Democrats.com – 2004-07-16 11:55:48
http://democrats.com/monitors
To: George W. Bush
We call on you to request expert election monitors to avoid an unprecedented electoral — and Constitutional — crisis over the Presidential election of November 2, 2004. Such a request was made by 13 Members of Congress on July 1, 2004.
We saw a preview of this crisis in 2000 in Florida. We believe the 2004 crisis will be worse because:
• Across the nation, error-prone punchcard machines have been replaced by touchscreen machines that have failed repeatedly in actual elections.
These machines lack paper trails, their source code is proprietary, and computer security experts believe these machines are hackable, so voters have no confidence their votes will be recorded and counted honestly. To compound voter fears, Diebold CEO Wally O’Dell vowed to “deliver” Ohio’s crucial electoral votes to you
• The crimes committed by partisan Florida election officials in 2000 were never punished, which sent a clear signal to partisan officials that they could violate election laws with impunity
* As the US Commission on Civil Rights documented in 2001, discrimination against minorities — mostly Democrats — in 2000 was widespread. More than half of the votes that went uncounted nationwide were cast by minorities. Most of these problems were never fixed, as the Commission documented in April 2004
• Most of the Florida non-felons whose voting rights were illegally revoked in 2000 have not regained their voting rights, and the 2004 “felon” purge was rigged to hurt Democrats by removing black “felons” and
help Republicans by overlooking hispanic “felons.” This revelation- – following a lawsuit opposed by Florida — created a furor, but officials insist they will “find other ways” to purge “felons”
• Also in Florida, Republicans eliminated the witness requirement for absentee ballots, creating a major opportunity for fraud. Republicans are tricking new citizens into registering as Republicans by illegally pre-
checking the “Republican” box.
• In Missouri, the Republican Secretary of State is trying to stop mainly Democratic voters in St. Louis from voting early
• There may be many other illegal activities underway at the state and local level that have simply not been discovered because no one is looking for them
• Key officials in your administration seek the power to postpone (or cancel) the 2004 election based on warnings of terrorist attacks, even though past warnings have been conspicuously politicized
• Pro-Republican bias in thecorporate-owned media, especially at Fox News, has been widely documented, creating an uneven playing field for the campaign. This problem is compounded by the extremely limited coverage planned for the summer conventions
• All five Republican Supreme Court Justices who betrayed America by throwing out 175,000 uncounted votes in 2000 remain on the Court, so any dispute that ends up in the Supreme Court will lack legitimacy
The American people share our concerns. A poll in June 2004 found 44% of all voters — and 62% of Democrats — fear a Florida-style debacle in November.
We believe observers who are experts in administering honest, transparent, and fair elections are needed for the “battleground” states (Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin) that will decide the Presidency. We call on you to request such experts from the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Carter Center.
To sign the petition, click
here
