All it accomplishes is demonstrating to the world that the government no longer has the consent of the governed. That can lead to changes that unending violence can never accomplish. Once people demonstrate clearly by not voting that a government does not represent them, it can no longer claim to be a legitimate government.
Once that is accomplished, other governments which had been supporting it because of its claim to be a legitimate government, no longer have that excuse. It didn’t happen overnight, but that’s what happened in South Africa.
The United States, the world’s biggest military superpower, has installed and supported many illegitimate governments. In so doing, it has lost credibility in much of the world. Changes will only come when the US government loses credibility here at home. Right now there are many US citizens who see nothing at all strange about the US sending our troops to die fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries, but being openly allied with Al Qaeda in Syria. People who trust the government to do what is right, never question whether what the government does makes sense or can be considered sane.
But why bother with me? I’m not an authority and, as you pointed out and I acknowledged, I have no credibility. You want to listen to people with authority and credibility, not to me.
It is a myth that the majority does not vote! Especially once you factor in non-eligible voters such as felons, non-citizens, the mentally incompetent, etc., you will find that virtually EVERY SINGLE presidential election since 1828 (since data has been collected) has had a majority of eligible citizens voting. Check it out on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
For all of you who still have faith in the system, George Carlin might set you straight:
http://youtu.be/HeMGqTwWA6U
It sounds like an interesting book, and I’m going to read it. But the government of South Africa never had the consent of the governed, because only a very small minority of the governed (white people) had the vote, and even in 1983 black people, the vast majority, didn’t have the vote.
There’s a difference between being an authority and trying to back up one’s opinions with facts. Especially if one wants to lead people in a movement for change which may involve repression, deprivation, or other dangers along the way. I mean, isn’t that why Al Gore invented the Google? :)
I agree with you.
See? We can agree on some things.
This diary and many of the comments just proves to be that the universe is perverse.
“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor and, when I die, I expect to find him laughing.”
–Depeche Mode
Anarchism isn’t incompatible with facts, marym. It is incompatible with dogma.
On a less serious note, I’d like to say that Depeche Mode, to this day, remains one of the greatest bands ever!
Whatever you or I or anyone else thinks of Illinois election laws is our dogma. Whether the vote of the woman in the video was illegally discounted is a question of fact.
I have found that anarchists are not immune to dogmatism, but it may be that they are less prone to this disease than are other tendencies within socialism. At one time I leaned heavily toward the anarchist school of thought, but now I like to see myself as a non-partisan socialist.
I’m not trying “to lead people in a movement for change which may involve repression, deprivation, or other dangers along the way,” marym. I’m trying to lead people in a mvoement to change the repression, deprivation, and other dangers that many of us are currently experiencing. I’m sure that those who are benefiting from our oppression, deprivation, and other dangers, such as being routinely killed by police, etc., are worried about losing their privileges, but fewer and fewer of them still have any.
Maybe what I’m trying to say is something like please stop doing unto others before you end up doing it to yourself.
When you entrust to others the power to decide who to kill, you may think that they will never turn that power against you, but you’re gambling. That form of gambling, when played with guns, is called Russian Roulette. Now it’s Iraqis, now Afghans, now Pakistanis, now Yemenis, now Somalians, now Syrians, now Libyans–but it will never be our turn, right? The guns we authorize and pay for will never be used against us, right? Of course not, no more than our government would outsource our jobs. Unthinkable! At least to those with any credibility at all. ;)
I think for the most part people have tried to be civil in this discussion, but I’m done now. Voting for someone who is committed to not doing any of the things you rightly don’t want done is no more complicit in those deeds than refraining from voting for anyone, guaranteeing that someone will be elected who is committed to doing those things.
If you think not voting will “delegitimize the government” or “boycott imperialism” or “bring down the regime” or whatever you or those supporting your position hope to accomplish, and you think this can be done without networks, structures, organization, allliances, and ideas about how and with what to replace it then you would indeed be encouraging people to do something dangerous.
Bullshit.
You agree to consent to be governed by whoever wins the election by living here and not rising up in armed revolt after the election.
