Take It Back, One City at a Time—A SUCCESS STORY!!!

[GuvWurld]

30% of the votes cast last November could not be recounted, ensuring an inconclusive outcome that could never receive unanimous acceptance. Unverifiable “elections” leave no basis for confidence in the results reported, and make this government’s power illegitimate.

The "just Power" of the government is derived from the Consent of the Governed. Yet this government does not seek our Consent. They don't seek it to decimate the Constitution (Patriot Act, citizens jailed without charges, lawyer or trial); they don't seek it when sacrificing our Commons for corporate profits (privatized water, approved pollution); and, as the City Council of Arcata, CA attested in their Voter Confidence Resolution (VCR):

"When elections are conducted under conditions that prevent conclusive outcomes, the Consent of the Governed is not being sought. Absent this self-evident source of legitimacy, such Consent is not to be assumed or taken for granted."

Right now our Consent is assumed. The assumption cannot stand. This is a campaign to withdraw the Consent of the Governed. We must create a position of non-recognition, consistent with other forms of civil disobedience involving non-cooperation and non-compliance. As more towns create and adopt their own versions of the VCR, our message calls forth an inevitable tipping point: Has the Consent of the Governed been withdrawn, YET?

You have tuned into a movement already in progress. Arcata adopted the VCR on 7/20/05. Which town will be next? How many communities will it take before it is clearly recognized that the Consent of the Governed HAS been withdrawn? What collection of reforms must we implement to ensure conclusive election outcomes, to create a basis for confidence in the results reported, and to establish an accountable government that represents us with our Consent?

We'll be working with the VCR and all these questions in my workshop this Sunday at the National Summit To Save Our Elections in Portland. I'm hoping to send people back to their communities prepared to run their own workshops. We need to build consensus on the local level and compel our City Councils to reflect this voice of the People. You don't need to wait for the workshop or even attend it. Show the Voter Confidence Resolution to a neighbor, or maybe just tell a friend. Identify the least you can do, and commit to doing at least that much.

Here are a few links that further explain this campaign:

Interview transcript from the Lone Star Iconoclast (9/12/05).
Guide to the strategy and talking points of the Voter Confidence Resolution.
Really big picture view: A Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution.

[autorank]

1. The Voter Confidence Resolution says it all: no fair vote, no confidence.

How much clearer can it get.

"When elections are conducted under conditions that prevent conclusive outcomes, the Consent of the Governed is not being sought. Absent this self-evident source of legitimacy, such Consent is not to be assumed or taken for granted."

This is so simple yet it includes much of what we've been talking about in compressed form:

--bad elections
--no recount
--no explanations
--no solutions
--NO CONFIDENCE

There were almost 200 cities who rejected the Patriot Act's intentions through city council approval. Let's put our heads together and figure out how that was done and do it for the Voter Confident Resolution.

Great post, great idea, great work. RECOMMENDED

[mom cat]

2. Great piece...nominated!

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. I see that the wonderful Lone Star Iconoclast is involved in this too

Recommended with my best wishes for success. Surely people will start listening!

[autorank]

5. Hope, do you have the Iconoclast link?

The Voter Confidence Resolution reminded me of that Iconoclast column by the business owner who said he considered people who didn't show up for work fired because they were not doing their job; and that Bush should also be considered fired.

Hey, our elections are not doing the job, our government is responsible for the elections as the fundamental step in their legitimacy,


GOVERNMENT, YOU'RE FIRED. YOU'RE OUTTA HERE."

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. This is the Lone Star Iconoclast link about the interview mentioned

in the OP - the link is there and it works:

http://www.lonestaricon.com/News/2005/37-38/37news02.htm

There's an intro and an interview with Dave Berman, one of the Voter Confidence Resolution authors - I'll excerpt part of the intro here. :

Arcata City, Calif. Establishes Model Voter Confidence Resolution For Nation’s Cities To Follow

By W. Leon Smith
Editor-In-Chief, The Iconoclast

September 14, 2005

ARCATA, Calif. — Voter confidence has plummeted during the past two presidential elections with corporate-owned voting machine tabulations in question from coast to coast. Several organizations have advocated changes in the voting system, but one city is taking it a step further. The City of Arcata, Calif., after months of debate and consideration, has adopted what is called the Voter Confidence Resolution.

