We have come so much further in race than in gender. (Not far enough in either.) When I think of the astonishing effort that ECS (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) & all those meeting & marching women put in to get women to be considered five-fifths human enough to vote & I see how invisible women in history still are, I realize how many miles upon miles we have to go for justice. Did you see CNN do huge gorgeously produced pieces on women's battles for rights this year? In this very election, hundreds & hundreds of thousands of older women in caucus states are cheated of their share of pledged delegates & popular votes because they are forbidden the Absentee Ballot.
In Texas, Hillary's voters were plus four in the primary and minus 12 in the caucus on the same day. A 16% swing! Suppose we had only seen the caucus results?
Since I talked to 87-yr-old Vera in Iowa, "I can't caucus, honey, I'm a cripple," I've been trying, like Diogenes looking for one honest reporter, to get the 15% Caucus Skew covered in any media. I chirped up to Vera, "Could you vote by mail absentee?" 2008 may well be her last vote. She longs for the 44th president to be a woman, to be the superbly prepared Hillary who is a champion for so many of us, who bears both the vile and veiled misogyny with such grace and grit, who has remarkable visions for a green jobs economy, insourcing, and actually universal health care. "Oh, no, we can't have an Absentee Ballot in a caucus state. If I can't be there in my body, I don't count." Vera should count.
I made 2400 volunteer phone calls for Hillary. Every 8th phone call I made into a caucus state got me: "No, dear, I don't dare go to caucus, I'm off-balance." I'm still in shock at the extent of this problem. There is an epidemic of older women with a terrible fear of falling who are prevented from voting in the benighted anti-democratic Caucus States. No ride will help them. They know a fall is the death sentence. Ruth said in anguish and fury, "Just because I'm sick doesn't mean I can't think."
The appalling injustice of caucuses is just what the (non-lemming) superdelegates were designed to scrutinize. These older women for Hillary know they've been cheated, silenced, disappeared. The Caucuses are The Big Lie. The Will of the People? Which people? The Will of (Only the Healthy) People?
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on wowowow in Comment on Lesley Stahl's post. Comment is shown as 4/9/08 5:10 am about #119.
contact caucusdebacle@gmail.com
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3 comments:
Vera should count indeed.
IT does seem like there should be some way to include these folk more easily. WE have electronic devices that do most everything these days.
Hi iotas & chancelucky -- Thanks for visiting!
I am obsessed with speaking on behalf of the silenced -- like Vera. The Caucus Skew is a huge & shameful voter suppression.
Chancelucky -- most of these older folks don't have computers. A good ole fashioned Absentee Ballot will do fine until enough generations cycle thru & everyone has access to some kind of verifiable electronics.
Presently CA, for instance, has permanent Vote-By-Mail Absentee voting & for 6 years I've been permanent Vote By Mail. You get your absent ballot unless you miss two major elections. There's a paper trail. I've voted by mail since 1988 when the campaign I was working on required it becaue we might not be near our own polling place on election day.
I thought I would miss going to the polls, but found the time I could take musing and carefully punching the holes or coloring in the arrow felt even more 'sacred.'
In Oregon they all only vote by mail in the whole state. Some folks huff & puff about Problems, but it's manufactured nonsense.
If we want to even pretend to call ourselves a Democracy, we gotta drive a stake thru the heart(lessness) of Caucuses.
In the meantime, I need help contacting the One Honest Reporter or The One Honest Superdelegate or The One Honest Pundit to break this Deplorable Caucus Skew story re Hillary's hundreds & hundreds of thousands of cheated, disappeared voters. Please pass the word along as often as you can.
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