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US Election Briefs: Results, Vote Tampering?
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Workers World - Jan 17, 2008 issue
http://www.workers.org/2008/editorials/primaries_0117
EDITORIAL
Behind the votes for Obama & Rodham Clinton
The surprisingly strong victory for Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses
and his close second to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New Hampshire
primary have put the campaign of the African-American senator from
Illinois front and center on the U.S. political scene and put him
neck-and-neck with Clinton. His results are all the more impressive
because they take place in lightly populated states whose
overwhelmingly white voters greatly underrepresent the big-city and
suburban population centers of the country. With these contests showing
that a large number of young white people are enthusiastic supporters
of Obama, tens of millions of people who hadnt believed it possible
that a Black man might be elected president in the racist U.S. now
might think Obama could be the first.
None of this changes the basic truths about U.S. elections. The
presidential contest remains firmly in the hands of the ruling class
and their politicians in the two big capitalist parties, the
Republicans and the Democrats. Who wins is closely related to the
amount of money raised by the candidates and leaves him or her beholden
to the ruling-class donors. Clinton and Obama have been the biggest
fundraisers, even out-raising the Republican candidates. All the
leading candidates of both parties have been firm defenders of U.S.
imperialist interests and big capital all their political careers,
still are, and can be expected to remain so.
Still, Obamas strong showing amid the large turnouts already has
lessons about the mood of the population. Since Iowa is at least
92-percent and New Hampshire 94-percent white, it says little about
nonwhite voters, who will be heard from in large numbers only on Jan.
19 and 26 in South Carolina, Jan. 29 in Florida and then on Feb. 5, the
so-called Super Tuesday of primaries in more than 20 states.
The first lesson comes from the large turnout in Iowa for the
Democrats, double the Republican turnout and almost double the
Democrats 2004 number. A high proportion of the participants were
youthful voters. The high participation in the Democratic caucuses in
Iowa by people calling themselves independents, that is, not members
of either party, reflects their strong revulsion to the Bush gang.
Many post-caucus analysts"including Obama and candidate John Edwards,
who came in second in Iowa just slightly ahead of Clinton and a distant
third in New Hampshire"said that Iowa showed the people wanted change
and they were the candidates who most represented change. Disgust with
the Bush gang on the one hand and perhaps consciousness of impending
economic difficulties on the other has moved the voting population
somewhat to the left.
Those selecting Obama seem to be looking beyond his program. John
Edwards has a program that is more pro-labor, pro-health care and
anti-war than Obama. Hillary Rodham Clintons domestic program is also
more progressive than Obamas, although among many anti-war activists
she is identified as an early supporter of the Iraq war who wont
cleanly break with that position. The voters perception of the
candidates is not necessarily connected to the spoken or written
promises. If they see Obama as an agent of change this appears to come
from the image he projects.
Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who is running an independent progressive
campaign in the Reconstruction Party and contending for nomination of
the Green Party, was interviewed following the Iowa caucuses. She took
a critical view of Obamas team and program, and what she believes
could be a negative impact on the struggle for Black rights. McKinney
points out that Obamas main foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the ultimate Democratic Party cold warrior.
Of course Clintons foreign policy advisers, like Madeleine Albright
and Richard Holbrooke, are the people who planned and executed the war
against Yugoslavia. And McKinney doesnt let her and Edwards off the
hook on this. But in discussing Obama, McKinney also notes that by
playing down the differences in how Black and white are treated in the
U.S., Obama does nothing to help, for example, the people displaced
from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.
There is little doubt that an Obama campaign that looks successful will
draw the fire of the most virulent racists in the U.S. This will happen
even if the majority of the ruling class is content to have him run and
even to win. Clinton, who has been in the public eye for 15 years, has
already drawn the fire of the worst sexists and male chauvinists. It
would be naive to think the reactionary Republican Party will campaign
without trying to manipulate backward sentiments of racism and/or
sexism.
With an Obama candidacy, working-class and revolutionary organizations
will have to stay sensitive to the impact of racism on the electoral
campaign, even as the left differentiates itself from Obama as well as
the Republican. The left will also have to adjust its approach should
there be an active intervention of the population in the electoral
process, especially if an economic or war crisis arises during the
election.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wwnews-subscribe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
***
ELECTION VOTE TAMPERING?
Various charges have already started flying about the results in Iowa
and New Hampshire, partly based on the use of electronic
voting machines and the inaccuracy of polls for the Democratic race but
not the Republican primary in NH. For a continuing discussion see
BradBlog here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530
Here's an interesting possible solution:
sent by Dean Vantari - Jan 9, 2008
Audit the Iowa Caucus Results!
Since the results of the Iowa caucus will be tabulated by an Atlanta
based company using a touch-tone technology that provides no paper
trail, it would be impossible to audit the results unless the
detailed electoral records are posted on the Internet, so that anyone
can download the file and compute the results for themselves.
It would be a trivial matter to post the caucus records as a
searchable SQL database table, using the caucus ID# as a key, so that
voters who attended the caucus could verify that the results that are
posted on the electoral database match their own individual results.
Conspiracy theories, whether true or not, are best nipped at the
root. This trivial technical change would insure that the results
have not been manipulated, and that we do not hear from anyone later
on in the electoral process, claiming that it was a fraud. Yes, it
can be done!
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