Within those constraints, you may choose to vote or you may choose not to vote, but the idea that voting for the loser means that you believe that whoever wins will be suitable to govern the country is asinine. If you thought they were suitable, you’d have voted for them in the first place. Voting for the loser means you voted your choice and they lost. Where do you come up with this shit?
Voting is a chance to add your one vote to try and effect the outcome of an election. Rigged, or not, it’s still your chance to make your statement by casting a vote.
You can decide not to make that statement thinking that by not voting your are making a stronger statement. That’s up to you.
But stop attaching nonsensical meanings and correlations to the act of voting to justify your decision.
Thank you.
I don’t hear you. Where’s the loud part?
You, and the diarist of this thread, are saying that you refuse to be counted and are thusly proud? And that you actually accomplish something by doing nothing?
IMO, the only thing you say by not voting at all is that you don’t care. Maybe it’s just me, but sitting around finding moral justification for sitting on your ass and doing nothing is about as productive as speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I don’t care what chance they have of winning. I vote my conscience and always have.
The loud part comes with the protests and burning of voter registration cards being planned and carried out. I am also outspoken to friends, family, acquaintances, in my blog, and in other internet comments. The ruling class and their politician flunkies, I assure you, will be much distressed if voter turnout drops into a minority for the first time since at least 1828. Mao Zedong said that we (as revolutionaries) should be FOR what our enemies are against and AGAINST what our enemies are for. That is a good measure of how to resist the enemy, at least for starters.
It may very well be that we have quite different objectives. If you feel that the system just needs to be reformed a bit and have no interest in achieving a truly egalitarian society, then by all means I suppose you should vote for the “lesser evil.”
The difference between a boycott and voter suppression is intent, but that does not mean the *result* will be any different.
Just to clarify my earlier comments, believing that a vote boycott is a Rovian wet dream is not the same thing as believing that progressives should vote for Obama. There is a better chance that my progressive voice will be counted if I vote Green rather than boycott.
Thank you, wayoutwest!
RIGHT ON, Prolecenter!
STILL NOT CONVINCED?
At both the DNC and the RNC Theatrical Convention Shows a public “vote” was cast. At each convention a party leader would go up to the podium and direct the audience to say ‘YAY’ if they were in favor of the item or ‘NAY’ if they were opposed. Whichever roar was the loudest indicated the selection of the voters.
However, the Ruling Class had something else in mind.
The teleprompter for each convention had a pre-written text for the speaker of the outcome of the ‘YAY’ or ‘NAY’ vote, which had been entered into the teleprompter prior to the audience’s response.
Watch this very public act of deceit for yourself to see this little scam exposed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmaE2Aez_XY
The Dems were challenged a bit more as the audience didn’t cooperate and so the speaker demanded a ‘do over’ until the audience response matched the pre-determined outcome.
Well, you’re ahead of the game in comparison to a lot of so-called progressives who will still vote for the Democrats despite their continual migration to the right. I would have supported your position just a few years ago.
I might almost be persuaded to vote for a third-party if, instead of voting for one of the half-dozen or so progressive/Left candidates, all these fragmented parties would merge into a Popular Front, so to speak. If the Greens, the Socialist Party-USA, Workers World, the American Federation of Labor, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, etc., would all join together in at least a federation of sorts; then they could decide to run ONE candidate as a Left voting bloc. Then, and only then, might I be persuaded to vote. By the way, this is something that desperately needs to happen in any event to forestall further collapse of the society into barbarism.
Unfortunately, it will likely come to that before it’s all said and done, but it’s hard to ask people to throw their lives away – to take such an extreme risk – as their first act of resistance to the system. Successful armed struggle requires a substantial base of support among the population. We’re just in the early stages of building a culture of resistance and a popular movement. You clearly side with the establishment because you want to see dissenters quickly commit suicide. No, we’re not going to so easily fall into the snares of the enemy. Nice try.
I didn’t ask anyone to do anything. I did, however, address the fallacy behind the other poster’s determination of what constituted consent to be governed.
That you read that as a call to action is ludicrous and your problem, not mine.
.
You are full of shit. Nowhere did I say, or, even imply that. Stop putting words in my mouth.
