Gaining Poll Position

You gotta fight for your right to vote?

A A A Comments By Janet Kim Tuesday, Oct 18 2005

Mark Crispin Miller: Won't get fooled again

Details

Panel Discussion on Voting Rights
Housing Works Used Book Café
126 Crosby Street
212-334-3324
Tuesday at 8

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Rehashing the funereal decision of 2004 could be called sore-loser bewailing. The election was decided by the "moral values" of a new majority of evangelical Christians. Or was it (again) theft? Michael Eric Dyson, the Afristocrat-reproaching author of Is Bill Cosby Right? and the forthcoming Come Hell or High Water, argues that conservative blacks voted Bush for his opposition to gay marriage, neglecting the socioeconomic inequities burdening poor blacks that are especially resonant after Katrina. But Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon and Fooled Again, contends it was theft. In Ohio, unused voting machines sat in warehouses while Democratic precincts remained undersupplied, and Democratic poll watchers and press were ordered to vacate the County Administration Building in Warren County (the last Ohio county to report its numbers) due to a terrorist threat that the FBI never issued. Whatever the reasons, the next step is clear: social action. Looking to channel anger into a movement for electoral reform, Dyson and Miller, along with a moderator from Mother Jones and Megan Hull from the Center for Civic Participation, weigh the culpability of both parties and the media, the existence of a right-wing majority purporting to be conservative, and what can be done to protect a basic civic right.