Note:The first part of this post is an announcement I gave trying to recruit volunteers from the Republican club meeting at my college in 2004 before the presidential elections.

I have a close friend, who I worked closely with in 2003 in Atlanta. Lester Mae Jackson is a little over 50, a strong Christian woman. She grew up in Chicago. A black woman struggling against racism and discrimination that engulfed her. She stood on the Mall in Washington and listened first hand to Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous I have a Dream speech. She was the first black woman to attend her college in a small Wisconsin town. She was very active in the civil rights movement in Chicago and Wisconsin. She became a nurse and worked for the Red Cross for a number of years. I worked alongside her as tutors in the Atlanta public school, for very little pay considering she was supporting herself, two daughters and a recent granddaughter. Lest you think I’m sharing a story of pity for a struggling citizen let me share with you something else. Lester Mae has her PHD; she by the standards we tend to hold here, has earned her respect. When Dr. Lester Mae Jackson speaks, everyone listens because she speaks from experience and wisdom. When she told me about the discrimination at the polls in the 2000 election that she had seen and experienced first hand, I did not explain it off as I might have if some other person has shared it with me, I listened. She talked about polls opening late, closing far too early, people being turned away who should have been able to vote. She acknowledged that whole communities in our country have a general feeling of helplessness at it relates to voting and our democracy; Communities that had been so frustrated by the injustices being done that ‘democracy’ had lost it’s meaning.

Fast forward a number of months. I saw an advertisement calling for volunteers to protect people’s right to vote and remembering Dr. Jackson’s words, I was compelled to sign-up. Election Protection is a non-partisan initiative to make sure every citizen of this country has a fair and equal opportunity to vote. Injustice exist.
I’m going to assume that you think politics and democracy is important. This election [2004 Presidential] is an opportunity to show the world that democracy works, that it empowers the people. If people are marginalized, discriminated against and kept from voting for wrong reasons, then our democracy has failed. Election Protection is an opportunity to show the world that the far left and the far right can still join together in a democracy to ensure that every voice is heard and every vote is counted.

I shared that and encouraged a room full of 50+ college republicans (and later to 15 college democrats) to spend their election day watching polls to make sure that all people had a chance to vote.  In other words, for our country to actually run as a democracy. Not one Republican came out and only one Democrat.  It made me realize we aren’t so much concerned about democracy as that “our side” wins.

There is a LOT of evidence and statistics that show that poor, working-class people are consistently marginalized during election time and their opportunity to vote is often unjustly taken. At what point do we acknowledge that we can’t really say we have a democracy when a large number of our societies voting members are denied that right. This is not just a series of mistakes, this is unjust, and I would venture to say, this is not a democracy.

The best place for a lot of info on what’s happened in past elections is Election Protection. Also, Voters Unite.
Here are two movie trailers also that are engaging and highlight some of the themes that have occurred:

How Ohio Pulled It Off

American Blackout

And specifically related to the 2004 election, Rolling Stone has a incredible article on the topic, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? by Robert F. Kennedy.

oh and a 2004 Voter Fraud