On the other hand, you seem to think you have a lock on my motives and what I think. Not only that, but you also think that your way is the only way and that by not agreeing with you I am siding with the “establishment”. Your attitude is about as establishment as it gets.
I peg you for a bourgeois. I know your type. I surmise you are engaging in psychological projection. It’s abundantly clear where you’re coming from.
Ah, the old ream of a coalition candidate.
Problem is that you still have to pick a side.
To a great degree the Socialist, Constitution, Libertarian, Green et cetera, platforms, goals, ways of seeing the problem, and solutions, that are almost always mutually exclusive.
These are all choices that are on the ballot in many other countries in one form or another.
In a country that respected real democracy and real power, these choices would be a bare minumum.
Look at any country, the coalition of parties to form a government happens after the election, and the system is called parlimentarian, here is the US.
This is one of the many ways in which a party committed to a full range of options would work to transform our system.
The Green Party and Libertarians, and likely other parties, support getting rid of the Electoral College, of ranked choice voting, like IRV, and requirement that a candidate is supported by a majority, even if noone recieves a majority of first choice votes.
If elected, or not, many nonconglomerate party candidates will drive the conversation towards consideration of more normative, more evolved, democratic and representative governance.
Not taking corporate money is the core of what makes the Green Party work, but opening up the system to other parties is a core value that we take very seriously.
The money may be the straw breaking it’s back, but the US system is an old archaic fossil, that was never intended to be democratic for unpropertied unwhite unmales.
The Libs and Greens worked long and hard (and expensively) together to get to the bottom of Ohio’s 2004 election, the Dems don’t care about their own voters.
Thank you! “I don’t care what chance they have of winning. I vote my conscience and always have.”
I don’t often bring it up, but the real gut-check reason I vote the way I do is because that’s what I believe in.
Always has been, always will be.
You peg, you surmise, and then everything becomes abundantly clear to you. And that’s when you are not spouting cliches, putting words in people’s mouths and just plain making shit up.
I peg you for a wannabe gadfly with zero insight and an inflated ego. I surmise you are engaging in psychological masturbation. And yes, it’s abundantly clear where you are coming from.
You are most welcome.
“Does this also mean that in 2010 the Green Party will field 435 House candidates and 33 Senate candidates? How about state legislative candidates, county commissioners, city councils, and maybe some statewide offices?”
No, it doesn’t mean that.
The green Party runs on people power.
In some places we are strong, and we have record levels of local and county offices, especially in some states.
To have that many candidates, and to get the word out to more than 1/5 of the electorate, we need you! to help support, or run to be, a candidate for legislature.
If you are not hearing about people running for legislative offices then your state GP needs your help.
Esp. if your state is not on this list, http://www.gp.org/states.php b- we need your help.
When there are enough bold and sound individuals who stand forth as candidates and campaign volunteers, then we will have a shot at legislative majorities.
Until then, I guess we should just await that magic moment, while working for Obama?
Real change takes patience and hard work.
The revolution is between your ears and in your hands.
Very well said.
I might add that for those thinking the Democratic party can be changed from within, think again. The Dems do a bullet-proof job of squashing progressive candidates with in the party.
Could not agree more.
The only way to send a clear message that you are unhappy with a single corporate party masquerading as two corporate parties is to vote third party.
How many Americans don’t vote and have not voted, except maybe the first election after they turned 21 or 18? How many never even bothered to register to vote?
The only message they’ve sent so far, if any, is that they are happy with the status quo that they can’t even be arsed to go to the polls. Or that they don’t care what either Party has done or is likely to do.
Thinking anyone will change that by staying home in 2012 is just the latest version of the Emperor’s New Clothes, which were neither new nor clothes.
In most states you will be presented with at least two legalization choices, Lib and Green.
In many states there will be a third, Socialist, or other, or more, and in a 3 states you will have to write them in.
Pretty much any lever you pull for a nonconglomerated party will be for legalization.
The one time I decided to be a one issue, last minute, voter, 1988, I had to do some research very quickly, turned out 7 of 9 choices on the WI ballot were pro legalization (and that was before green was a party).
The Green Party considers legalization and hemp production as core to the Green New Deal, healthy communities, and local economies everywhere.
Is your only choice voting for Obama or not voting at all?
