SENSE AND NONSENSE - THE OBAMA SPEECH
From the editor: I am writing this just after reading the text of Barack Hussein Obama’s speech on race that he delivered Tuesday, Mar. 18, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of democracy. I strongly urge everyone to get their hands on the printed text of his speech. It is a powerful speech. It is a personal speech. It is a truthful speech. And for me, it is especially truthful. I worked in the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s -- first as a student minister in the inner city of Baltimore through the Student Interracial Ministry, and then in a voter registration project in Albany, Georgia, as part of the Southwest Georgia Project directed by one of the founders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Charles Sherrod. I credit Mr. Sherrod with understanding the importance of non-violence within the civil rights movement as much as I credit Dr. Martin Luther King with the same understanding. I worked in Southwest Georgia during the tumultuous year of 1968. Firsthand, I saw the faces of rural Georgia black citizens who had the courage to walk into the county courthouses of southwest Georgia past the purposely intimidating county sheriff deputies to small courthouse backrooms so that they could register to vote for the first time in their lives. They were trying to take advantage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and it took the same kind of courage for black citizens to register to vote as I had witnessed in Army Special Forces and Marines during my tour in Vietnam. (Note: I myself was not involved in direct combat operations in Vietnam. I served as one of three Air Force Public Information Officers in the country during 1964-65.)
The response to Obama’s speech has been almost universally positive, I think, because it was a speech about healing the deep wounds of racism in this country. The healing value of the speech aside, I think the most important element of the speech is Obama’s grasp of the true nature of what constitutes “good and evil” in human nature.
In contrast to the neoconservative and fundamentalist world view that maintains “evil” resides elsewhere, e.g., the “axis of evil,” and “good” resides exclusively within the United States of America and a few of its allies, and/or resides exclusively within Christians who accept Jesus Christ as their savior, and/or resides in extreme Islam In this shallow and very destructive view, evil is “outside,” good is “inside.”
Senator Obama’s rejection of this simplistic view of good and evil is most evident in his description of the relationship he has with his minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama rejects some of his sermons without rejecting the man. For example, he says in the speech, “As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.”
While condemning some of the fiery sermons of his pastor, Senator Obama does not reject the community of his church, the recurring themes of self-help and self-determination and the common good also preached by his minister, and he does not hide from his responsibility as a black man to be a healing influence for his family, his church, and his country. In short, his speech clearly demonstrates that we have an opportunity as a free society to recognize the good and bad within all of us precisely for the purpose of choosing unity over division,
Obama’s speech goes on to challenge each of us to treat the issue of racism in this county intelligently and compassionately rather than “as spectacle -- as we did in the OJ trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news.” He warns, “We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.”
“We can do that,” he says. “But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”
Senator Obama speaks the truth, and it is in the country’s self-interest for each of us to read his speech, to accept his challenge, to respect his courage, to ignore the distractions, and to face the evil within us all.
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
HOW TO LOSE AN ELECTION
From the editor: Amid the debate over whether Sen. Hillary Clinton should drop out of the Democratic presidential race, Democrats would be wise to pay more attention to the possibility that election fraud (both deliberate fraud and errors as a result of “unintended consequences) will determine who wins the 2008 general election in November.
Karl Rove may have resigned from the Bush administration, but his ideas and tactics such as “caging” qualified voters can still impact election results. In addition, issues such as requiring voter I.D.s at polling sites, control of voter registration lists, ownership of voting software, maintenance of voting tabulators and touch-screen devices, purging voter registration lists, and voting status of citizens accused of felonies versus those convicted of a felony all can impact election results.
The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections revolved around Machiavellian manipulation at best and illegal tactics at worst of election results by the Secretaries of State in Florida and Ohio. An examination of election fraud takes research in many directions from examining the Supreme Court’s recent tendency to rule against disenfranchised voters to a review of Bush’s Dept. of Justice’s role in voter suppression.
A single corporation is at the heart of many problems that have systematically occurred throughout the country including California, New Mexico, and Colorado in addition to Ohio and Florida.
The company is Election Systems & Software (ES&S). Following is some background information on ES&S and a list of complaints against the company.
Background
In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in response to the backlash from voters about the disastrous 2000 Presidential election in Florida. HAVA has proven to be a windfall for ES&S. According to the ES&S website, the company contracted with 1,700 jurisdictions in 43 states. The website boasts that ES&S is “carrying out the greatest transformation in the way elections are run since the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s. During the U.S. congressional election in November 2006, nearly 67 million voters cast ballots using ES&S voting systems. In fact, ES&S systems have counted approximately 50 percent of the U.S. national vote in each of the last four presidential elections.”
