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My Reply to Senator Kerry
Submitted by Ginny Ross - DFO on December 5, 2005 - 4:16pm
Senator Kerry,
No offense, but don't write to me anymore. Do not write because I will not lift a finger to respond to your requests in any way. That is, unless you come out as the leader you are supposed to be on the single issue in which you must redeem yourself:
election reform.
You must lay everything on the line and focus all your effort and time on the one thing you can bring unique attention to:
election reform.
Specifically, you should work day and night to end the use of trade secret software in machines that are responsible for counting over 80% of the votes cast in this country.
After three appallingly inconclusive, corrupt and outrageous national elections, our democracy is now a 'demockery'. You hold the majority of the blame for Bush's re-selection in 2004 because you capitulated without demanding a full counting of the vote in Ohio as you promised you would. Not only did this leave us with no basis for confidence whatsoever in the announced election result in Ohio, you also wasted a colossally important opportunity to expose the utter disgrace and disaster that is our electoral system.
By wasting this opportunity, you erred gravely. You should admit it. In fact you let us down so severely that in all the activist circles I am involved in, we laugh out loud whenever we hear that you are talking about running for national office again.
There is only one course left for you. You should come out right now, one year after the fact, with a comprehensive, hour long apology to the nation for not fighting back against the crime against our democracy that occured late on election night. You should take responsibility for being such a disgrace and a coward when many of us worked so hard for you and gave you our trust. After acknowledging your misjudgment, you should then be a leader in the charge, without any concern whatsoever for your political career (which ended, in case you were wondering, when you capitulated on election night) and you should from this day forward fight against the complete subversion of our democracy occuring right before our eyes as vote counting is transferred from the public domain to the locked and secret hard drives of private corporatations. You found this kind of courage when you fought BCCI, and you can find it again.
Do it.
Until you do, don't ever write to me again.
Sincerely,
Virginia L. Ross, Attorney
Kerry Election Protection Volunteer
Oregon Voter Rights Coalition
Democracy for Oregon
Former 1LT, Oregon Nat'l Guard
Right on, Ginny!
I totally agree with all of this. I'm going to send the Senator a letter with substantially this same argument and call to action. Thanks!
Snail mail address?
Hear, hear! It would be great if we could send a snail mail letter, would his DC office be the best address?
I too am sick and tired of Kerry posturing as a "leader" and constantly demanding money--didn't he already have a bunch of our money left over from the election?
He doesn't have to say the election was "stolen"--that "S word" seems to freak out everyone inside the beltway. But he does have an obligation to stand up and demand an end to privately (ie Republican) controlled election software and vote counting. We all must start bombarding our elected representatives and the media demanding clean and reliable elections.
D.C.
Typically on items regarding legislation and such, it's best to write to the D.C. office. The local offices mainly deal with constituent issues like problems with Social Security. Letters on legislation and the like are usually passed along to the D.C. office, which means it takes longer to get to the people who actually handle those items.
Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Jenni Simonis
Will respond in kind
Thanks for the info, Jenni. If Kerry has the gall to write me a fundraising letter I will put this piece of my mind on a piece of paper and put it in those little envelopes they think we will put money in. But when they send me an email solicitation, I am going to shoot my thoughts right back to the email reply address. As many times as it takes until they stop emailing me or they actually do something. (Just think if we all did this at once?)
....I have a horrible feeling we even need to do this with Dean and the DNC as S. Pitcairn is suggesting. I hope we don't have to resort to drastic measures but it is looking like it.
Yea...
I don't even read Kerry's e-mails anymore. Until he shows that he actually has a backbone, I don't want anything to do with him. That's why I was so mad at Edward Kennedy saying already that he is supporting Kerry for President again. I'll never vote for him for anything again.
And yea, I'm worried that we need to do it with the DNC as well. I think sometimes Dean is watered down by other leaders within the Party. We still need more changes in the DNC Committee people.
Jenni Simonis
Important Read...
We are in for the fight of our lives to get and keep a truly democratic voting system. It is already clear that pressure on voting officials will not be enough. The revolving door transforming election officials into corporate voting machine lobbyists, and vice versa, has never twirled faster. Only a grassroots effort of the type used to alert the public to the lies behind the war in Iraq will do the job. With two-thirds of the American people finally realizing that George W. Bush is a liar, now is the time to educate the public about e-voting. One voting activist, Joan Brunwasser, has actually created a lending library to provide the movie free of charge to anyone who wants to have a house party, speak to a group, or -- like me -- write an article on the subject of e-voting.
Why not host a party showing Invisible Ballots? You couldn't do anything more important right now.
Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at: plgoldsmith@optonline.net
Source: Dissident Voice:
http://dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Goldsmith1128.htm