Voting a left third party is a lot clearer message about your dissatisfaction with Obama than is staying away from the polls.
The latter will only be spun as satisfaction with the status quo, or apathy or laziness.
I see you are a new registration and commenter so you may not be aware of The Carnac Rule
What if the delegates who were opposed to the amendment remained silent? Then we would not even know that they opposed the amendment , but had been bulldozed by the Obama people.
That would really have showed the Obama people, right?
Btw, the voice vote required was two thirds, not a simple majority and they waited until it was either very late at night or very early in the morning to take the vote.
Because some people shout louder than others and some do not shout at all, determining when you have a 2/3 vote by voice is almost impossible, unless there are no “nays” at all. But it is crystal clear the Obama people never got a two thirds vote.
The guy who claimed the amendment had carried by voice vote should never hold office again, despite his adorable daughter, but he will.
Cannabis Hemp actually is a way to get this paradigm overturned, and is meeting with a lot more success these days than the decades-old election boycott is.
Cannabis has the highest biomass per acre of any plant: It produces clean energy much cheaper than the dirty energy from Oil/Coal/Gas/Nukes.
If a person votes at all in hopes of affecting this country’s future, the Marijuana question is most important, then the Presidency.
We don’t have 40 years, the Air Force’s micro drone swarms are set to come online before 2015, and you don’t want to know where I see that going (think structural interiors, think nano, think network, think medical sensors and devices, think data mining plus an end to privacy unless we learn to share our data intelligently). Autonomy, or a reduction in the number of human pilots per platform, is a primary near term goal, as is larger, smaller, and nested drones.
Realize that well before 40 years we will have amatuers crunching real time comprehensive numbers replacing laboratory experiments, or else have our minds be subsumed in the conglomeration of corporations and nano devices. Every concievable data point monitored, a complete real time model of the real world will soon be available, the question is to whom.
An alteranative must be in place when we learn to think, speak, and get our information, for ourselves, together. It takes years to build a viable party without corporate sponsorship, but it’s the only way to oppose conglomeration from too big to fail to too big to survive.
We are not going away, the Green Party awaits only enough participation to be more useful, the ballot lines and solidarity are there. If you agree with the US majority on any number of issues, if a sustainable caring human centered culture matters to you, the Green Party is your party.
In many places the revolution is here now, and many of them have Green Party elected officials helping lead the way.
Humanity has weathered many storms by being the masters of adaption, we will not let our own cultural machinery stand in the way of our survival much longer. Face it, the imaginary monsters don’t actually run the world, yet.
Odds are the world “controlled” by legal fictions of persons will not last until they actually develop the capacity to think and act for themselves… but don’t wait to hold your breath for it.
We’re in it for the long haul @ jillstein.org & gp.org
Almost every party is pro-legalization and pro hemp.
This issue is also important because opposition of it is a good indicator of a pro conglomeration party.
Vote for humans not bank accounts, vote for a real party not fronting, vote for anyone but the duopoly.
“the Democrat Party is where dreams go to die”, David Cobb, GPUS Pres candidate 2008, who put much time and energy into finding it out for himself, is fond of saying.
So, 3rd party can’t win, so you will stay home?
How is that a win?
If you are going to take a loss, try voting for something.
There’s lots to choose from, even though I’d say we’re in a post ideology age*, if you can’t find something in this list to vote FOR, either you’re not even trying, or you need to help start a better party:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States
* (In that US terminology common usages make political ideology useless and/or wake up to the Anthropocene, we are all now in triage, no time for philosophy, just causes and effects.)
Heh. I was quoting prolecenter @ 198 for an intended reply and goofed.
See timesthree @ 215 for my answer to his quote :)
Anarchism precedes Socialism, it is not a part of it, unless you count being antecedant.
Anarch should not be an ism, and it should be taken most literally.
Anti-Hierarch is what it means, and the only way to practice that is direct political cultural and economoic democracy.
To organize is to anarch, chaos is proarchy.
To anarch is to attempt your best to share decision making and discussion (with all).
