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Take Back the Presidency
The Boston
Statement
Drafted
Spring 2001 ~ Last Updated November 2002
George W. Bush is not our
president.
The people of the United States did not elect him. He occupies the White
House only because of a widespread and coordinated effort to stop people from
voting and to stop legal votes from being counted.
Obstruction of voting occurred at every level of government. Republican
officials violated election laws in more than a dozen states, costing the
Democratic candidate as many as 200,000 votes in Florida alone. Yet – contrary
to misleading media reports - they still could not deliver the majority vote to
Bush, either nationally or in Florida.
Faced with these failures, Bush knew that only a biased judiciary could
secure him the White House. He sued to stop the vote count, appealing to the
highest Federal court, where he relied on political allies and friends of the
family to rule in his favor.
In collusion with the Bush campaign, five Supreme Court justices stopped the
counting on the grounds that it would cause Bush "irreparable harm" in his aim
for the Presidency. They then cited the Equal Protection (14th)
Amendment to justify their denial of equal protection to the voting public, for
whom it was intended. Instead, they used the Amendment to protect their
candidate from being rejected by the electorate.
According to the Constitution, it is the president who appoints Supreme Court
justices. However, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court justices appointed
the president. The Court thus undermined the constitutional balance of power and
created a closed circle of power that excluded the will of the American
people.
The US Supreme Court bypassed the constitutional process for determining the
US president and imposed the loser of the election on the nation.
Bush and his allies have subverted our republic's most fundamental principles: the right
to vote, the separation of powers, and impartial justice. In so doing,
they have demonstrated that they cannot be entrusted with any of our democratic
institutions.
The Bush regime is illegitimate. He and his allies have effectively
overthrown our government. They reign without the consent of the governed,
and they hold the American people in their grip.
If we overlook their treasonous theft of the Presidency, what will they take
from us next?
HOW BUSH AND HIS
ALLIES STOLE THE PRESIDENCY
No tactic was beneath Bush,
his campaign, or his party in their effort to steal the
Presidency.
- Before and on Election Day, Republican officials in Florida – as well as
Tennessee, Georgia and other states – thwarted the access of citizens to their
ballots. There has been evidence of election fraud in AL, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA,
IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, LA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NY, PA, SC, TN,
TX, VA, WA, WI, and WV. In Florida, for example:
- Led by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Florida
election officials commissioned inaccurate software, financed by the
Republican Party, to purge legally eligible voters (allegedly felons) from the
rolls. They intentionally rejected the software vendor’s recommendation to
double-check the list of purged voters for accuracy.
- They "misplaced" motor-voter registration forms, singling out those coming
from African-American colleges.
- They tampered with absentee ballot applications.
- They intentionally provided heavily Democratic precincts with inadequate
voting machines, staff, and backup systems.
- They prevented disabled citizens from voting and ordered African-American
citizens to "stand in the back of the line."
- They refused to provide ballots in Spanish and other languages, despite
being required to do so by Florida law.
- They moved polling places in some Democratic precincts without notice,
opened others late or closed them early, and permitted still others to be
blocked by construction. This left many citizens waiting in line to vote and
prevented others from voting altogether – all in violation of Florida law.
- They designed ballots and voting instructions to confuse voters likely to
favor Gore, resulting in discarded Democratic votes. Many of the voided
"overvotes" were caused by specific instructions to "vote every page" on
ballots listing Presidential candidates over two pages.
- They silently condoned certain Republican Party officials in Florida who
voted for Bush multiple times.
- They engaged in extensive ballot tampering, as evidenced by the pattern of
voided "overvotes," particularly in African-American districts of Republican
counties. As of this writing, officials in Duval County continue their refusal
to release the ballots for examination by the media.
- They lied to elected Representatives such as
Corinne Brown (D-FL), who was told by Duval County officials that only
"a few hundred" ballots were voided, when in fact more than 20,000
ballots were voided. On the basis of this false information, Rep. Brown
did not file for a recount in Duval.
- After Election Day, the
Bush campaign used every means to stop votes from being
counted:
- They failed to conduct the legally mandated
automatic recounts in several heavily Democratic precincts.
- They stalled court-ordered vote counting in order to cause deadlines to
pass without completing the counts.
