WE MUST REGAIN OUR FOCUS. CHECK IN HERE IF YOU AGREE.

[nashuaadvocate]

Hi folks,

This is the News Editor of The Nashua Advocate. We've been covering the election reform movement for 53 days now. Democratic Underground is more active on this front than any other group we have thus far located. What that means is, you are -- we are, here at Democratic Underground -- more focused on promoting and generating real change on this issue than any group of persons in the United States.

Read that sentence again.

Because it's the literal and absolute truth.

And if you think about it, this particular board at DU, "2004 Election Results and Discussion," is the perfect venue for discussing election reform (as the need for it was so patently on display during the 2004 presidential election, particularly in Ohio).

The danger, now that Bush's inauguration has passed, is that we who support election reform so irrevocably -- with our hearts, our heads, our pens, our skills, our voices -- will lose our focus.

I am now starting to see lots of threads here about, say, the nomination of Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. It's certainly okay to oppose that nomination -- it so happens The Advocate does -- but that is *not* an issue connected to either the 2004 election or the urgent need for election reform which that election (along with the 2000 election) made so obvious to us all. Likewise, threads about general "progressive" issues, like whether a radio-show host respects liberals, or whether Bush is a liar (which, I think, should be self-evident, anyway), or what people thought about the inauguration/coronation simply don't move the ball on election reform.

THIS IS OUR MOMENT. WE SEIZE IT OR LOSE IT FOREVER.

Things are happening right *now* which we should be focusing on and talking about, rather than giving 100 to 200 comments on posts which may have everything to do with progressive issues but *nothing* to do with the 2004 election and/or election reform.

By mingling general "progressive" talk with talk about the 2004 general election, we're merely reinforcing the image -- to anyone who visits here and is wondering what we're about and deciding, also, whether to join in -- that our beef is not so much with the inaccuracy of the 2004 presidential election, it's with the decline of progressivism, generally. Or that it's not the specific issue of election reform which draws our blood to a boil and ushers us to a board entitled "2004 Election Results and Discussion," but rather a general angst toward conservatives.

Do most of us feel that angst? Yes.

Do we need to post messages to that effect on a board explicitly targeted at discussion of the "2004 Election Results"? I don't think so.

REPUBLICANS CANNOT STAND AGAINST A UNITED, PRO-ELECTION REFORM FRONT.

We must be that front.

(That's why -- post-criticism -- The Advocate has now warmly embraced Kerry as an ally in this fight).

Obviously, anyone can post here whatever they want. But things are *happening* right now on the election reform front which we *need* to be focusing our attention on, perhaps even to the exclusion of all else. For instance:

* prospective hearings on election reform before the House Judiciary Committee (we need letters, calls, and faxes to Sensenbrenner's office to make this happen -- especially from Wisconsin residents);

* as many as ten election reform bills in the House and Senate which members of Congress have promised to sponsor (publicly-announced sponsors include: Senators Boxer, Dodd, Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein, Chafee, Harkin; the House Members involved with these bills are too numerous to name, but are headed, obviously, by John Conyers);

* a just-released Mitofksy study which is riddled with lies and/or inaccuracies and/or false conclusions, which the media will let slide by if we don't complain to them and to local newspapers about it (witness CNN's coverage, which effectively said that the exit polls skewed to Kerry because more Kerry voters participated in the polls, an imbecilic tautology which CNN has so thoroughly and blindly embraced it will no longer report the story);

* an ongoing need to analyze old and/or produce new data from Ohio and Florida from the last election, including (if possible) conducting new county-by-county exit polls, analyzing existing pre-election and exit polls, making FOIA requests, and so on;

* making the criminal investigation of Blackwell, if or as appropriate, a top priority -- an issue which is now in the hands of the D.O.J., which means we should be militating for a Special Prosecutor *now* before it's too late.

And that's just the beginning. This board must be THE war-room for the election reform effort.

Look around you: does this look to you, right now, like the primary -- indeed, perhaps the *only* -- PRO-ELECTION REFORM WAR ROOM IN AMERICA?

And yet that's what it is.

So, let's make it look that way. Let's commit and rededicate ourselves today to the notion that THIS BOARD IS GROUND ZERO for election reform efforts.

Can I get an amen?