But then I’m an ardent anti-ism-ist, consider expertisism one our greatest woes, and expect everyone to learn and think for themselves on solid reasoned scientifically literate foundations even in a post-ideology, post-literate world; so my rules do not apply to everyone, and I think any really comprehensive and deep spiritual, cultural, economic, or political practice or belief should be unique to one individual’s path.
Hence, I anarch, and expect to think I’m doing it better than you, and I expect you to feel the same, and I expect the magic lies in the fact that I know I’m wrong.
“Wisdom knows not” Lao Tzu.
Anarching is incompatible with dogma, ism implies dogma.
Anarchism should be incompatible with dogma, but to too many it is about what dogma should be, so it becomes dogma.
What is an anarchist is the most debatable theoretical question IMAO.
Jill represents an unprecedented leap in party building, ballot attainment, and media coverage for the GP, despite valient efforts on the part of David Cobb and Cynthia McKinney.
She also represents a leap in use of social media, the web, and fund raising.
Jill Stein is proof that the patience of our stalwarts is being rewarded.
She is not just a singularly exceptional candidate and speaker, she is an MD, she cares about and relates to everyone, and she’s exceptional at framing problems and solutions in simple clear terms.
Moreover, she is being witness in a very visceral way to a fundamental shifting of the sands of opinion and awareness to match the recent crossing of so many very critical tipping points, which is way more than any one individual can compete with.
This is the time when it is still critical to get the word out, any party that makes 5% of the vote gets Federal matching funds, and that is enough to ensure everyone hears about them next presidential cycle.
I confess, I knew the majority votes in presidential years, but very seldom does the majority come to the polls on the “off” years.
Additionally, participation is dropping, and may well be at record lows this Fall.
Because my vote is recorded on paper and counted by humans?
While I cannot garuntee your unconglomerated party vote will be counted, I know that mine will be.
please! steal this idea
I was written open source, and I’ll die open source.
Seems you’re assuming that whether I vote or not affects my disrespect for, or feelings of credibility for, the US government, when, in fact my vote has no impact on the legitimacy of the US government, which, in my mind, is mainly based on the pentagon’s ability to foist illegitimate governments on countries around the world; which “legitimacy” i proudly loudly protest.
Will staying home on election day undermine the military supremacy of the US Governement? I doubt it.
Other than that, the “legitimacy” effect so widely discussed here is solely between your own ears, and there are more important aspects to the struggle that are real.
The most important aspects of revolution are all in your own head, but unless they are based on observable reality and reasoned cause and effect, they matter not at all.
Stay home on election day to continue your plot to assist electronic direct democracy peoples’ assemblies in taking over the world? that I support, if you really don’t feel you can spare the time.
But stay home and watch the election returns on TV? pathetic.
So, by not voting you defeat torture, surveilliance and the practise of death squads by remote control?
Or, do you vote to bring them into more use domestically?
“Our” state is the perfection of state terror worldwide, and you expect your not voting to change that because you are not expressing your consent? Your not voting is what the machine wants, the definition of consent unless the struggle is furthered by your being underground (fighting the war to end all wars?).
The power to prop up a government is being practiced right here and now, staying home just keeps you from some of the terror of becoming a target, and it might help you feel the need to organize an alternative, but it accomplishes nothing outside of your own noggin.
After reading all of these posts, I discovered how easily I am swayed. “To vote, or not to vote; that is the question”? “She loves me, she loves me not”. I have to get up and get dressed to go to the polls if I vote. I can stay home, not get dressed and listen to music if I don’t vote. What earth shattering decisions I have to make.
If a pollster called and asked who I was going to vote for, I would tell him “Obama”. There is no way I’m going to give the “nutbags” any satisfaction by telling them I’m not going to vote. How many Democrats will do likewise? That’s what’s skewing the polls.
Your vote will be recorded on paper and counted by humans. Then it, along with the votes from other districts, will probably be sent to a company in Spain for a final count:
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/04/spanish-company-known-as-scytl-will-be.html
http://www.westernjournalism.com/spanish-company-will-count-american-votes-overseas-in-november/
But whatever they say the results are, since there is no way to verify it, you’ll believe it if you want to believe it. That’s why many people call our electoral system “faith-based elections.”
You are certainly entitled to your beliefs, whether it is that the earth is flat, that space aliens will save us, or that your vote is counted. I know of very few instances where being presented with the facts has ever changed anyone’s belief.
