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BOSTON STATEMENT

Take Back the Presidency

The Boston Statement (Rev. 2.0a)

Primary Statement

HOW BUSH AND HIS ALLIES STOLE THE PRESIDENCY

CALLS TO ACTION: We ask what we can do for our country

THE BUSH REGIME: A WAR ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

SIGNATORIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Primary Statement

George W. Bush is not our president.

The people of the United States did not elect him. He occupies the White House only because of a widespread and coordinated effort to stop people from voting and to stop legal votes from being counted.

Obstruction of voting occurred at every level of government. Republican officials violated election laws in more than a dozen states, costing the Democratic candidate as many as 200,000 votes in Florida alone.  Yet - contrary to misleading media reports - they still could not deliver the majority vote to Bush, either nationally or in Florida.

Faced with these failures, Bush knew that only a biased judiciary could secure him the White House. He sued to stop the vote count, appealing to the highest Federal court, where he relied on political allies and friends of the family to rule in his favor. 

In collusion with the Bush campaign, five Supreme Court justices stopped the counting on the grounds that it would cause Bush "irreparable harm" in his aim for the Presidency. They then cited the Equal Protection (14th) Amendment to justify their denial of equal protection to the voting public, for whom it was intended.  Instead, they used the Amendment to protect their candidate from being rejected by the electorate.

According to the Constitution, it is the president who appoints Supreme Court justices.  However, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court justices appointed the president.  The Court thus undermined the constitutional balance of power and created a closed circle of power that excluded the will of the American people.

The US Supreme Court bypassed the constitutional process for determining the US president and imposed the loser of the election on the nation.

Bush and his allies have subverted our republic's most fundamental principles: the right to vote, the separation of powers, and impartial justice. In so doing, they have demonstrated that they are unworthy of holding public office.

The Bush regime is illegitimate. He and his allies have effectively overthrown our government.  They reign without the consent of the governed, and they hold the American people in their grip.

If we overlook their treasonous theft of the Presidency, what will they take from us next?

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    • HOW BUSH AND HIS ALLIES STOLE THE PRESIDENCY

    No tactic was beneath Bush, his campaign, or his party in their effort to steal the Presidency.

    A. Before and on Election Day, Republican officials in Florida – as well as Tennessee, Georgia and more than a dozen other states1 -- thwarted the access of citizens to their ballots.  In Florida, for example:

    • Led by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Florida election officials commissioned inaccurate software, financed by the Republican Party, to purge legally eligible voters (allegedly felons) from the rolls. They intentionally rejected the software vendor’s recommendation to double-check the list of purged voters for accuracy.
    • They “misplaced” motor-voter registration forms, singling out those coming from African-American colleges.
    • They tampered with absentee ballot applications.
    • They intentionally provided heavily Democratic precincts with inadequate voting machines, staff, and backup systems.
    • They prevented disabled citizens from voting and ordered African-American citizens to “stand in the back of the line.”
    • They refused to provide ballots in Spanish and other languages, despite being required to do so by Florida law.
    • They moved polling places in some Democratic precincts without notice, opened others late or closed them early, and permitted still others to be blocked by construction. This left many citizens waiting in line to vote and prevented others from voting altogether – all in violation of Florida law.
    • They designed ballots and voting instructions to confuse voters likely to favor Gore, resulting in discarded Democratic votes. Many of the voided “overvotes” were caused by specific instructions to “vote every page” on ballots listing Presidential candidates over two pages.
    • They silently condoned certain Republican Party officials in Florida who voted for Bush multiple times.
    • They engaged in extensive ballot tampering, as evidenced by the pattern of voided “overvotes," particularly in African-American districts of Republican counties.  As of this writing, officials in Duval County continue their refusal to release the ballots for examination by the media.
    • They lied to elected Representatives such as Corinne Brown (D-FL), who was told by Duval County officials that only “a few hundred” ballots were voided, when in fact more than 20,000 ballots were voided. On the basis of this false information, Rep. Brown did not file for a recount in Duval.

    1There has been evidence of election fraud in AL, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, LA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NY, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WI, and WV.