ES&S was founded in 1979 as American Information Systems (AIS) by two brothers, Todd Urosevich, who is currently Vice President of Customer Support for ES&S, and Bob Urosevich, who is currently President of Diebold Election Systems. AIS merged with Business Records Group in 1980 to form ES&S. By 1994, ES&S was one of four providers used in the 2004 election. The other three were Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions), Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.
Walden “Wally” O’Dell, the current CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004. On Sunday, March 2, 2008, The United Technologies Corp. announced an unsolicited $3 billion bid for Diebold, the parent company of Premier Election Solutions. ES&S is jointly owned by the Omaha World-Herald Co., the publisher of Nebraska’s largest newspaper. Sen. Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S shortly before his election to the Senate in 1996.
Diebold Election Systems (a.k.a. Premier Election Solutions) and ES&S are responsible for tallying around 80% of votes cast in the United States. ES&S’ website also highlights the company’s PowerProfile ® voter registration and election management systems. The company claims, “…our systems are unbeatable in terms of reliability, security, accuracy and ease of use.”
Documented List of Complaints
The website www.votersunite.org links to a 51-page pdf document that contains a list of complaints regarding ES&S systems nationwide. This list is a well-documented comprehensive list of problems and system failures. Between 1998 and 2006, there were documented failures of ES&S voting machines in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and in the country of Venezuela.
Ohio has just published the results of $1.9 million study entitled the “Everest Voting System Review.” The study can be accessed at the Ohio Secretary of State’s website www.sos.state.oh.us. The Ohio Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner said in a press release that “Ohio’s electronic voting systems have ‘critical security failures’ which could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.” Ohio uses three voting systems - ES&S, Hart Intercivic, and Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold).
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen recently withdrew approval of the ES&S InkaVote Plus optical scan voting system after a “top-to-bottom review” of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007.
A 2007 review in Colorado by auditors and cyber-security specialists found multiple problems with machines that were made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and ES&S. Secretary of State Mike Coffman urged state lawmakers to allow counties to use “a software patch” to correct problems. The review found that machines made by ES&S “suffered programming errors and could be disabled by voters.”
In New Mexico, the county clerk of Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) has partnered with a Univ. of New Mexico political science professor to perform a post-election audit of the 2006 election results in Bernalillo County.
ES&S has requested a no-bid contract to maintain New Mexico’s voter registration system and N.M. Sec. of State Mary Herrera said the state has no choice but to go with the firm.
In New Mexico, the Associated Press reports that “problem-prone” memory cards used in the ES&S voting machines across the State are being recalled to make certain they’re working properly for the State’s June 3 primary election.
CALL TO ACTION ON THE MIDDLE EAST
From the editor: Compass Society member Fred Bender of Santa Fe continues to lobby Congress to find a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In the following letter to Senator Bingaman, Fred offers his opinion of what is preventing progress in the peace talks. He urges everyone to either forward his letter to their Senators and Representatives or to draft their own letters on the subject.
Dear Senator Bingaman,
Senate Resolution 321 regarding the U.S. role in resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which you co-sponsored was, I understand, put on hold pending progress of President Bush’s new initiative to bring about a two-state solution. The situation is worsening. As weeks and months go by, the Israeli/Palestinian impasse is hardening to the point of no return. We need a new definitive Senate resolution that will send a strong message to the Administration and a positive message to our Middle East allies who have been pleading for a strong U.S. role to help stem the ominous advance of Islamic fundamentalism in their countries.
Resolution of this conflict is essential to bring stability to the Middle East and to restore U.S. credibility with Islam. It is important for our energy security and in dealing with Iran. It is critical -- in Prime Minister Ohmert’s own words -- to Israel’s survival as a Jewish state. It is the one crisis in the Middle East that the United States still has the leverage and influence to bring about a resolution, but it cannot be done with President Bush’s rhetoric and the Administration’s lukewarm and hit-and-miss diplomacy.
I believe SR321 fell short in two key aspects: First the U.S. special presidential envoy must have the authority to deal with all relevant parties, including direct talks with Hamas without preconditions. Second, if any progress in negotiating a two-state resolution is to be achieved, a peace-keeping arrangement, such as that suggested by Tom Friedman, is mandatory.
Tom Friedman’s prescient column in the December 12, 2002, New York Times on exactly this stated: “The mutual trust needed for a self-sustaining peace is gone. The only way out is for a trusted third party to take over the territories and separate the two. The only viable party is a U.S. -led NATO force. The only way Israel is going to have security is if Palestinians provide it by restraining their own, which will happen only when they have a responsible state, which can emerge only under energetic NATO supervision -- not Israeli occupation.”
If this was true five years ago, think how urgent it is now with the aggravating actions of all sides.
U.S. Senate leadership is needed. Please give your urgent attention to promoting this Senate action.
Sincerely yours,
Frederick Bender
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
