Stepan=Buckhead
Posted on 01/11/2005 7:18:20 PM PST by Seattle Conservative
Good morning. My name is Stefan Sharkansky and I’ve been writing about the whole governor’s race at a blog called SoundPolitics.com
I’ve never given a speech to this large of a crowd before. Unlike most of the people up here who really are distinguished in their fields, I’m just an ordinary citizen; a husband, a father, a small business owner; a citizen with a computer and some opinions. But that can be pretty powerful, can’t it.
Because we really are in the middle of a kind of citizen’s revolution, aren’t we. No, it’s not of the scale of the American Revolution of 1776, or the current revolution in Ukraine. But if you use the word revolution to describe any exceptional change to the established order of things, then yes, this is something of a revolution. Because the established order of things is broken and we’re changing it. We can all see how our elections process, the core of our democracy, has broken down. It’s kind of a metaphor for all that ails our political institutions. Underperforming, untransparent, unaccountable. Is it really “good enough for government work” to have 3,500 or 2,000 or whatever is the number du jour more ballots than voters? The airlines figured out years ago how to count both boarding passes and the people sitting in the airplane and come up with the same number. Why can’t our elections officials figure out how to match the number of ballots cast with number of eligible voters who cast them?
It’s not a coincidence and it’s not just happy talk that Christine Gregoire says that this election was, and I quote “ a model to the rest of the nation and the world”. Because in Christine Gregoire’s mind the King County Elections office is her model for how she wants to run the State of Washington. And that might be good enough for their idea of government work, but it’s not good enough for ours. We have to take our state government back, so that this illegitimate pretend victory, with its margin of 129 double voters, felons, cemetery residents and imaginary playmates does not stand. So we can have a new election and know that the person who moves into the governor’s mansion deserves to be there and has a legitimate mandate from a majority of the eligible voters. And I believe that in a fair election Dino Rossi will win and will become our next governor.
But whether or not the judges allow a revote and whether or not Dino Rossi ultimately wins; no matter who is governor three months from now, this revolution for election reform that we’ve all started will go on. Because our democracy is not built on “elections”. It’s not built on contests with arbitrary rules and procedures. It is built on the principle that government is subservient to the will of the people. Elections are merely a tool for measuring the will of the people. If an election doesn’t measure the will of the people and is just a contest about counting pieces of paper, you might as well just let the candidates pick a winner by playing a game of Rock, Scissors, Paper. And if the elections system that we have today isn’t good enough to measure the will of the people within the margin of sloppiness, incompetence and illegal voting, then we don’t just suck it up for four years with a governor we don’t want. We say enough is enough, this will not stand, we fix the elections system and we measure the will of the people again so we can have the government that is our right to have.
And it’s only fitting that this citizen’s revolution for clean elections and a legitimate government is playing out not in the mainstream media, but in the alternative media. Not the one-way media of the big-haired pontificators of network TV news or the cocooned editorial boards. But the citizen’s media. Talk radio. Thank you, John, and Kirby and Mike and Dori . Rabbi Lapin. Stephanie Sandlin in Spokane. And their guests from all walks of life and the callers who talk back and every day teach the hosts and the listeners something new. And the blogs. And of course it’s not just me and my fellow Sound Politicians Brian, Andy, Matt, Jim, Marsha, Kevin, Tim, Ambra, Scott, Seth and Ron. You know I learned the other day that in certain parts of Seattle they call us the Dirty Dozen. And it’s not just the other local bloggers like Tim Goddard, privateradio.com, a guy named Mac who calls his blog “Pull on Superman’s Cape?”, or the indispensable OrbusMax. It’s our readers, who post comments and send us tips. You know it was our readers who helped us break the story of double voting. A “freeper” who uses the nickname Hanna sent us that tip. She also sent us the tip that found the first documented case of a ballot cast in the name of a deceased person. The Times and the P-I had to play catch-up two days later. And they still haven’t reported the double voter even though Norm Maleng’s office has referred it for prosecution. And there are lots more stories that we were able to bring to your attention largely through the efforts of our readers. Because our establishment media has grown partisan and credulous and as lazy and complacent as the local government it’s supposed to be watching. “It’s in the P-I” When was the last time you looked in the P-I expecting to find something you both needed to know and didn’t know already. There’s very little in the P-I about how badly botched this election was, only how we should accept the result and move on. But we Americans are a resourceful people, an inventive people, a self-reliant people. When our institutions stop serving us well, we fix the ones we can and must fix, and create new institutions to supplant the ones we can’t fix.
And that’s where these two revolutions converge. The citizen’s revolution for clean elections and legitimate government and the revolution of citizen’s media. And each and every one of us is part of both. And we’re going to continue to work for election reform. And I don’t mean trusting Sam Reed, Frank Chopp and the Seattle Democrats to bring us some girly-man symbolic gesture they call election reform. I’m talking about a citizen’s initiative for real reforms. Like you can only register to vote if you have proof of citizenship. You can’t vote unless you have both a photo ID and a pulse. And you can’t certify an election unless the number of votes equals the number of voters.
There are a couple of pictures on the site and the comments are interesting - a fellow FReeper posted on it I posted the link on another thread, but thought I'd give this a thread of it's own. I did a search and didn't see a thread on this, so hope it's not a duplicate
All of WA needs to engage in EXTREME civil disobedience during Inaugeration(in WA State)!
Stefan did great! A great speech, especially for a first-timer. Thank you for being there.
By Gregoires through with raising your taxes, they'll be forced to build a wall to keep people in for revenue. It'll be called, "The Great Wall of Washington."
There's going to be so many B & O taxes that business will try to penetrate the wall to no avail. And if you think unemployment is bad there now, wait till she gets through raising the minimum wage yet again. Washingtonians will get a nose bleed it'll be so high.
All of this will be brought to you via the Democrats and one stolen election. I'll say an extra prayer when the wall goes up.
Thank God I moved when I did.
"Thank God I moved when I did"
Ditto
Stefan is a hero.
Makes you wonder who the PI and Times really represent.
I'm being cautiously optimistic and hoping the court will see the light (and the law)and do what's right and Rossi will be in Olympia.
If that doesn't work out, then, we'll appreciate your prayer when the wall goes up.
"Makes you wonder who the PI and Times really represent."
Doesn't make me wonder at all. Their editorials are ridiculous and the letters to the editor were almost vile at times (that's why I quit reading them).
"If that doesn't work out, then, we'll appreciate your prayer when the wall goes up."
Let's all hope I don't have to do it.
Amen.
Stepan=Buckhead
To certify an election that no one can possibly know who won is misfeasance and legal grounds for the recall of all State Senators and Legislators who supported the fraudulent certification of Christine as Governor.
"To certify an election that no one can possibly know who won is misfeasance and legal grounds for the recall of all State Senators and Legislators who supported the fraudulent certification of Christine as Governor."
Someone (I think one of the Dims in King County) said we couldn't have a revote because WA state election law says the election for all (or certain) offices must be done on the same day. There are some of us who are saying okey dokey fine - let's revote on the legislature, too. My guess is we'd pick up a few more Repub seats if we did
When does the 2nd Amendment kick in? It seems that, as in Athensville, that time is coming soon...
bump
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