As I’m not interested in staged propaganda or distractions, I haven’t owned a TV in decades.
I have a Twitter account where I follow activists in or from Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, England, South Africa, Mexico, Venezuela, and many other countries. I unfollow anyone who isn’t involved in the global struggle against capitalist imperialism or who wastes my time talking about celebrities and political puppets.
So, for many, the reason for voting in an election where, no matter who wins, the result is preordained to be more murders by drone bombs of innocent kids, is so that the Green Party can get federal funding and, perhaps, after a few decades, if the economy doesn’t collapse and the planet is still here, be able to field more candidates?
Nice trade-off, but it doesn’t sound very green to me.
Crane-Station, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. I am utterly amazed that anyone would think boycotting the vote is a good idea. And this diarist’s proposal is even worse, because she is trying to persuade progressives to boycott the vote. That is a Republican’s wet dream. I’m glad you spoke up.
What does it say about people when they know that no matter who they vote for and no matter who wins, the result of an election will be more wars of aggression based on lies, but they vote anyway?
It says that they don’t care. That they’re apathetic.
Many of these same people, if they knew that no matter who they voted for and no matter who won, the result of an election would be the murder of innocent kittens and puppies, would refuse to vote. They care about kittens and puppies, they just don’t care about other people.
And they have a point. Most kittens and puppies are a lot nicer and more caring than voters.
“It may very well be that we have quite different objectives. If you feel that the system just needs to be reformed a bit and have no interest in achieving a truly egalitarian society, then by all means I suppose you should vote for the “lesser evil.””
LOL. If you had read any of my posts over the past couple of years, you’d know better than to think that of me. David Seaton and many other Obama supporters can certainly attest to that.
I’m an out and out Socialist, dude. Stewart Alexander of the Socialist Party USA is on the ballot in Ohio and I will be voting for him. Some of the other posters I see the boycott-the-vote crowd engaging with here are voting for Jill Stein. I don’t have a problem with them, either.
As far as I’m concerned, the Democratic Party must be destroyed. And I was a lifelong Democrat until the 1990′s. The most effective way to do that peacefully is to vote third party.
You’re going to burn voter registration cards to protest the system? All-righty then. Oh, that’ll make the PTB quiver in fear, all right. They’ll quiver so much they’ll laugh their asses off if they deign to even notice you.
You want effective action? A general strike is effective action. A homeowner boycott of their mortgage payments is effective action. Rent strikes are effective actions. Credit card payment boycotts are effective actions. All of those things hit the ruling class where it really hurts them. Americans may not be ready to take such actions yet, but what you propose will accomplish far less, IMHO, than getting off your ass and voting third party.
I don’t think our objectives are all that different, so I’ll just agree to disagree on tactics and let it go. Have a nice day.
Your analysis of the Egyptian election causes me to doubt your motivation and your claims. It is seriously flawed.
The Egyptian election is a very good case in point.
Probably Egyptians voted a very great deal ‘on faith.’ By that I mean that they surely had great doubts themselves about whether their individual votes would be counted properly, whether their choice would be effective – all the doubts we now have as US citizens they surely have had.
If you research what happened after the election, you find that there were ups and downs in the power struggle, and it is still a work in progress, but by and large the original protesters have won the day, and not the army as you suggest, mymarkx.
Your arguments seem to boil down to ‘no government’ is better than a flawed government. I seriously doubt this claim.
In 2010 it made sense to me to register a no vote – by which I mean, those of us who did not vote then registered our disappointment with the Democratic Party, whom we had supported in droves when we thought Obama was our progressive candidate. This was indeed sending a message then, but we did that, we withdrew our support visibly and actually. That was Part One.
I don’t believe Part Two is to do the same thing again. But there should be, for our third party vote to be effective, some exit polling or parallel voting procedure (green dye?) that will enable us to crosscheck and verify at the polls that we did vote as we intended to vote – and surely that is possible for an attempted verification as voting day comes around – it is that important. I live in a small community; it wouldn’t be hard to verify the votes for Jill Stein here. And if here, why not in other precincts as well?
