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Democracy on Trial!
The world will watch America’s polls

“President George W. Bush himself declared, ‘All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected.’ As members of a prosperous democratic society, U.S. citizens innately believe that democracy would be good for Iraqis too. The most optimistic have even offered a vision of a future Iraq as a ‘City on the Hill’ for the Arab world that would inspire democracy throughout the Middle East and beyond. Critics often conjure a vision of an Iraq beset by civil strife with rival communities seeking revenge on one another while neighboring armies trample the country. Finally, they assert that the United States is too fickle, and the Iraqis too hostile, to give democracy the time it would need to grow and bear fruit.
“The doubters do not so much question the desirability of democracy in Iraq as they do its feasibility. Claiming that building democracy in Iraq after the U.S.-led war to depose Saddam would be easy or certain—let alone that doing so might solve all of the problems of the Middle East overnight—would be foolish.” The foregoing text (lifted from The Brookings Institution’s quarterly report in the summer of 2003), leaves a very pertinent question that’s begging to be asked: How can America, with it’s history of “dirty tricks” politics hope to spread democracy throughout the world? It becomes even more ironic, when one reads the Oct. 17, 2004 Houston Chronicle article (“An army of lawyers stands by for Nov. 2”), at a time when the U. S. Army is assuring that democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq will be fair.

The article asserts: “This time, armies of partisan attorneys trained in local election law will be in every closely contested state in the country. Conventional wisdom dictates that where lawyers gather lawsuits follow, and any state where the vote is close could be ‘this year’s Florida.” Conversely, Thomas Jefferson, one of our democracy’s founding father warned, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And, for sure, the world will be watching America’s polls to see whether, or not, the world’s greatest democracy will practice what it preaches. And African American News & Issues (as Black America’s watcher on the wall) must share an Oct. 25, 2003 why-war.com article, that alleges, “In the 2000 elections, George W. Bush stole the presidency by combining various forms of voter fraud, not all of which could be concealed from the American public.
“The month-long battle in Dade County ended with open slaughter of the democratic process, and the occupation of the county by a regime of what may be accurately described as corporate fascists.” The website, also insists that Gov. Jeb Bush (an adherent of “My Brother’s Keeper”), presents a clear and present danger for Florida’s voters, in spite of improved technology and intense scrutiny. Meanwhile, the inflammatory article further suggests: "Squadrons of shiny new Touch Screen Trojan horses are being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are told, to make voting easier or more accurate, or to help disabled people vote privately, or to save America from the dangers of hanging chad and butterfly ballots — no. The real reason America is being flooded with billions of dollars worth of paperless computerized voting machines is so that no one will ever again be able to prove vote fraud."
Then again, voter fraud and “dirty tricks” politics are nothing new in the land of the free. History records, “Until the 1840s dirty tricks had been all but unknown in American politics. The first presidential election in which dirty tricks were played was in 1844. One involved a newspaper story put out by the boss of the Whigs, Thurlow Weed. He alleged that a slaveholder named Roorback came across some of Democrat James Polk's slaves cruelly branded with Polk's initials--proof allegedly that Polk had sold slaves to raise money for his campaign. It was a lie. Still another involved the printing up of phony ballots; the ballots mixed up the names of Democratic and Whig electors, which was intended to confuse voters. The first election in which a dirty trick apparently altered the outcome was in 1888.
“Grover Cleveland was running for re-election against Republican Benjamin Harrison, grandson of Tippecanoe. Cleveland already was having problems because he had taken a strong position against a high tariff, weakening his support in the business community. Just two and half months before the election, Republican senators robbed him of the one victory he'd had in foreign affairs, by voting against a treaty he'd signed with Canada (the Bayard-Chamberlain Treaty) that settled a long simmering dispute over fishing rights, a dispute that had become so heated the Canadians had begun seizing American sailing ships. After the Civil War dirty tricks became nastier and more insidious.” Space won’t allow a full discourse on Dirty Tricks Politics, but we’re sure you get the message.
Meanwhile, all eyes will be on Florida.
And well they should be, insofar as recent as Oct. 15, 2004 an E-voting Machine crashed. Critics of paperless voting systems used in 15 Florida counties said the incident demonstrates their pleas for a system that includes printers on every touch-screen and produces paper records of every ballot cast. Lest we forget, four powerful hurricanes devastated Florida counties in succession a few months ago. Acts of providence notwithstanding, can America trust the Florida’s E-voting Machines? For sure, America can’t afford to have another questionable presidential election. Especially when America is trying to sell Middle East nation’s democracy, although American voter’s apathy is at an all time high. Over the past fifty years, less than half of all eligible voters went to the polls, sometimes less than 25%.
“However, far more astounding is that those who voted rarely bothered to wonder if their vote was counted accurately. Thus, why-war.com concludes: “A vote cast but not counted is meaningless. The only way to know that your vote is properly counted is to watch the entire counting process, which is why election law requires an open, public vote count, and makes secret ballot counting illegal. However, most voters have eagerly abdicated the responsibility of overseeing their vote count to a handful of extremely dubious ‘experts’ and ‘officials.’ Human nature is largely to blame.”

Translation: We (Political astute American voters of all races) must keep a calloused eye on the GOP, that has proven that it will do anything necessary to stay in power. Given that democracy will definitely be on trial and the whole world will be poll watching on Nov. 2, 2004.