According to Dave Berman, one of the resolution’s authors, this type of initiative, if adopted by cities throughout the country, could have a decisive impact on the confidence voters achieve by providing unquestionable election returns.

(snip)

Berman is aggressively taking his case to the people, conducting workshops, keynoting speaking engagements, and asking cities throughout the country to seriously push this agenda.

The heart of Arcata’s resolution is an eight-point comprehensive election reform platform, including:
(1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
(2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
(3) a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a nonpartisan nationally recognized commission, and
(4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
(5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and credentialed members of the media, and
(6) equal time provisions to be restored by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
(7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a nonpartisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
(8) preferential voting and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections.

(snip - much more, including an interview with Dave Berman by the Leon Smith, editor of the Lone Star Iconoclast)

(Is this the link that you wanted? It's already in the OP, so I'm wondering if you're looking for something else.)

[autorank]

11. You're a treat! Thank you!

.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. I am so glad to

hear this. It really is about taking it back a town, county, and state at a time.

[understandinglife]

6. Excellent. Nominated. Will try to contribute something to this endeavor...

... shortly.


Peace.

[texpatriot2004]

7. This is great. I am printing the VCR, will review and see what I

can do to help this cause. Thanks for sharing this. I won't be attending the national conference, will it be summarized and shared in another form?

[paineinthearse]

9. autorank for head of HAVA!

:yourock:

[autorank]

12. I accept. I'll rule with an even hand. Just look at my news threads.

I'm objective and open hearted, a man for all seasons and all peoples.

My motto: "It's nice to be nice, I like everybody."

[Peace Patriot]

10. Recommended! This is great work that you're doing, GuvWorld!

It speaks to the heart of the matter--the disenfranchisement of the progressive American majority, which has been against the Iraq war from before the invasion (58% opposed, Feb. '03; over 70% opposed today), and which disapproves of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up the 60% to 70% range, across the board in many polls, for over a year now.

But I don't quite get the sense of the question, "Has the consent of the governed been withdrawn yet?"

To my mind, the consent of the governed was never given. The election was non-transparent and unverifiable. The only evidence that Bush won is the so-called tabulation of votes conducted by friends of George Bush, Diebold and ES&S, using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. All other evidence points to a significant Kerry win.

The question should be: Has the consent of the governed been given yet?

[GuvWurld]

13. The reason the question is phrased that way...

In a way, I can see why the wording you suggest might seem more obvious. However, "withdrawn" has advantages over "given." As I see it, it really comes down to the mechanics of intentionally creating a Tipping Point. Such moments typically follow a gradual swell or accumulation, often unnoticed, until "the last straw" breaks the camel's back (the TP). So what can we cause to build up and what sort of threshold must we shatter?

If the "given" question is asked over and over, you might get "yes" answers that eventually become "no, the Consent is not given." But nobody is going to adopt the VCR if they think the answer to the "given" question is "yes." I think it is fair to say that anybody prepared to embrace the VCR will acknowledge that the Consent is not sought, and the assumption that it is sought must be eliminated. So if the "given" question starts out with a "no" answer and just spawns more and more "no" answers, there is nothing to build to. Think of the 300+ resolutions that said "no" to the Patriot Act. These still haven't restored our rights.

The "withdrawn" question works better because it reflects a "not if, but when" attitude. At this point, Arcata hasn't convinced the country at large that the Consent has been withdrawn. But, by repeatedly asking the "withdrawn" question, we reflect an assumption that we can switch the answer from "no," to "yes, the Consent of the Governed HAS been withdrawn." This won't happen immediately, but rather as a result of the accumulation of town after town passing the VCR. This is what I call cumulative impact and it is the missing ingredient in strategizing for social change. It really is just the lesson of how to manufacture a TP. The "withdrawn" question seeds the growth of cumulative impact by creating, essentially, the inevitability of the TP. The only way it is not going to happen is if we don't see our ranks swell. Meanwhile, we can make it about how many resolutions, how many towns, is it going to take before the answer switches from "no" to "yes, the Consent HAS been withdrawn."