- They flew in Republican congressional staffers, organized riots, physically
assaulted people who were counting the votes, stopped the Miami-Dade hand count,
and then wined and dined the rioters as a reward.
- They pressured the media to persuade the public that manual vote counting
is inherently flawed, contrary to national practice, to Texas law, and to
court testimony.
- They pressured the media to persuade the public that we had to sacrifice
legitimate governance for the sake of stability. Such rationalization is
fallacious and pernicious. The real threat to political stability is a lack of
legitimacy. The more harmful destabilization or national crisis was the one
created by stopping the vote counts.
- They persistently petitioned courts to override legal state voting
procedures.
- Jeb Bush, the Governor of
Florida and the brother of George W. Bush, violated Florida law and
assisted in keeping people from the polls. For
example:
- He prevented voting by ex-felons from other states who had voting rights
restored, thereby violating two Florida court orders forbidding him from so
doing.
- He sanctioned roadblocks set up by the Florida State Police at selected
locations to prevent likely Democratic voters from reaching the polls.
- Katherine Harris, Secretary
of State of Florida, was also co-chair of the Bush election campaign in
Florida. Instead of recusing herself for conflict of interest, she used
her position to manipulate the election process, thereby violating
Florida election laws. For example:
- She illegally certified voting machines that permitted multiple votes per
voter for one candidate, establishing a culture of ballot tampering.
- She illegally failed to mandate the manual counting of write-in votes and
votes unreadable by machines.
- She certified the election results before the completion of legally
mandated manual hand counts.
- She certified that the machine recount had occurred, even though 20
counties had not yet performed such a recount.
- Richard Cheney, the Vice
Presidential candidate, with extensive connections to the Bush family,
manipulated election 2000 and violated the
Constitution:
- Cheney was a low-level administrator for Richard Nixon, the Chief of Staff
for Gerald Ford, Vice-Chairman of the Iran-Contra Hearings for Ronald Reagan,
and the Secretary of Defense who prosecuted the Gulf War for George H. W.
Bush. During the Clinton administration, he became the Halliburton CEO and was
made rich by military contracts.
- Although the Constitution specifies that the President and Vice President
must be "inhabitants" of different states, Bush and Cheney were legal
inhabitants of Texas. In July 2000, Cheney changed his "residence" to Wyoming,
but his employment, taxes, and car proved that he "inhabited" Texas. In this
and other manipulations he violated an Article of the Constitution and all
laws related to it.
- In Bush v. Gore, the
Supreme Court handed down what is likely the most anti-constitutional
decision in its history. Legal scholars have stated that it is without
foundation in law:
- The majority of Justices granted a stay (halt) of the hand count in
Florida, thereby asserting Federal jurisdiction in clear violation of the
Constitution and U.S. law.
- The majority of Justices granted a stay of the hand count in Florida on
the basis that such a vote count might cause "irreparable harm" to George W.
Bush by "casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his
election." HIS election? Hundreds of law professors, from across the political
spectrum, responded: "The five justices were acting as political proponents
for candidate Bush, not as judges. … [They] moved to avoid the ‘threat’ that
Americans might learn that in the recount, Gore got more votes than Bush. This
is presumably ‘irreparable’ harm because if the recount proceeded and the
truth once became known, it would never again be possible to completely
obscure the facts. But it is not the job of the courts to polish the image of
legitimacy of the Bush Presidency by preventing disturbing facts from being
confirmed. Suppressing the facts to make the Bush government seem more
legitimate is the job of propagandists, not judges."
- The majority invoked the "Equal Protection" clause in the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution (in which "no state shall make or enforce any
law which shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws") on behalf of those who were not plaintiffs, contrary
to its own clear precedents.
- On November 24, 2000, although the Court agreed to hear two of Bush’s
objections to the recount, it refused to review his objection that such a
recount would violate the Equal Protection clause. It decided that this
objection was devoid of merit. Three weeks later, the Court changed its mind
and ruled that the Equal Protection clause was grounds enough to invalidate
the votes of millions of Floridians.
- The Court, at least since 1945, has consistently held that the Equal
Protection clause can be invoked only if the discrimination was intentional.
In 1980 the Court stated, "Only if there is purposeful discrimination
can there be a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment." The plaintiffs never argued that the different ways of counting
ballots constituted purposeful discrimination.
