Updated: added video; see below
by David Swanson
Global Research, October 20, 2008
afterdowningstreet.org/
If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
A McCain “win” will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and against their will, obstructed voter registration drives, falsely warned students against voting where they attend school, falsely accused community groups of voter registration fraud, falsely alleged the widespread existence of voter fraud, and encouraged supporters to falsely believe McCain’s opponent is a foreign terrorist through speeches, recorded phone messages, and flyers. Already in early voting in a number of states there have been cases of votes on electronic machines visibly flipping to McCain or McKinney when intended for Obama. We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people’s right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls — which we will be denied any access to unless they have been “adjusted” to match the official counts.
Inciting your supporters to violence with racist and religious lies about your opponent, effectively alleging treason on absolutely no basis, should be enough, alone, to disqualify a campaign for the presidency of the United States. Working to block voters from registering should be enough on its own. Any of the dozens of creative forms of vote suppression currently being used by the Republicans should be enough. And allowing votes to be counted on completely unverifiable machines owned and controlled by corporations allied with your party should make the results illegitimate even if plausible. If McCain is declared the “winner,” it will not be plausible, but at this point he has so disgraced himself and our electoral system that he is no longer a legitimate candidate for president regardless of what the polls (themselves fallible, but all we’ve got) say just before election day. Too many people have already been denied the opportunity to even push the buttons and have their votes miscounted. Too much incendiary slander has been let loose. Too much visible vote flipping has already been documented.
If Obama officially wins, McCain is likely to challenge it, charging the Obama campaign with some of the very crimes engaged in by McCain himself. Our reaction should be exactly the same in the event of a McCain challenge as in the event of a McCain “victory.” We should not sit back for even a split second and wonder how it will work out. We should not try to organize a plan on the spur of the moment to travel to key battleground states. We should be prepared already to immediately travel to Washington, D.C., head straight for the White House, occupy Lafayette Square Park, the Ellipse, and surrounding streets, block entrances, and shut the place down until Obama is recognized as the president elect or we are guaranteed a credible election with universal registration and hand-counted paper ballots.
We may be there for days or weeks or months. But we must be there. We must be there by the millions. We must show each other, and the nation, and the world that we have had enough, that we will not stand for one more stolen election, that we will not give in to fear, lies, theft, and intimidation. If they choose to attack our nonviolent gathering of citizens, let them do it right in front of George W. Bush’s White House with the world’s media watching. We will not back down.
I’m not hoping it comes to this, of course. If it doesn’t because the official election results are credible and just, we should celebrate and prepare to lobby our government for real change. But if resistance does not develop because people are too scared and obedient to act, then you’ll still be glad you packed ahead of time, and you might want to look into tickets to Canada.
© Copyright David Swanson, afterdowningstreet.org/, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10624
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Rationales for Theft and Missing Exit Polls
The Republicans Couldn’t Steal the Election Again, Right? Right?
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Thanks for the info and link, Bob. The link you gave me didn’t work so I put the main link to the site in its place as I couldn’t find the exact link. If you find it, post it here.
Never break the law. If you want our rulers to heed your pleas, fall on your knees first and worship them like gods. Lick their boots, and grovel like a whipped cur. Never, never, never stoop to the level of violence. Don’t throw tea into the harbor. Don’t drive the money changers from the temple with a whip. And if a bunch of redcoats come to grab your guns, don’t shoot back. Hand them over promptly, while singing “God Save the King” (or “My Country Tis of Thee” or “Heil Dir in Seigerkranz” or whatever they call it where you live).
If you don’t know the lyrics, click here:
http://www.contemplator.com/
(snip)
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
(snip)
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Face it, both campaigns – Republican & Democrat – will do things that the other considers cheating. Purging voter roles is NOT cheating per se, but can be used to cheat. Voter fraud and voter registration fraud are cheating period.
It should also be noted that both campaigns are ready to field literally tens of thousands of attorneys – Obama has 5000 lined up in FL alone – to monitor / interfere with the election process.
Both Candidates and their respective campaigns are prepping to dispute this election and “finalize” via litigation rather than votes.
I would expect the aftereffects to be the same no matter who is elected, so Swanson’s threat should hold true for both sides – except their would be more violence from the Left than from the Right.
I see where Jonolan is coming from, cause it does sound weird to say if one candidate wins it was all clean, if the other one wins we need to shut down the capitol.
But the author is correct. We cannot allow this to happen again. Enough is enough of this bullshit, and McCain’s only chance of winning is through the very actions we are SEEING on the ground all over the place. Winners don’t have to cheat, losers do. And this time we have a candidate (some of us) who is prepared to fight back before the election even happens, and a national constituency that is fed up with being cheated of the very things we kill people for.
Ideally Nader/Kucinich ’08, but given the circumstances, sorry Lo,
Obama’08!
🙂
Good point, Shaine, and one of the many reasons I’m supporting and voting for Ralph Nader, but it doesn’t change the fact that if McCain does win that this election would then be also stolen and the people are going to take action.
The Democrats deserve to lose. The last two elections were stolen. The Democrats were fully aware of that yet did nothing to fix the system. A few changes were made in a few states, but nothing at the national level. Besides, electing either McCain or Obama is re-electing the status quo.
jonolan, check out some of the posts in this category:
http://wordpress.com/tag/voter-suppression-voting-rights/
I’m not supporting either McCain nor Obama, but it does look like the Republicans are the ones purging the voter rolls.
Do you want to give up democracy in order for your candidate to win? Not very “American”, is it? Is it OK to steal an election?
I wonder how Leftists like Swanson would feel if Conservatives did the same thing when or if Obama was elected. Somehow I guess they would suddenly advocate the use of troops against such evil Conservative radicals.