    • B. After Election Day, Bush and his campaign used every means to stop votes from being counted.  For example:
    • They stalled court-ordered vote counting in order to cause deadlines to pass without completing the counts.
    • They flew in Republican congressional staffers, organized riots, stopped the Miami-Dade hand count, and then wined and dined the rioters as a reward.
    • They pressured the media to persuade the public that manual vote counting is inherently flawed, contrary to national practice, to Texas law, and to court testimony.
    • They pressured the media to persuade the public that we had to sacrifice legitimate governance for the sake of stability.  Such rationalization is fallacious and pernicious.  The real threat to political stability is a lack of legitimacy.  The only destabilization or national crisis was the one created by stopping the vote counts.  A statewide hand count could have easily been accomplished with a minimum of disruption.
    • They persistently petitioned courts to override legal state voting procedures.
    • C. Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida and the brother of George W. Bush, violated Florida law and assisted in keeping people from the polls.
    • For example:
    • . He prevented voting by ex-felons from other states who had voting rights restored, thereby violating two Florida court orders forbidding him from so doing.
    • He sanctioned roadblocks set up by the Florida State Police at selected locations to prevent likely Democratic voters from reaching the polls.
    • D. Katherine Harris, Secretary of State of Florida, was also co-chair of the Bush election campaign in Florida. Instead of recusing herself for conflict of interest, she used her position to violate election laws and manipulate the election process. For example:
    • She certified voting machines that permitted multiple votes per voter for one candidate, violating Florida law and providing an opportunity for ballot tampering.
    • She violated Florida law by failing to mandate the manual counting of write-in votes and votes unreadable by machines.
    • She certified the election results before the completion of legally mandated manual hand counts.
    • She certified that the machine recount had occurred, even though 20 counties had not yet performed such a recount.
    • E. Richard Cheney, the Vice Presidential candidate, with extensive connections to the Bush family, appointed himself to manage the Bush Presidency. For example:
    • When asked by the Bush campaign to find the best possible candidate for Vice President, he found himself the only qualified person.
    • Although the Constitution specifies that the President and Vice President must be “inhabitants” of different states, Bush and Cheney were legal inhabitants of Texas.  In July 2000, Cheney changed his “residence” to Wyoming, but his employment, taxes, and car proved that he “inhabited” Texas.
    • F. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court handed down what is likely the most anti-constitutional decision in its history.  Legal scholars have stated that it is without foundation in law.  Specifically.
    • The majority of Justices granted a stay (halt) of the hand count in Florida, thereby asserting Federal jurisdiction in clear violation of the Constitution and U.S. law.
    • As Justice Souter specified in his dissent, “If this Court had allowed the State to follow the course indicated by the opinions of its own Supreme Court, it is entirely possible that there would ultimately have been no issue requiring our review, and political tension could have worked itself out in the Congress following the procedure provided in 3 U. S. C. §15” (wherein the Congress decides the victor)
    • 26. The majority of Justices granted a stay of the hand count in Florida on the basis that such a vote count might cause “irreparable harm” to George W. Bush by “casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” HIS election?
    • But Justice Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented from Scalia’s argument. “To stop the counting of legal votes, the majority today departs from three venerable rules of judicial restraint that have guided the Court throughout its history.  On questions of state law, we have consistently respected the opinions of the highest courts of the States.  On questions whose resolution is committed at least in large measure to another branch of the Federal Government, we have construed our own jurisdiction narrowly and exercised it cautiously. On federal constitutional questions that were not fairly presented to the court whose judgment is being reviewed, we have prudently declined to express an opinion.  The majority has acted unwisely. … Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm.”
    • Hundreds of law professors, from across the political spectrum, responded: “The five justices were acting as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges. … [They] moved to avoid the ‘threat’ that Americans might learn that in the recount, Gore got more votes than Bush.  This is presumably ‘irreparable’ harm because if the recount proceeded and the truth once became known, it would never again be possible to completely obscure the facts. But it is not the job of the courts to polish the image of legitimacy of the Bush Presidency by preventing disturbing facts from being confirmed. Suppressing the facts to make the Bush government seem more legitimate is the job of propagandists, not judges.”
    • The majority invoked the “Equal Protection” clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution (in which “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”) on behalf of those who were not plaintiffs, contrary to its own clear precedents.
    • It claimed that voters from different counties were not being “equally protected” because their votes would not be counted according to the same standard.  But none of these “unequally protected” voters brought a lawsuit on their own behalf.  Instead, the plaintiff was Bush, who had no personal claim that he was being injured under the Equal Protection Amendment.  Bush, in other words, had no “standing to sue.”