- The legal argument of the decision was so faulty that the Court felt
compelled to qualify that this argument could not be used as a legal precedent
for any other case.
- Further, this decision violates the equal treatment it purports to
protect. As Justice Breyer dissents, "By halting the manual recount, and thus
ensuring that the uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any
standard, this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted harm.
And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the Court is attempting to
protect. The manual recount would itself redress a problem of unequal
treatment of ballots."
- The majority usurped the power of Congress to determine the outcome of the
election in clear violation of both the Constitution and accepted law. In
doing so, they reversed the proper distribution of powers in the federal
government by giving the Supreme Court justices the power to "select" the
President: an "elected" office as defined in the Constitution.
- The majority clearly violated the state rights of Florida by accepting the
case without Federal jurisdiction.
- Several of the justices in the majority had personal conflicts of
interests in Bush v. Gore, but failed to recuse themselves from the case.
- The majority asserted the primacy of the December 12th "safe
harbor" deadline over the December 18th "reporting of electors"
deadline, in violation of Federal law. This created an illusion of the lack of
time to properly count the votes, thereby overlooking the Court’s own role in
creating this crisis.
- The mainstream media,
controlled by a small number of mega-corporations, have concealed the
election violations of the Bush campaign and the gravity of his
appointment to office:
- They have failed to investigate or report the violations of election law
and other manipulations that are known or suspected in Florida and other
states.
- Their occasional coverage of African-American outrage over the election
has been focused on "anecdotes," "perceptions," "emotions," and so forth,
rather than on the facts of election violations underlying this outrage.
- They have consistently failed to report the grounds for prosecuting those
who have violated election laws.
- They have treated the Bush appointment to the Presidency as legitimate and
not particularly newsworthy.
- They have glossed over Bush’s illegal behaviors in Texas, including his
military record and three arrests, in contrast to their persistent, in-depth
reporting of Clinton’s behaviors during his campaigns, terms, and after he
left office.
- They have failed to analyze or investigate the Supreme Court decision of
December 12, 2000 in light of the many questions that have been raised as to
its foundation in law.
- They have withheld publicity on public protests, including mass
demonstrations on Inauguration Day.
- They have tried to cover up Bush’s cognitive impairments and lack of
knowledge of domestic and international issues.
- They have continued to report falsely on the media vote count in Florida.
Typically a headline claims a Bush victory, while the facts cited in the
article show that Gore would have won. When more evidence arrives of a Gore
majority, the media remain silent.
- They refer to the media vote count as a "recount," even though many of the
ballots were not counted a first time.
Would a thorough
investigation of Election 2000 uncover additional illegal, unethical,
unconstitutional tactics that the Bush regime has used to occupy the White
House?
THE BUSH REGIME: A War On American
Democracy
Bush has brought shame on American democracy in the eyes of a stunned
world.
His seizure of power did not come about suddenly. The American right wing,
backed by powerful corporations, has been crafting its takeover for decades. The
Bush coup d’etat is a consummation of the anti-democratic political tradition
that gave us McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and Watergate.
Even though Americans have voted for a Democratic Chief Executive for three
consecutive presidential elections, the right wing now exercises almost complete
control over the Federal Government. Corporate money rules the Republican Party,
and it gags the Democratic Party as an effective opposition.
Flaunting his illegal appointment to the Presidency, Bush is rapidly enacting
an extremist agenda that jeopardizes our social and planetary survival. His
regime, like his ascendancy to office, subverts democratic governance for the
profit of special corporate interests and right-wing ideological aims.
The Bush regime is a declaration of war on our democracy. We are fighting
back. We call for the citizenry to restore social justice and create a way of
life that will sustain our planet. We act out of love for our country and belief
in its founding principles.
Our goals:
- Investigate Election
2000
- Expose and prosecute
the criminals
- Impeach and disbar the
Rehnquist 5, remove them from the Court
- Remove Bush, Cheney
and their appointees from office
- Reform our electoral
system
We will not abdicate our rights.
We will not back down.
The will of the people must prevail.
Version 3.01, May 6, 2002; © Copyright 2001 by Clark,
Clarke, Engler, Moliver, & Sacks
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