“Those Ignorant of History…”
A Forward-Looking EON Election Protection Retrospective
“Oppose the will of the people. Impose your will on the people. Never let the people win a single fight.” – A calligraphic note pinned up in a workstation in the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, observed by co-author Brangan.
“Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics…. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.” – Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page - 2014
“Here’s a truth that’s certain to infuriate a lot of people reading this: The evidence that Biden/Harris really lost in 2020 is at least as copious and solid as the evidence that Bush/Cheney really lost in both 2000 and 2004 (and, beyond those two demonstrably fake “wins,” many other, lesser “victories” nationwide).” - Mark Crispin Miller – 2022
By Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle - EON
Past Election Snafus, Steals & Even a Win We’ve Documented
As we approach the impending, important 2022 US midterms with the multiple looming existential threats of economic and ecological chaos, supply chain collapse, food and fuel shortages, the ‘next pandemic,’ transhumanist totalitarian technocracy, and potential nuclear war defining this volitile election season, we feel moved to share some lessons we believe we have learned from decades of involvement with electoral issues.
A chronological playlist of our 57 video reports on election integrity is here for those interested. We’ve peppered the following brief, overview narrative with a few selected links we hope you’ll check out at your convenience. Please feel free to pass on your own selections from this rich list to your personal information networks.
The take-away message of our Election Integrity (EI) work is: On the basis of this video history, let’s all be alert for potential manipulation from any party, domestic or foreign. “Eternal vigilance,” as Jefferson (or someone) said, “is the price of liberty.” Election protection is not ‘treason,’ it’s patriotic.
Documenting Dysfunction
In our 10 years of work in Micronesia we witnessed repeated forced elections aimed at reversing Palau’s historic nuclear free constitution, as well as the assassination of two of the country’s presidents. We documented that decade’s lessons in our two PBS documentaries, Strategic Trust: The Making of Nuclear Free Palau
and Islands on the Edge of Time, as well as in other video and print reports.
As international election observers in the Philippines we reported on the nation’s first electronically-mediated election in The 2007 PHILIPPINES ELECTION: A Fight for Deep Democracy, and captured the nation’s politically tense atmosphere in PEOPLE POWER IN PAMPANGA.
The integrity of that election was so questionable that a subsequent official legislative investigation concluded it had so many flaws that, “It is as if no election was ever held.” (A quote from the final report.)
In our lifetimes in our home country, we have witnessed the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. and others. Subsequently uncovered evidence strongly points to perpetrating factions and actors within the agencies of the US national security complex itself. As David Cobb, the Green Presidential candidate put it in 2004, “The greatest danger to democracy in America is the belief that we have one.”
Sadly, the validity of the announced outcomes of US elections since (at least) the year 2000 are open to legitimate and serious forensic question with one notable exception in 2012 (see below.)
Working with others (as credited in the video), we helped organize the first Bay Area election protection conference. Here are the prophetic presentations from that historic event in an updated post of our report, GOT DEMOCRACY?: Confronting America’s Electoral Crisis.
Moving right along, we chronicled the citizen response to the 2004 election in our next documentary A Little Light’ll Do Ya. We were first honored that it was translated into Urdu and broadcast nationally in Pakistan in 2007. Then we were chagrined when that same year the prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto was assassinated mid-election - showing how common is the challenge to sister and brother democracy advocates around the world, some extremely violent.
Electronic Voting Machines = Exponential Increase in Rigging
The long-established pattern of American interventions in other country’s electoral processes is well documented. Furthermore, for many years United States AID fomented the sales of electronic voting systems globally. By 2002 electronic machines were pushed nationally in the U.S. with the Help America Vote Act. Afterwards we watched the progressive take-over of key aspects of our election system by private, partisan and even foreign electronic ‘election services’ companies. With Megan Matson of Main Street Moms, we produced a short documentary about all this in 2006 titled, “Help America Vote – On Paper (18 min.)”
We covered the 2008 election in our 1 hr. documentary The Price of Liberty – America’s Election Protection Movement 2008.
Nixing the Fixes
Against the odds, our US election integrity activists can point to at least one major victory - the Obama win in 2012. Despite attempts most likely masterminded by Karl Rove, Obama’s second term was saved from being foiled by brave Ohio activists.
The day before the election we documented Ohio election integrity lawyers, Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press and Cliff Arnebeck as they made their game-changing legal moves. They alerted both the Federal District Court and the Ohio State courts about the last minute attempt by the Ohio GOP Secretary of State (who ran the election) to insert uncertified “experimental patches” on electronic voting machines in key counties.
This was after many years of these Ohio activists reporting on their accumulating evidence of voting discrepancies in their critical ‘swing state’ where national elections were won or lost, as summarized in our short, CHEATED: The Comic - Wake up and save your country. So there was a general awareness in the courts by 2012 of potential election scumbaggery.