This is a very interesting context in which to explain this. I do a more concise job of making this case in my new white paper, A Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution.

[GuvWurld]

14. Kick for morning crowd (eom)

[DemReadingDU]

15. recommended

[Peace Patriot]

16. I see your point, GuvWorld, and it also speaks to the real world (as we

used to say), in which most people don't know that the great majority of Americans are progressive in their views and threw the Bush Cartel out of office.

I had a frustrating conversation with a very intelligent and savvy person the other day, who, after I explained the election facts, and who Diebold and ES&S were, and about the SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code for vote tabulation, said, "But surely the Democrats wouldn't let that happen."

Some people have that reaction to, say, the exit poll data being doctored on their TV screens on election night. ("Surely the news media wouldn't deliberately give us wrong numbers.")

People so want to believe that SOMETHING is reliable in BushWorld--the Democrats wanting to win, and not being insane and suicidal (or, as it turns out, over the top corrupt), and silently acquiescing to Bushites counting all our votes behind a veil of secrecy; or the news monopolies being trustworthy at least on the basic NUMBERS of things, at the very least because they are in competition with one another (ahem), and NOT acting in concert to FALSIFY basic data about the election to make it LOOK LIKE Bush won.

The reality of our situation is so fantastic--and so like the movie "The Matrix"--that it's hard for some people to grasp. It's like they're hanging onto an apparent reality with all their toenails--wanting to have faith in SOMETHING, in the Democrats (at least in their wanting to win), in our democracy, in the news media and the illusion of "a nation" that it perpetrates, and, especially, in the ability of this illusionary democracy to change course, to right itself, eventually (how? by our voting, of course!--by public opinion MEANING SOMETHING). They don't understand that, even if you put a million protesters in the streets, it means nothing to people who have SECRET, PROPRIETARY control over the vote tabulation. And sometimes I almost hate to shatter peoples' desperate faith that something in our political and governmental system is still working right.

Back in the '60s our democracy was still functioning to the extent, for instance, that LBJ (who had been sold to people as "the peace candidate in 1964!) withdrew from the 1968 presidential race because of the antiwar protests. He feared the peoples' judgment by means of THEIR VOTE. Perhaps we should have realized then what it meant that the war went on for FOUR MORE YEARS, under Nixon, and that all our best antiwar advocates had been violently eliminated--that is, that the monstrous war machine that had grown like a parasite on our backs since the end of WW II, WOULD STILL HAVE WAR, no matter what we, the people, thought, or who we voted for. The war profiteers won. THEY were not put out of office. THEY are our rulers, and now they have direct control over vote tabulation, so that they can create a FALSE public endorsement of whatever goddamned bloodfest they decide to engage in.

It can be truly disheartening, and indeed, soul-searing, to realize what we, as a nation, have become, especially given the good hearts and souls of most people in the country. But it is something that MUST be done--ripping up peoples' faith in whatever vestige of democracy they think we still have. Reclaiming of our democracy cannot take place without a clear view of what we have lost, and how.

"Has consent of the governed been withdrawn yet?" Maybe the question should be: "Does it matter if consent of the governed is withdrawn, if the war profiteers can now count on Diebold and ES&S to manufacture false consent, with the War Democrats and the war profiteering news monopolies then endorsing that falsehood?"

[Usrename]

17. If we can wake them softly, one town at a time, we win.

This is the most inspirational thread I have seen on this subject!

[bleever]

18. Brilliant. The consent of the governed.

:thumbsup:

[GuvWurld]

19. Kick for the night crowd

Thanks for all the good cheer, y'all

[GuvWurld]

20. Kick once more for the ride to Portland

back online tonight after dinner

[NoBushSpokenHere]

21. kick n/t

[GuvWurld]

22. Kicking from Portland (eom)