    • According to legal scholar Jamin Raskin: “In equal protection cases, certainly those involving racial minorities, the Rehnquist Court has been adamant that plaintiffs seeking a hearing may not assert the rights of others or abstract principles of fairness but must establish standing by showing their own concrete personal injury at the hands of the government. … In Allen v. Wright (1984) … Justice O’Connor stated that citizens have no general right to make government comply with the law. … But in Bush v. Gore, the Rehnquist majority did not even ask, much less explain, how Bush was personally injured by the hypothetical possibility that anonymous third-party citizens might have their ballots counted differently in Florida’s presidential election. Nor, for that matter, did the justices ask how stopping the vote counting would redress those third-party injuries.”
    • On November 24, 2000, although the Court agreed to hear two of Bush’s objections to the recount, it refused to review his objection that such a recount would violate the Equal Protection clause.  It decided that this objection was devoid of merit. Three weeks later, the Court changed its mind and ruled that the Equal Protection clause was grounds enough to invalidate the votes of millions of Floridians.
    • The Court, at least since 1945, has consistently held that the Equal Protection clause can be invoked only if the discrimination was intentional.  In 1980 the Court stated, “Only if there is purposeful discrimination can there be a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”   The plaintiffs never argued that the different ways of counting ballots constituted purposeful discrimination.
    • The legal argument of the decision was so faulty that the Court felt compelled to qualify that this argument could not be used as a legal precedent for any other case.
    • Further, this decision violates the equal treatment it purports to protect.
    • As Justice Breyer dissents, “By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that the uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard, this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted harm.  And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the Court is attempting to protect. The manual recount would itself redress a problem of unequal treatment of ballots.
    • The majority usurped the power of Congress to determine the outcome of the election in clear violation of both the Constitution and accepted law. In doing so, they reversed the proper distribution of powers in the federal government by giving the Supreme Court justices the power to “select” the President: an “elected” office as defined in the Constitution.
    • As Justice Breyer dissents, “The Twelfth Amendment commits to Congress the authority and responsibility to count electoral votes. … after States have tried to resolve disputes … Congress is the body primarily authorized to resolve remaining disputes. … The power to determine rests with the two Houses, and there is no other constitutional tribunal.”
    • The majority clearly violated the state rights of Florida by accepting the case without Federal jurisdiction. 
    • As Justice Ginsburg observes, “The extraordinary setting of this case has obscured the ordinary principle that dictates its proper resolution: Federal courts defer to state high courts’ interpretations of their State’s own law. This principle reflects the core of federalism, on which all agree.”
    • And, Justice Breyer clarifies that the “petitioners’ claims … raise no significant federal questions.”
    • Several of the justices in the majority had personal conflicts of interests in Bush v. Gore, but failed to recuse themselves from the case.
    • The majority asserted the primacy of the December 12th “safe harbor” deadline over the December 18th “reporting of electors” deadline, in violation of Federal law. This created an illusion of the lack of time to properly count the votes, thereby overlooking the Court’s own role in creating this crisis.
    • As Justice Ginsburg observes, “Time is short in part because of the Court’s entry of a stay on December 9, several hours after an able circuit judge in Leon County had begun to superintend the recount process.”
    • G. The mainstream media, controlled by a small number of mega-corporations, have concealed the election violations of the Bush campaign and the gravity of his appointment to office. For example:
    • They have failed to investigate or report the violations of election law and other manipulations that are known or suspected in Florida and other states.
    • Their occasional coverage of African-American outrage over the election has been focused on “anecdotes,” “perceptions,” “emotions,” and so forth, rather than on the facts of election violations underlying this outrage.
    • They have consistently failed to report the grounds for prosecuting those who have violated election laws.
    • They have treated the Bush appointment to the Presidency as legitimate and not particularly newsworthy.
    • They have glossed over Bush’s illegal behaviors in Texas, including his military record and three arrests, in contrast to their persistent, in-depth reporting of Clinton’s behaviors during his campaigns, terms, and after he left office.
    • They have failed to analyze or investigate the Supreme Court decision of December 12, 2000 in light of the many questions that have been raised as to its foundation in l
    • They have withheld publicity on public protests, including mass demonstrations on Inauguration Da
    • They have tried to cover up Bush’s cognitive impairments and lack of knowledge of domestic and international issue
    • . They have continued to report falsely on the media vote count in Florida.  Typically a headline claims a Bush victory, while the facts cited in the article show that Gore would have won. When more evidence arrives of a Gore majority, the media remain silen.
    • They refer to the media vote count as a “recount,” even though many of the ballots were not counted a first time.
    • Would a thorough investigation of Election 2000 uncover additional illegal, unethical, unconstitutional tactics that the Bush regime has used to occupy the White House?

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