Reader's Forum: Defending democracy in Iraq while destroying it in Ohio

The original rationale used by the Bush administration for invading Iraq -- to blunt an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction -- has now been abandoned and blamed on 'faulty intelligence.' ...

The original rationale used by the Bush administration for invading Iraq -- to blunt an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction -- has now been abandoned and blamed on 'faulty intelligence.' The new rationale inserted in its place has been the 'establishment of democracy.' For this combination of claimed purposes, over 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed, 30,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives, and $225 billion (already half the amount for the entire Vietnam war) has been spent.

Many people strongly questioned the original rationale, and many people again question the sincerity of its replacement. Those who are skeptics need look no further than what is happening to the democratic process right here in Ohio in order to find ample support for such a questioning.

For decades, the electoral votes of Ohio have played a key role in the outcomes of presidential elections. Today, both major political parties are dealing with an essential 'stand-off' -- almost perfectly equal division of support between the 'red' and 'blue' states. This stand-off came down to Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. With such enormous stakes riding on the outcomes of these key swing states, the big-money interests behind Bush-Cheney are now pulling out all the stops in their extremely aggressive quest to secure their control.

Greg Palast, in his book 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,' has documented what happened in Florida. These strong-arm tactics are currently being refined even further in Ohio.

In the very next month after Ohio supposedly put Bush over the top in a highly controversial and Secretary of State-manipulated election, Republican Gov. Robert Taft used a Republican majority in the state Legislature to steamroll a special session designed to completely dismantle the state's already minimal rules for controlling campaign spending. This included the quadrupling of contributions from $2,500 to $10,000 and throwing out a 90-year-old ban on direct contributions from corporations.

Progressive groups in the state fought back in 2005 with a series of election-reform ballot measures. One of these, Issue 3, which was aimed at restoring meaningful spending limits, caught the wave of a voter backlash against several Republican money scandals and was projected by polls to be handily winning.

The most significant such poll was conducted by none other than the heavily Republican Columbus Dispatch newspaper, which has taken pride in decades of accurate polling and showed Issue 3 winning by 61 percent only two days before the vote. Even the organizers in opposition to Issue 3 were conceding defeat on that measure.

Astonishingly, election day brought a stunning reversal with Issue 3 supposedly going down by 67 percent, an even larger margin than it had been favored to win by.

Columbus authors and election watchdogs Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (see www.freepress.org) have cried foul and are calling for investigations of the computerized vote-counting system now in use in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties. These computerized machines have been installed by Diebold, whose former CEO Walter O'Dell promised that he would 'deliver' the state for Bush in 2004.

The federal General Accountability Office (GAO) just released a major report confirming that such computerized vote-counting systems can easily be broken into and tampered with by a small but determined group of people. The response of the Ohio Republican Party has been to try to rush through another last-minute December bill -- House Bill 3 -- this time aimed at exempting these electronic systems from citizen oversight, such as a recount with random sampling. Combined with the ongoing absence of a paper trail, Ohio citizens would be left with no recourse whatsoever with which to confirm the accuracy of such elections.

Several questions beg to be asked. The first: Why would those who do not hesitate to rig elections through the campaign-spending process experience any hesitation in trying to also rig outcomes by manipulating the computerized vote count? A second question: If the Republicans have nothing to hide, then why would they seek any barriers to citizen oversight regarding electronic vote counts? Their haste and aggressiveness in doing so only heighten further suspicion concerning their motives. HB 3 also contains elements to suppress a Democratic vote, such as more stringent ID requirements (that would disenfranchise many thousands of poor and transient people) and rules that would impede broad-based registration drives.

The secretary of state of Ohio, Republican Ken Blackwell, aiming to become governor next year and whose primary base is a fanatical, right-wing fundamentalist movement, has consistently and blatantly abused his position of director of the election process to skew the outcome in favor of his party. In a move reminiscent of third-world dictatorships, he has even refused to allow international observers to be present in the polling places.

What we are seeing in Ohio is an uncanny blending of the big-money right wing of the Republican Party with the right wing of the pseudo-Christian fundamentalist movement. It is no accident that one of the most well-funded and politically ambitious operations in the country directed to mobilizing the fundamentalist vote -- known as the 'Ohio Restoration Project' -- has set up shop in this crucial swing state.

As I personally witness this systematic and ruthless dismantling of a participatory democracy and see it supplanted with a different kind of system completely run by the wealthy (also known as an oligarchy), it is preposterous for me to believe that this same political party is in Iraq only to 'promote democracy.' Not with one of the world's largest supplies of oil involved.

With its latest moves in Ohio, the hard-core right wing of the Republican Party is baring its fangs for all to see. Will those who wish to preserve our democratic process recognize the depth of the threat that is emerging and marshal enough forces to counter it? Will the Democratic Party recognize the tremendous opportunity that is now appearing to re-galvanize itself by showing the public that it indeed has a backbone and is willing to stand up to such an insidious threat? There is no more important issue that Democrats could choose to differentiate themselves from the Republicans in this state and in the process breathe life, vitality, mission and resolve into its ranks. Will its leadership recognize the opportunity that is being presented by this crisis? Only time will tell.

Editor's note: A Dec. 16 Associated Press story reported that a test conducted by the supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida, confirmed that the Diebold system could be broken into and left without any trace of interference.