This Week:

Quote of the Week

Election Day Tips

Resources for Election Day (And Beyond!)

Big, Small, and Uncorrected Errors
Correction #1: “You Know, Native Americans”
Correction #2: Contradicting Myself in the Same Paragraph!

Greetings,

Please vote. Then please get back to work transforming the United States into a country where voting has more meaning.

In solidarity,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

“The 1965 Voting Rights Act was among the crowning achievements of the civil rights era, and a defining moment for social justice and equality. The stories of the men and women who were willing to lay down their lives for the full rights of citizenship, including first and foremost the right to vote, are the stuff of history. Their accomplishments can never be erased. Yet . . . attempts to erode and undermine those victories have never ceased. Voter intimidation is not a relic of the past, but a pervasive strategy used with disturbing frequency in recent years. Sustaining the bright promise of the civil rights era, and maintaining the dream of equal voting rights for every citizen requires constant vigilance, courageous leadership, and an active, committed and well-informed citizenry.”

From the August 2004 report “The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America,” found on the web at http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/.

Election Day Tips

Some of you vote. Some of you do not. This section is for those who plan to vote on November 2.

In Minnesota, you can get basic voting information from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office (the actual Secretary of State is a horror story, but the office still does the basics pretty well). You can call them, toll-free, at 1-877-600-8683, or go online to http://www.sos.state.mn.us/.
(Click on “Find your Polling Place & Candidates on Your Ballot.” It’s easy.)

It’s not so easy in some other states. You could try calling your local elected official and asking them about where to vote and how you get a sample ballot. OR, you could call the toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE, run by Election Protection 2004. They offer “free, immediate and multi-lingual assistance to help voters with questions about registration and voting, and assist voters who encounter barriers to the ballot box. Thousands of callers have already been assisted in finding out where and how to register and vote.”

Resources for Election Day (And Beyond!)

Here is a small sampling of groups that are already organized, or are getting organized, to respond to whatever this election gives us. This is a wide range of groups, so you should be able to find one that you would like to join and/or support in other ways. Again, this is just a SMALL SAMPLING. There’s lots more going on, but check these out:

“COUNT EVERY VOTE 2004” is based in the Southeastern U.S. and their mission is “to strengthen democratic culture and deepen voter engagement with the electoral process by providing the skills and tools needed to protect the franchise in the southeastern region of the United States,” namely Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri. They are recruiting and training domestic monitors to observe, document and report on the election process in these states.

Supporting organizations include the African American Human Rights Foundation, the Black Radical Congress, Concerned Black Clergy, the NAACP National Voter Fund, the Women of Color Resource Center, and many more. Anybody who thinks the civil rights movement was only “back then” should look at this week’s “Quote” of the Week, then check out this group, which has been “organized to protect a right guaranteed to every U.S. citizen by the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” They are at http://www.counteveryvote2004.org/

The problem of disenfranchisement is not limited to the Southeastern part of the country, as another group calling itself THE ELECTION PROTECTION COALITION knows full well. They remind us that “more than four million Americans from all over the country were disenfranchised in 2000. People were denied the right to cast a vote – or to have their vote counted – by a range of problems...”

The EPC is a collaboration involving more than 100 national, state, and local public interest groups that has come together “to address the systemic neglect and/or obstruction of voting rights in African American and Latino communities in the modern civil rights era. The magnitude of this undertaking has brought this coalition together,” they say, in “the largest national voter protection mobilization since Freedom Summer forty years ago...”

“NO STOLEN ELECTIONS” is a campaign initiated in September of 2004 as a joint project of United for Peace & Justice, Global Exchange, Code Pink, and The Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. They have organized a pledge that you might be interested in signing, which reads:

“I remember the stolen presidential election of 2000 and I am willing to take action in 2004 if the election is stolen again. I support efforts to protect the right to vote leading up to and on Election Day, November 2nd. If that right is systematically violated, I pledge to join nationwide protests starting on November 3rd, either in my community, in the states where the fraud occurred, or in Washington DC.”

All sorts of good people have already signed it, including Elizabeth Martinez, Damu Smith, Starhawk, Howard Zinn, and Natalie Johnson Lee. Don’t know who all of them are? Go to the NSE website at http://www.nov3.us/http://www.nov3.us/

“THIS TIME WE’RE WATCHING” is a project of the Truth Force Training Center, League of Pissed Off Voters, and The Ruckus Society. Their goal is “to support existing election protection work with one more stop-gap measure: preparing community-based rapid mobilizations in the event of A) broad voting rights violations on election day, and/or B) disputes over the legitimate winner of the presidential election.” They also plan to work “to hold the next president accountable to the principles of peace and justice.” Find out how they plan to do that by visiting: http://www.ttww.org/watch/index.shtml

A group I don’t know too much about is called “BEYOND VOTING.” I don’t usually recommend groups about which I know so little, but their website has perhaps the best listing of local post-election actions around the country that I have seen. There were three dozen or more listed when I looked, in various places around the country. Find them at http://www.beyondvoting.org/. Click on “All Current Events.” You can also add your group’s event if you don’t see it listed already.

I feel bad about stopping here because there are SO many more efforts underway. I recommend to those who want to know more that you check out the links page of Beyond Voting, at http://beyondvoting.org/links.php#6 or go to the “Count Every Vote 2004” site at http://www.counteveryvote2004.org/frameset.html and click on “Links.”

