[Mb-civic] From Selma to Ohio: A Report from the Conyers Hearing

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

    Author's Note | To read my blog report from the 
    hearing today, please go here. Statements made and 
    then placed on the record during the hearing can be 
    found here. - wrp
>From Selma to Ohio: A Report from the Conyers Hearing 
By William Rivers Pitt 
t r u t h o u t | Report 
Wednesday 08 December 2004 
It looked for all the world like a real hearing. Along the far 
wall were arrayed Congressional Representatives from the 
Judiciary Committee. Before them at a long table sat 
witnesses and experts in front of microphones, prepared to 
give testimony on the record. Behind the witnesses sat row 
upon row of everyday citizens who came out to watch the 
proceedings; the crowd was so large that an overflow room 
needed to be opened on another floor. Along both walls were 
arrayed more than a dozen television cameras. 
It looked like a real hearing but it wasn™t, because despite the 
issuing of invitations by the Democratic Minority members to 
their GOP Majority brethren on the Judiciary Committee, not 
one Republican congressman bothered to show up or give 
their blessing to the proceedings. Judiciary staffers from the 
Minority office told me the GOP majority would not even 
allow this hearing to be videotaped on the television 
equipment that came with the hearing room, and so they were 
forced to pester C-SPAN into showing up. They did, along 
with a number of other media outlets, but the effect was a 
quieting of the entire event. 
In the official sense, then, this was not a true Congressional 
hearing. It bore no weight in law. One cannot overstate, 
however, the importance of what took place in room 2237 of 
the Rayburn House Office Building today. In this place was 
discussed the very future of participatory democracy in 
America, and the serious problems that future holds if the 
allegations of vote fraud in Ohio and elsewhere which were 
the subject of this hearing, are not dealt with in immediate and 
dynamic fashion. 
It all began with a letter from Rep. John Conyers to Ohio 
Secretary of State Blackwell. In that letter, Conyers described 
a long series of irregularities in the Ohio Presidential election 
that amounted to an accusation of fraud. The letter was the 
basis for today™s hearing, and made sure to invite Blackwell to 
participate. It is worth noting that Blackwell did not show up 
today. 
The hearing itself was a showcase for both fact and passion. 
The witnesses, the Representatives before them, and the 
crowd that filled the room lit the place up with a concerned 
electricity. Some believed the irregularities and outright fraud 
which marred the Ohio vote require immediate redress, a 
successful completion of which could come to overthrow the 
results of last month's election. Others saw the hearings as a 
gift to their children and the future, a means to ensure that any 
and all elections to come will not suffer the kind of nonsense 
that afflicted both November of 2004 and November of 2000. 
Jon Bonifaz, general counsel for the National Voting Institute, 
is bringing a lawsuit against Secretary of State Blackwell in 
order to bring about a full recount of the vote in Ohio. He said 
of the hearings today, "I think this moves the ball forward 
with respect to demonstrating that people in this country, 
throughout this nation, demand a full accounting of what 
happened on election day, and demand that all votes be 
properly counted. Until we get to that point of all votes being 
properly counted, we cannot declare this to be a legitimate 
election." 
Some scattered observations from my notes of the 
proceedings: 
Rep. Nadler: The right to vote and to have the votes counted 
is indispensable. Confidence in our election processes is on 
the wane, and the stability of our government is threatened. 
We do not have the luxury of waiting to fix all this, as the next 
national election comes in two years. 
Rep. Scott: The complaints were not limited to Ohio. In his 
state of Virginia, some 500 complaints were made by voters. 
In his own district, voters were given ballots that did not have 
his name on them. 
Rep. Watt: The basic premise of our democracy is the vote. If 
it is broken, it must be fixed, and we must institutionalize a 
process that continually evaluates the way we run elections. If 
we can deliver ballots to rural voters in Afghanistan on the 
backs of donkeys, surely we can make sure our elections are 
free and fair here in America. 
Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way): In 
Cuyahoga county, Ohio, there were fewer voting machines 
available to the voters during the Presidential election than 
there were during the primary election. Secretary of State 
Blackwell, he of the paper-weight obstructionism, wins the 
Katherine Harris award this time around. There should be 
prosecutions over all this, and people should go to jail. 
Cliff Arnebeck (Chair, Common Cause Ohio): The fraud 
must be fixed. It must be fixed now, and not in the future. 
People cannot and will not accept a fraudulent election for the 
office of President. The best precedent that can be set is to 
state flatly that people will not tolerate fraud, and will not 
˜move on™ until the problems are repaired. How can we, with 
a straight face, talk about democracy in Iraq when we cannot 
guarantee democracy here at home? 
Shawnta Walcott (Zogby Inc.): This election has created an 
unprecedented level of suspicion that things did not go as they 
should have. Zogby Inc. wants to see a blue-ribbon panel 
created immediately to investigate the claims made at this 
hearing. 
Rep. Jackson: We must have a standardized national voting 
process and take the matter out of the hands of individual 
states, which can keep the process "separate and unequal." We 
