Email to "supporters" announces intention to not challenge electors.
By Brad Friedman on 1/5/2005, 1:13pm PT  

John Kerry has just sent a pathetic email to the supposed 3 million members of his email list.

He has said that he will not be "taking part in a formal protest of the Ohio Electors", and urges his supporters to support Electoral System reform.

We, of course, support such reform, but that is for the future. And the way to that future is helped by challenging the enormously flawed election of 2004 tomorrow in Congress' Joint Session.

Here is a portion of Kerry's email [emphasis in the original]:

Tomorrow, members of Congress will meet to certify the results of the 2004 presidential election. I will not be taking part in a formal protest of the Ohio Electors.

Despite widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote, our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

But, that does not mean we should abandon our commitment to addressing those problems that happened in Ohio. We must act today to make sure they never happen again.

I urge you to join me in using this occasion to highlight our demand that Congress commit itself this year to reforming the electoral system. A Presidential election is a national federal election but we have different standards in different states for casting and counting votes. We need a national federal standard to solve the problems that occurred in the 2004 election. I will propose legislation to help achieve this.

Florida 2000 was a wake up call. But the Republicans who control Congress ignored it. Will they now ignore what happened in 2004?

Yes, Senator. They will ignore it, and we thank you for giving them the opportunity to do so.

As we have said many times on these pages, this issue has never been about John Kerry. (As regular BRAD BLOG readers may know by now, we didn't even vote for him ourselves!) Nor has this ever been about "changing the outcome of the election" as Kerry asserts in the letter.

This is about the very founding principles of the world's most important democracy. Period. Whatever "election outcomes" which may occur in the process of assuring that those principles remain intact is wholly beside the point.

Attempts to reach John Kerry's office via the main Senate switchboard at 800-839-5276 were met with a voice mailbox which was full, could take no more messages, and simply disconnected us.

A call to a direct office number: 202-224-2742, offers a message saying that these are not office hours (though they are, until 6pm ET) and allows one to leave a message after the beep. DO IT!

UPDATE: You can also leave your opinion at Kerry's Boston office: 617-565-8519.

Email can also be sent to Kerry via this webform. [previously broken link, now fixed!]

We have done both ourselves, and have made it abundantly clear that if he imagines he will be receiving support from any of the Democratic base for a 2008 Presidential run --- if he does not stand up tomorrow! --- he is sorely mistaken!

We hope you will join us in making that message exceedingly clear to Senator Kerry.

Please continue, as well, to call the 800 number given above to speak to as many Senators as you can about this issue. It's difficult to get through to many of them right now, as the switchboard is going a bit crazy there right now we are told. We were recently, however, able to get through to Obama's office (and others) to express our firm support of the importance of standing up for democracy tomorrow!

Keep making noise.

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