Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Some bloggers are willing to suspend all critical thought to accept any theory that Ohio was stolen, regardless of the validity of the argument and regardless of what the actual evidence shows. Russell Shaw discusses this at Huffington Post with a quote from Tom Hayden:

And to the bloggers, I say stick to standards of evidence that will convince the mainstream voters. Sometimes we stray from what we know, and what can be proven to the public, into the world of, well, conjecture. We cannot fight against a faith-based crusade with one that sometimes appears to be fantasy-based. We cannot fight the conservative model with a conspiracy model. The facts are staggering enough to cause deep public questioning and, in time, a radical public awakening. We should see ourselves as the questioning conscience of the nation, the prod to deeper digging by the media, the force that pushes politicians to address all the “inconvenient truths”, every last one of them.

Many of the claims of fraud have been refuted by liberals including Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation, and Jimmy Carter. There are real problems which need to be addressed, but screaming “Ohio was stolen” based upon poor evidence makes reform less likely. Accepting every claim of fraud creates multiple problems:

• Some charges appear valid while some do not. Accepting all, even those with flimsy evidence, makes objective observers less likely to believe any of the charges
• Concentrating on the belief that votes were “stolen” after the vote distracts from the real problem of Republicans stacking the system in their favor by various methods of voter suppression which reduce Democratic votes.
• The belief that one’s vote will not be counted results in some Democrats being reluctant to campaign or vote, unintentionally helping the Republican voter suppression efforts.
• Denial of the fact that Republicans won partially due to mobilizing voters such as residents of the exburbs and the religious right keeps Democrats from responding to these challenges
• Promoting the weaker arguments undermines the claim of Democrats to be the “reality based” community on issues such as Iraq, national security, intelligent design, and stem cell research.
• Claims based uoon theft of the 2004 election will appeal to Democrats but turn off Republicans. Bipartisan support is needed to achieve change. Fair minded independents are Republicans who desire honest elections are more likely to support change if this is argued baaed upon the principles of fairness and not disputing the 2004 election
• For Kerry supporters this creates the additional problem of John Kerry being unfairly attacked for failing to fight a stolen election. If no evidence which would hold up in court of theft could be established to date, it was certainly not possible for Kerry to prove theft in the narrow window between election day and the counting of the electoral votes

In a democracy it is essential that all parties accept the result of elections as valid. The fact that, under the current system, it is not possible to verify the results to everyone’s satisfaction is sufficient to argue for changes in the voting machines, including a paper trail. Going beyond this and claiming fraud which cannot be proven acts to undermine the argument.

This issue gained more publicity after Robert Kennedy, Jr. wrote an article for Rolling Stone on election reform which was ultimatley a great disappointment due to promoting many weak and previously disputed arguments along with real arguments for election reform. My previous posts related to to this article are below the fold.
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