Author, Activist, Professor Mark Crispin Miller had summarized the situation in this Oct 6, 2008 EI Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
After the court challenge the day of the 2012 election the judge then put the Republican State Attorney General and Secretary of State on notice that in the event of apparent anomalies in the Ohio vote count, they would be held legally responsible and could potentially bear the cost of any necessary recount. The Fitrakis- attorney team also alerted the Justice Dept. and the FBI of the software patch attempt. Because of this alert, it appeared that it may have been impossible for Ohio operatives to inform Rove of the change in plans.
Late on election night Fox News televised Karl Rove’s shocked reaction as reports on Ohio’s final votes that assured the Obama victory came in. We told that story in SWING STATE: How the Fix was Nixed in Ohio 2012 (18 min.). We include media reports of the Fitrakis Free Press quote that Fox News quoted that Forbes then quoted.
Nothing to See Here?
Surprisingly, these election integrity heroes weren’t acknowledged by the Democrats for rescuing Obama’s 2012 election for them. Out friend attorney Bob Fitrakis had been a Green Party candidate that year and that had given him the standing to intervene in the courts.
If the Democrats had been presented with the leaked documents about the last minute software patches would they have protested? The Democrats failed to fight for their rights in 2000 and 2004 despite copious evidence of election fraud that gave the GOP the wins those years. Our friends had gathered that evidence…
BUSTING the 'Man-in-the-Middle' of Ohio Vote Rigging
It seems Joseph Stalin knew what he was talking about when he remarked, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
Putting together all that, despite the Democrats’ silence, plus the above evidence-based statements from Dr. Martin Gillens of Princeton University, Dr. Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, and the statement by Dr. Mark Crispin Miller of New York University with our own experience leads us to ask an uncomfortable and currently very unpopular question.
“Is There a Remedy for Chronic US Electile Dysfunction?”
For many years this has been a question that we’ve devoted – with many others - an immense amount of time, energy, creativity and resources in the production of documentaries, video reports, articles and organizing efforts.
Our experiences as documentarians and election observers in both Micronesia and the Philippines confirmed our election protection perceptions in our own country: electoral dysfunction management is a successful corporate business and population control model at work around the world.
If this seems too politically paranoid and ‘incorrect’ a statement, let us share a brief overview of our articles reporting showing how we have come to that conclusion…
Can’t Buy It? Steal it. – Electoral Dysfunction U.S.A.
Ohio Confidential – How the Fix was Nixed
Internet Voting Pushed in CA
Killing Democracy by a Thousand Cuts
Mind Fogged in the Nuclear Anthropocene
What Then is to Be Done?
It’s no mystery or ‘rocket science problem’ as to what needs to be done to cure our chronic electile dysfunction. All seasoned election protection activists could readily agree with this formulation posted by the Organic Consumers Association:
A 12-Step Program to Save US Democracy
1. Repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
2. Replace all electronic voting with hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB).
3. Get rid of computerized voter rolls.
4. Keep all private vendors out of our elections.
5. Make it illegal for the TV networks to declare who won before the vote-count is complete.
6. Set up an exit polling system, publicly supported, to keep the vote-counts honest.
7. Get rid of voter registration rules, by allowing every citizen to register, at any post office, on his/her 18th birthday.
8. Ban all state requirements for state-issued ID's at the polls.
9. Put all polling places under video surveillance, to spot voter fraud, monitor election personnel, and track the turnout.
10. Have Election Day declared a federal holiday, requiring all employers to allow their workers time to vote.
11. Make it illegal for Secretaries of State (editors addition who administer elections to simultaneously) co-chair political campaigns (or otherwise assist or favor them).
12. Make election fraud a major felony, with life imprisonment--and disenfranchisement--for all repeat offenders.
To which we would also add:
13. Maintain transparent, secure chain of custody for ballots and ballot boxes.
14. Use random audits to help verify accurate vote counts.
15. Enable easy, transparent, inexpensive recounts if necessary.
16. If machines are used to vote, the ballot image record function must be enabled and records preserved for inspection.
17. Automatic registration of everyone on their 18th birthday.
18. Retain local, convenient precinct-based polling places. At the end of the vote count on the night of the election, post election results on the door as well as other places to enable accurate tracking of vote tallies all the way from precinct to county level and beyond.
There are many additional practical suggestions that election integrity activists have developed over the many years of studying the current election dysfunctions.
Is it too late? Can we as citizens demand and implement total reform of our election system? We must if we are ever to reclaim our attempt at democracy. And we’ve seen it happen before.
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Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle co-direct EON - the Ecological Options Network. The EON feature documentary SOS - The San Onofre Syndrome will be released later this year.