If you still want to boycott, for that to be effective you will have to do the same thing. And if your ‘noncandidates’ win – what then is your strategy? What comes next?
Tearing things down is easy; Bombing Baghdad showed us that. It’s building that’s hard. Egypt has begun the process of building and it is a very interesting scenario over there, not cut and dried degeneration as mymarkx has said.
They voted.
No one who wants change has a clue as to what to do. Discussions are good, but arguments are bad. Are we all on the same side or not? What is our desired outcome? Does anyone believe Obama is going to deliver anything different. Our options are chocolate or vanilla, no strawberry. Take it or leave it.
I forgot to tell you, “The chocolate is fake”.
The occupation is here, now, we are occupied, that is the message of OWS. You think you’ll end the occupation, the hate, the psychosis, the fanatical suspension of disbelief that have brought us here?
Even if you plan to use other means to register your voice, registering a choice for Bozo the Clown (who used to run and get lot’s of votes), says a lot more, even though the guy who used to run died, than not voting.
It’s not like there are fewer solutions than problems, but you have to seek to find them, it’s not like protest that gets more ignored by media the more widespread it gets.
If you are building direct democracy and local community, programming the open source self hosted wireless network,
building an alternate government, working on wildcat general strikes of solidarity, helping people stay in illegally foreclosed homes, and working to protect local control of public water, clean water and air, and critical economic and human infrastructure, starting local currency and slow money investment movements, and keeping us abreast of the latest unimaginably disastrous results of the grand experiment we are performing on this planet, and so much more that today’s heroes and warriors are doing daily…
You still have a chance to spend an hour or so once every four years to try to state your goals by testing the current state of (in)accuracy of the most popular poll we currently “participate” in in this otherwise occupied, lied, conglomerating, and largely too top heavy not to fail, supposed democracy of a supposed republic, a member of a supposedly civil(ized) culture of delusion.
The imaginary monsters aren’t real yet, you still get to act as if they don’t exist. Drop out, turn on, but how hard is it to vote?
If you can demonstrate power, speach, representation, obstruction, a communication of your “deligitimization” more effective than writing in Bozo, or any lever that will move the center back towards sanity, resulting from not voting, I will join you.
Until then I will tend to lump you in with the apathetic, the lazy, the uninformed, and others who can’t even be bothered to pull a lever, just to show they are paying some attention, much less organize around taking a more important poll.
If the majority only knew how much they agree with themselves, then we can see the tipping point, until then every poll helps, especially the one that people most like to discuss or participate i.
I will not sit and wait for direct democracy, I will work towards it, and for me that means voting gp.org, jillstein.org, & wigp.org.
I know the people that count and publish my vote, that’s as close to having something to base my faith on as it gets, besides being one of them.
Your faith that not voting sends a clear message all by itself is a bit wispy in comparison.
If I felt a need, I could poll my community for Jill Stein votes and check the count, but it seems navel contemplation would be more productive.
pretty much, but, we don’t have decades, the micro drone swarms come online by 2015. In decades the machines will be more humane than we are, and plural will no longer apply at current rates.
One of the driving forces towards the nanobots is “lab an a chip”, and medical delivery devices, and most ways we have found to read brain states are actually read/write.
Whoever is in charge in a couple of decades will live in a programmable environment, where murder can be outlawed via physical law, simply by making it physically impossible within the built/scanned/occupied environment.
Go ahead, stay home, that’ll bring the most immediate results in the triage the Earth has become.
Here’s somethings you can do right now that speaks far clearer and louder than talking about not voting:
Open the Debates: Demand inclusion of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson!
my.firedoglake.com/scottmclarty/2012/09/20/open-the-debates-demand-inclusion-of-jill-stein-and-gary-johnson/
There is one country that manufactures open source polling machines that yeild a public count, a public audit, and paper receipts for each voter that can also be verified and recounted.
The newest model must verify a thumbr print’s uniqueness before each vote cast, which makes it almost hack proof, even the administrators cannot enter more than one vote.