must have a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right 
to vote. How can people argue that the right to own a gun is 
implicitly stated in the constitution, and then turn around and 
say it is acceptable to have the right to vote only be ˜implicit™ 
in the constitution? 
It was this last point, made over and over again by Reverend 
Jesse Jackson, that drew the most applause from the audience 
and attention from the Congressmen. In demanding a 
constitutional amendment cementing the simple right to vote, 
Jackson spoke of the long line that reached from Selma, 
Alabama to Ohio, and into this room. "This is not about who 
won or lost," he said. "This is about participating in 
democracy. The 2004 election is not past-tense. We are not 
whining. It is time to take this struggle to the streets and fully 
legitimize this struggle." 
The importance of the presence of Reverend Jackson was 
described best by Cliff Arnebeck. "If you look at who was 
here," said Arnebeck, "you had leaders from the generally 
white political reform movement, and leaders from the black 
civil rights movement. This is a powerful coalition. We are 
not talking about one group having dominance over the other, 
but a real partnership of the traditional political reform 
community with the traditional civil rights community, and 
Reverend Jackson is the one that proposed it, has initiated the 
organization of it." 
"Jesse Jackson, as you could see today, is giving tremendous 
moral leadership to this," continued Arnebeck. "He has 
tremendous credibility. This is a man who walked with Dr. 
Martin Luther King in the long civil rights struggle that we 
honor so much in our history now. This is the man who was 
holding Dr. King when he died. I was sitting right next to him 
when he talked about the fact that there aren't members of 
Congress with children dying in Iraq, and tears were in his 
eyes. This is a man who feels this stuff deeply, and when he 
talks about what is at stake, he means it in the deepest part of 
his being. It shows, and people respect that, and I feel 
privileged to be associated with him in this struggle." 
The hearing today took place in a unique moment in our 
history. Election fraud and voter disenfranchisement are not 
new in our history, but have been as much a part of the 
process as campaign buttons and baby-kissing. The fact that 
the electorate™s voting habits are becoming more clearly 
drawn, and the fact that so many were watching like hawks 
after Florida in 2000, means that the standard-issue fraud 
which has always existed now has a bright light shining upon 
it, and means the new kinds of fraud involving electronic 
machines and computer tabulators are likewise suffering 
intense scrutiny. In this moment, that bright light means the 
problems, both new and old, can and must be addressed, 
repaired, and purged from our democratic process. 
Aspects of the hearing could have been better. There was a lot 
of heat from the panelists and from the crowd, but not nearly 
as much cold data delivered. Had the forum presented that 
cold data, had the forum made an irrefutable case, the process 
to come would have been better served. The data was there “ 
the panelists came armed with reams of paper and facts “ but 
needs to be more fully delivered to the public at large. There 
were also grumblings among the assembled about why it was 
that Dennis Kucinich was not in attendance, about why 
Howard Dean chose this day to hold a press conference that 
sucked some of the media oxygen out of the hearing room, 
and about why no Kerry campaign people or Senate staffers 
made any kind of public appearance at the event. 
There was also a moment of deep frustration when the 
Representatives opened the floor to general questions from the 
audience. This led to something that always seems to happen 
when liberals and progressives get in a room together. Person 
after person came to the microphone not to ask questions, but 
to pontificate at length on whatever crossed their minds. As 
usual, this stole time from people who actually had questions, 
and led to a watering-down of the information at hand. When 
Conyers gently prodded people to move it along, some got 
openly aggressive and angry, despite the fact that they were 
riding roughshod over the stated process. Rep. Frank finally 
had to lay down the stomp on the quickly-unwinding process. 
The open forum could have been a beneficial addition to the 
hearing, but became in the end a waste of valuable time. 
At the end of the day, the hearing was a beginning, a chance 
for those fighting this fight to look upon one another and 
know they are not alone. Rep. Conyers and his fellow 
Congressmen are to be commended for putting the process in 
motion. The most striking moment came when the hearing 
ended, and all of the people assembled began embracing one 
another. They had made their voices heard, they knew they 
were not alone, and it smelled like vindication in there when 
all was said and done. 
The hearing was a beginning. There will be more, especially 
in Ohio. The lawsuits will continue. Rep. Conyers intimated 
today that he might object to the seating of the Ohio Electors 
when the certification process begins. The protests will 
continue to grow across the country. Perhaps, if we can follow 
through and accomplish the cleansing of our democratic 
process, we will look back on this day in room 2237 of the 
Rayburn House Office Building and know that yet another 
popular movement towards achieving that more perfect union 
began here, in this time, and in this place. 


William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international 
bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush 
Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is 
Silence.' 

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