General Wesley Clark - ClarkCast, Election Integrity
August 8, 2006
Transcription by Melange

It's Tuesday night, the eighth of August and Senator Joe Lieberman has just conceded defeat in the Democratic primary in Connecticut. I want to take a step back from what that race means just for a moment to ask all of you to realize how important the 2006 midterm elections are going to be to turn things around in this country. We've been saying it and I know you believe it, that these elections will very well determine the future of our economy, our security and our ability to move forward as a great nation in a dangerous world. It is a dangerous world and we need the best that the US electorate can bring to Washington.

This election in 2006 is a chance to bring new leadership to Washington - that's important. It's important to have people in the United States Congress who will do their duty, who will challenge the Executive branch, who will work for putting the country above a political party and who will work to help shape American policies to put America back in a strong, value-based leadership role in the world.

It's not enough for us out in the political community to give our ideas. It's not enough to demonstrate. It's not enough to carry signs. It's not enough to write policy papers. We've got to walk the walk and that means we've got to deliver the votes.

It's the vote that matters. So, it's about taking the ideas, our energy and organizing - organizing neighborhood by neighborhood, organizing business by business, church by church, group by group; friends, neighbors, people we know through our social activities or business activities and getting out the vote. Because ultimately it's not enough for us to talk about a better America, we have to vote for a better America. The Constitution is what this is all about. We must follow through on our duty to vote, to bring our ideas, to hold our leaders accountable, to question our government during good times and bad and we've got to put people in office who will live up to what the electorate expects of them.

Now this has been a tough fight on voting and it's not over, by a long shot. You know, we started with the Declaration of Independence saying that essentially God created us all equal but it's taken us a long time to get around to that. We've been through a Civil War, we've been through the problem of direct election of Senators, we've been through the problem of ending the property owning requirements for voting to universal male suffrage and then getting women the right to vote. We've been through the civil rights movement so that every American had a right to vote regardless of the color of their skin.

I grew up in Little Rock in the 1950's and I saw how wrenching this fight was. When President Johnson signed the National Voting Rights Act into law, he outlawed literacy tests and poll taxes to qualify and it was almost the final step. Of course that Voting Rights Act has been renewed but we're not through yet because what we've got is we've got the integrity of our election process in question. We've got the questions about Florida. We've got the questions about Ohio.

Now, I was in politics in Ohio in 2004. I went to see my good friend the mayor of Columbus, Mike Coleman and he told me in October that they'd registered 100,000 new voters, 80% of them were Democrats and he told me then the state…Secretary of State wouldn't put them on the voter rolls. He wanted to force these voters to use provisional ballots and I guess it worked. That's a terrible thing in a democracy when we believe we fought for freedom in this country to have the right to elect our own government.

How can we tolerate a democracy where the right to vote is guaranteed by law but access to voting is restricted? We have to demand a full, fair and free exercise of our right to vote, with every single vote counted.

So, we're not done yet on this voting system. We've got to get people interested in the election system. We had a 12% turnout in Russ Warner's primary race in David Dreier's district in California. Jim Webb's primary for the US Senate, the turnout rate was 3%. This is a problem for us. If we believe in this country and we believe that one of the key freedoms is the freedom to elect the people who will lead us, then we've got to exercise that right and that means getting a turnout. It means standing up for the integrity of our election system and it means looking at new ways like maybe mail voting to be able to improve our ability to bring in the votes.

So tonight we saw the primary system at work. We saw an incumbent senator defeated. We'll spend the next month, two months and three months talking about the significance of this. Certainly there are many explanations for it but I think what it most validates is the ability of an informed citizenry, energized by an issue to challenge the establishment. Regardless of what party it is, ultimately in this country, ideas communicate if people care enough. And in Connecticut, voters showed they cared enough to challenge the establishment.

This really is not about Joe Lieberman. It's about us. It's about our ability to help lead America and take it forward - all of us, people who care, people from all across the political spectrum. We've got to look at the results of this primary in Connecticut and resolve that Americans do care. When the American people are energized, they use it. It's up to us to get that energy out to the American people so that we take advantage of the freedoms we've been given as a nation. We can do it. We can take this country back and I believe that's the message of the Connecticut primary. It's up to us. We have the right to vote - let's use that right. Thank you.