Issue #1

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Nothing we say or do matters if we don’t have fair elections. And as of right now, we don’t.

A must read: BradBlog’s The Staggeringly Impossible Results of Ohio’s ’05 Election.

Also, as Brad notes, Free Press’ heroic Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman’s “article on what happened on ballot issues 1 through 5 last week is A MUST READ for anybody who still gives the slightest damn about whatever democracy might be left in America.”

Something seriously screwed up is going on. It’s great that Bush is tanking, and it’s great that Americans seem to be waking up to the fatally flawed neo-conservative philosophy, and it’s great that polls indicate voters are increasingly likely to vote Dem in next year’s mid-terms. But none of it matters if elections can be stolen. The lack of accountability that is the hallmark of the Bush administration starts with a lack of voting accountability. We’ve got to have a paper trail.

To that end, in February, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced H.R.550 (pdf of the entire bill here) which seeks to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 with respect to: (1) voter verification and mandatory paper record audit capacity; and (2) accessibility and voter verification of results for individuals with disabilities.

To register your support for H.R.550, sign online petitions here and here. (Thank you to DBK for the links.)