As mentioned yesterday, the Tribune Syndicate's Robert Koehler has dropped a killer column on Election 2004 and the National Election Reform Conference which we attended, and spoke at, last weekend in Nashville.
Koehler was the one member of the MSM brave enough to show up in Nashville and to share a stage with both ourselves and Free Press' Bob Fitrakis (editor, writer and attorney who joined the lawsuit in Ohio to have its vote count set aside).
As it turns out, Koehler is one of the good guys still fighting the good fight in the MSM, and his column today --- which out and out declares the 2004 election to have been stolen --- hits on so many pistons it's virtually impossible to pull out just the money quotes. So we strongly recommend you read the whole thing. Here's the first and last few grafs to whet your appetite...
The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?
As they slowly hack democracy to death, we're as alone — we citizens — as we've ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation's founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
It's time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.
The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It's just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It's more like: “Oh no, this can't be true.”
I just got back from what was officially called the National Election Reform Conference, in Nashville, Tenn., an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists — 30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue — sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering To Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775: citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic. This was the level of its urgency.
...
In contrast to the deathly silence of the media is the silent scream of the numbers. The more you ponder these numbers, and all the accompanying data, the louder that scream grows. Did the people's choice get thwarted? Were thousands disenfranchised by chaos in the precincts, spurious challenges and uncounted provisional ballots? Were millions disenfranchised by electronic voting fraud on insecure, easily hacked computers? And who is authorized to act if this is so? Who is authorized to care?
No one, apparently, except average Americans, who want to be able to trust the voting process again, and who want their country back.
Additionally, there was some coverage of the event during and after, by Laura Luxor of The Tennessean. Her two --- much appreciated pieces --- are here and (from their front page) here.
As to a few other random and personal thoughts, and photos (and even a bit of video) from the event...