Big, Small, and Uncorrected Errors

I have said in the past that I don’t really like the idea of news media running “corrections.” It seems like just yesterday that I said it, but in fact it was back in July of 1999, in Nygaard Notes #37, when I published my first-ever official Nygaard Notes correction. Here’s some of what I said back then, and it’s still what I think:

Pretty much every corporate (or “mainstream”) newspaper has a “Corrections” column, in which they tell you about some of the more obvious errors that they have made in previous editions. I think that these columns are objectionable, for two reasons. First, there are many published errors that never make it into the “Corrections” column, and they are often the largest and most significant errors, and they are errors both of commission and omission.

An example of an error of commission would be the routinely-repeated statement that the Social Security system is going “broke” or “bankrupt.” This is factually false, as I have repeatedly pointed out, and I have yet to see this acknowledged in any column, “Corrections” or otherwise.

An example of a major error of omission might be the international Gallup poll that was taken in late September of 2001, as the U.S. prepared to go to war against Afghanistan, allegedly in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the U.S. Gallup asked people in 37 countries this question: “In your opinion, once the identity of the terrorists is known, should the American government launch a military attack on the country or countries where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?” What they found was that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the world’s population opposed the Bush military response, a fact that remains unreported in this country to this day – except in the pages of Nygaard Notes – as far as I can tell.

The second reason I don’t like Corrections columns is directly related to the first: Even though the most important errors rarely appear here – and errors of omission virtually never appear here – these columns nonetheless give the (desired) impression that anything that is in the paper and does not appear in the “Corrections” column must, obviously, be “correct.” This is dangerously deceptive, and I could give many pages of examples of uncorrected errors from any newspaper you care to name that would illustrate this point.

Well, having said that, I have not just one, but TWO errors from the pages of this very newsletter to report this week.

Correction #1: “You Know, Native Americans”e

I was talking in Nygaard Notes #273 about things that were never mentioned in the presidential debates, and I suggested that some things were simply Unthinkable. In this context, I said that the words “Indian” or “Native American” were never uttered by the candidates. Eagle-eyed reader Rachel wrote to me and pointed out that “the words ‘Native American’ were in fact [spoken] in the last debate. John Kerry, in some pusillanimous religion-related warble, made sure to throw in that he had received a blessing from (unspecified) Native Americans recently...” (Nice turn of phrase, Rachel!)

She’s right. Here’s what Mr. Kerry said, verbatim: “And as I measure the words of the Bible – and we all do; different people measure different things – the Koran, the Torah, or, you know, Native Americans who gave me a blessing the other day had their own special sense of connectedness to a higher being...”

This is a great example of the type of correction that typically runs in the mass media; it’s an incorrect detail, but it’s not too important in the long run (and I don’t think Rachel was saying that it was fundamentally important; just incorrect). Rather than saying that Indians were never mentioned, what I could have said was that indigenous people were not mentioned in the debates except for in the standard anthropological sense, in which “their spirituality” or “their special sense of connectedness” is invoked for the purpose of conferring some legitimacy on something or other as desired by the candidate.

If anyone needs a few examples of substantial mentions of “Native Americans” – the type that we didn’t and won’t get – here’s a short list: Tribal sovereignty; treaty rights; the Third World-ization of reservation economies; freedom of religion for indigenous peoples. Here’s my favorite: The century-long – and ongoing – theft of billions of dollars from the Indian trust fund. This may be, as one Colorado newspaper put it recently, “the single largest and longest-lasting financial scandal in history involving the federal government of the United States.” How about it, George? John?

So, forgive me for saying that the candidates “never uttered” the words “Native American.” I stand corrected.

Correction #2: Contradicting Myself in the Same Paragraph!

This correction is somewhat more substantial than Correction #1. The error in this case appeared in the first part of Step 6 of my “Seven Steps to Better Elections,” which ran last week. The relevant part read: “REQUIRE A TRUE MAJORITY TO WIN. Currently, a majority of the votes that are cast is sufficient to win an election. I propose that no one be allowed to take office with less than 50 percent of the votes of all possible voters. Not voting, under these rules, would amount to a vote for ‘none of the above.’ If an election fails to yield a majority for any candidate, another election is immediately held, either with the same or with different candidates. This system would do away with the so-called “mandates” often earned with 20% of the possible votes.”

Oops. As alert reader Larry pointed out, that first sentence about “a majority of the votes” is wrong. Larry correctly said that “Currently the requirement for victory in almost all elections in the USA is a ‘plurality’ – the one with the most votes wins. The electoral college vote is an exception in that it requires a majority. A majority means 50 percent plus 1 vote.” He’s absolutely right.

There are a couple of ridiculous things about this particular error. One is that I have published different versions of this piece on at least three different occasions, and have never noticed this bone-headed mistake. Duh.

Part of the reason why it wasn’t noticed is the second ridiculous thing, which is this: Later in the very same paragraph in which the error appeared, I myself made clear that my comment about winning with a majority was wrong! When I talked about mandates earned with 20 percent of the votes, it’s pretty clear that such a thing could not happen if the winner had to get a majority in order to win. As I said: Duh.

So, again, I don’t think the error changes my basic point, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an error. So I want to extend an invitation and a thank-you.

Unlike the corporate media, I don’t have the money to hire a fact-checker, or even a proofreader! So let this be an invitation to all Nygaard Notes readers to let me know when I say something that is wrong. And a special thanks to Rachel and Larry for keeping me on my toes!