Cameron Kerry on Counting Every Vote
Carmeron Kerry has an op-ed in today's Boston Globe. He notes that the facts of the election have not changed from the time of his brother's concession, with the provissional and uncounted ballots being insufficient to change the result. However, there remain many questions which will continue to be examined:
John Kerry, the Election Protection Coalition, and the Democratic National Committee will document inequities, voter suppression, and irregularities and continue the fight to reform the voting process. It is time to make vote suppression a violation of civil rights laws and adopt national standards that ensure that all voters have equal access to voting machines and ballots without the kinds of technical obstacles that call to mind Jim Crow laws. And trust in the system requires that it be transparent; whether inside local election board offices or inside the code of electronic voting machines, the counting of votes has to be public and nonpartisan.Next time the electoral votes are tallied, every American citizen should be able to know that his or vote has counted.
posted by Ron Chusid at 7:21 AM
5 Comments:
Kerry didn't take part today as he is not in the country.
If he was here, one more vote would not have mattered. Ohio is just one small of the fight for election reform. Actually, those who concentrated so much on Ohio might have made the actual fight more difficult by identifying voter reform with a Quixotic battle to overturn an election as opposed to being a battle for principles which could obtain bipartisan support.
I'd much rather see Kerry in Iraq as he could be more useful in opposing Bush's foreign policy. Remaining here would not have accomplished anything.
I agree Ron, and would add the following.
Debating the electoral results in Ohio is procedural only. It won't change a thing as the GOP has enough support to vote Bush in regardless
If Kerry was there the media focus would be on him not voter reform, which is what all dems agreed it should be about. Kerry's presence would play like democratic sour grapes and only give the GOP attack machine more fodder.
As Kerry stated, having the debate is important and will help the Democratic cause as Kerry has promised to introduce legislation to mandate federal election standards. He wants the focus on REAL voter reform.
Also, Kerry asked his supporters to contact GOP Majority leaders who are responsible for allowing bills to be voted on. Without hearing from voters the bill won't be brought to the floor.
That's an important step that no ammount of venting at today's electoral debate will bring about.
Think long term, not 24 hours.
IFK Editor
www.independentsforkerry.org
I agree Ron, and would add the following.
Debating the electoral results in Ohio is procedural only. It won't change a thing as the GOP has enough support to vote Bush in regardless
If Kerry was there the media focus would be on him not voter reform, which is what all dems agreed it should be about. Kerry's presence would play like democratic sour grapes and only give the GOP attack machine more fodder.
As Kerry stated, having the debate is important and will help the Democratic cause as Kerry has promised to introduce legislation to mandate federal election standards. He wants the focus on REAL voter reform.
Also, Kerry asked his supporters to contact GOP Majority leaders who are responsible for allowing bills to be voted on. Without hearing from voters the bill won't be brought to the floor.
That's an important step that no ammount of venting at today's electoral debate will bring about.
Think long term, not 24 hours.
IFK Editor
www.independentsforkerry.org
I agree that it might have been more difficult to proceed with today's protest if Kerry was there. I suspect he intentionally did not want to be present so that such an effort could proceed on its own merits without being distracted by personal coverage of Kerry.
The point is that yesterday was not the way to judge Kerry's actions on election reform. He has already had a team of lawyers in to investigate, and we will hear more from him in the future. However, strategically this is best done as something totally separate from the type of challenge conducted yesterday.
While I sympathized with them and wished them well, yesterday was a side show which may have done more harm than good, and Kerry was very wise to stay away. For example, from today's First Read:
Only time and polling will tell, but we wonder if something happened yesterday beyond Democrats' clear discomfort with the dispute of the results, and with the GOP's arguable overzealousness in rejecting the claims -- that electoral reform moved a notch away from being an issue of concern to the general public, and one step closer to becoming viewed as a partisan Democrat issue touted by liberals and minorities.
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