One despotic ruler had the money to spare for democracy, now the machines are selling like hotcakes.
miamiherald.com/2012/09/21/3013929_carter-states-that-the-election.html
venezuela-us.org/2012/08/13/carter-center-venezuelan-electoral-system-among-the-most-trusted-in-the-world/
Do what you can to get these machines installed where you vote:
http://www.smartmatic.com/solutions/electoral-solutions/view/article/electronic-voting/#.UF5XTlbkBGc
That damned Hugo! He’s gonna drive Pat Robertson crazy.
(Deranged cackles.)
Thanks Monte.
Monte writes, “I know the people that count and publish my vote…”
No, you don’t know the people who will count your vote, you only know some of the people who will send their local results to be tallied for a final count by corporate-owned computers in Spain (see my comment @ 253 for links). But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were on first name terms with some of the people who will publish your vote–people on the boards of directors of the big defense contractors that own the media that will announce the unverifiable results.
It took more than verifiable voting machines to make Venezuela’s elections more than the total waste of time that US “elections” are. Even before their revolution, they were allowed to vote directly for President and Vice-President, their votes were verifiable, and no elections officials, political party leadership or super-delegates, Electoral College, government legislative body, or court had the power to overrule the popular vote. In the US, hone of these conditions apply. Furthermore, if a candidate who wins the popular vote decides to concede before the votes can be counted, as John Kerry did, Venezuela would hold a new election instead of installing the losing candidate as President. Although they were ruled by an oligarchy, as we are, their oligarchy had not written a Constitution to ensure that those who owned the country, the 1%, would always rule the country the way that the 39 plutocrats who signed the US Constitution did.
I was astonished to learn that Venezuela had brought about real change by voting, so I asked my friend in Caracas to explain to me how that was possible. It was a totally different situation, where even their pre-revolutionary Constitution required that votes be counted, be verifiable, and be the final say in elections. Let me know how you plan to change our Constitution by voting so that those conditions could happen here. You’re not even allowed to vote on the Constitution or even on Amendments, you have to elect representatives or delegates to do it for you, and they may not follow your wishes. In Iceland they’re crowd-sourcing their new Constitution and allowing everyone to provide input and to vote directly on what will be adopted.
You cannot bring about honest elections by voting in corrupt elections. If you’re willing to vote in corrupt elections, the government knows it doesn’t have to allow you honest elections because you’re too apathetic to care–you’ll vote anyway.
The things you mention, Monte, “building direct democracy and local community, programming the open source self hosted wireless network,
building an alternate government, working on wildcat general strikes of solidarity, helping people stay in illegally foreclosed homes, and working to protect local control of public water, clean water and air, and critical economic and human infrastructure, starting local currency and slow money investment movements, and keeping us abreast of the latest unimaginably disastrous results of the grand experiment we are performing on this planet…” are all important and I have been and still am participating in many of them. They are all part of what world-renowned peace activist S. Brian Willson calls noncompliance.
But another essential part of noncompliance is not voting. Here’s why:
Suppose you and your family, friends, and neighbors get together and plant an urban garden to provide your community with healthy, organic food. But you all vote in the 1012 election because you want the current government to continue in power, albeit with some reforms. So, no matter who wins the “election,” you’ll have voted your consent to let local and federal government make certain important decisions, such as whether or not to extend the licenses of aging and unsafe nuclear power plants, or to allow nearby petroleum or chemical refineries to continue in operation. What that means is that eventually there will be an explosion or a meltdown, and even if you survive, the food in your organic garden will be inedible.
You don’t build direct democracy by voting for centralized representative government. You have to choose which direction you wish to go. Either you want self-governance, or you are willing to vote for governance by representatives. You can’t go north and south at the same time. That’s not a diversity of tactics, that’s defeating your own purpose. Voting to elect other people to make decisions for you is antithetical to direct democracy.
It is all well and good to call for a general strike, a tax boycott, and other means of noncompliance, but many people with kids to feed won’t be willing to risk their jobs and freedom. But there is one form of noncompliance that everyone can do with no risk whatsoever–it is completely legal, totally nonviolent, and does not consent to allowing the government to determine what we may and may not do. It’s called an election boycott and is accomplished by not voting.
If you think you can build an alternate government while continuing to vote for this one, you’re wrong. The first step to regaining our power is to stop giving it away. Don’t vote! Boycott 2012.