Dear Senator,
One Honest Man. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogenes went searching with a lantern to find "one honest man". It wasn't easy. I don't know if he ever succeeded. (I suspect that if he broadened his search to include women, he might have succeeded!)
For the last three days my colleagues and I from a modest group of citizens have been searching the halls of the senate office buildings for "One Courageous Senator". We carry notebooks of evidence instead of lanterns. We don't know if we will succeed.
The senators, and representatives, have a legal duty today to pass judgment on the electoral behavior of every one of the 50 states. Although there have been a few exceptions, tradition is that they accept the votes sent to them. They go through the formalities of accepting the votes, but they have the opportunity to object.
They have an opportunity to say, state-by-state, that the selection of electors was done in an acceptable way, or to say that it was not acceptable. To the extent that it is possible for independent investigators to know in the short period since the election, we know that what went on in at least several states cannot be acceptable, and we have clues that even worse things went on. These are clues that must be followed.
There are thousands of people whose names can be named and whose stories are documented who suffered attempts, successful or unsuccessful, at disenfranchisement. This is acceptable?
There are states that don't follow or even thwart their own rules for recounts, including documented cases of tampering of machines before recounts. This is acceptable?
There are documented attempts to fabricate election materials obtained under freedom of information requests, and to destroy the real material. This is acceptable?
And we have clues, many of them, that the basic process of collecting and tabulating votes may have been tampered with in favor of one candidate. These are not honest errors; they are tips of icebergs -- icebergs that we will discover either by investigation, or when our democracy hits them, and sinks.
In a few hours the House and Senate will be asked, "Is this acceptable?" Yes or no, Senator, is this acceptable?
We're looking for "One Courageous Senator" who will stand up and say, "This is wrong!" We wish we could find 100. The American people, and the generations who went before, deserve 100 courageous senators. But can we find even one?
In our conversations with Senator's aides, we see little outrage at this unacceptable electoral behavior. More seriously, we don't see any courage. It is not courageous to simply defer all questions to a future GAO report. Is the GAO the "Department of Courage"? It is not courageous to say, "we have laws and agencies to deal with that" or "the states will deal with that", especially when the questions include the behavior of state government.
And then there's the excuse of "unity". I find it incredible that any of our most powerful and respected leaders would consider a vague "unity" a more important principle than voting rights, justice, and democracy. In a democracy, "unity" without voting rights is worthless. Why would any honorable person want to claim "unity" with people who suppressed certain classes of voters? And why would anyone with a basic knowledge of history think democracy requires unity? Unity is a characteristic of dictatorships!
Washington, DC should be a grand and beautiful city. But "beauty is as beauty does". Right now Washington is a very ugly city. People have lost the right to vote, and to have that vote counted honestly, by deliberate actions; however, few want to talk about it.
A bright light has been shown on our electoral process thanks to the efforts of election observers from many organizations. Is there not even one senator who can stand up to say, about any or all of the tens of thousands of problems, "This is wrong"? Or will each senator wait for someone else, or a safer time, to say that?
Bob Fleischer
Coalition Against Election Fraud (CAEF)
http://www.caef.us
Massachusetts
United States of America
