Next: A Popular Referendum for a New Honduras Constitution?

I had a thought on the ballot boxes I thought I'd share. First, isn't it odd that there isn't ONE single ballot? You might think, well that's just the way they do things there. Well, if you have all those ballots, isn't it easier to manipulate the vote count? Suppose a mayor is particularly powerful, but not terribly well-liked. If there are separate ballots then the mayor has an easier time getting access to the ballots and alter the vote count. I imagine that is the original reason for all these ballots.

If this is a correct supposition, it would also be fruitful to bring the need for ONE national ballot into the conversation.

Any thoughts?

That little bird is right. Organizing a parallel ballot box system would put the usurper regime in a bind. It could also boost the organizing strength of the opposition by an order of magnitude.

This is what I call prefigurative action, a "Be-the-change-you-want-to-see" implementation of the future, NOW. It's just like the famed old sit-ins against racial segregation. "This is what we want, and we're just gonna do it now". Nothing beats that clarity of message and commitment.

A couple of years ago, by amassing thousands of signature on a petition to city hall, citizens in Philadelphia who were opposing plans to build predatory casinos in their home town won the right to put the question of casinos on the ballot, alongside those for the mayoral race. It looked like they would win.

But the legal system in Philadelphia is quite corrupt. So a judge imposed a last-minute ban on the consultation that the promoters were really happy about. He cancelled the vote on the casinos, even though the law was crystal clear about the right of citizens to put questions on the ballot. The judge's decision even came so late, the ballots had already been printed. So the question had to be covered with a sticker that said "removed by order of the court".

Local opposition to the casinos felt very despondent. I know, because a few of the leaders in that fight are personal friends. So I got a call. And during that call I ventured "well, my friend, why don't you set up your own parallel ballot box?"

I'll be asking those friends if they'd be willing to come here and share that story with the Field, but the short of it is that they did organize that parallel ballot box. It took great efforts to put alternative "people's ballot boxes" right outside local polling stations. But the benefits were huge. The media were all over the story. The vote on casinos became front page news. All mayoral candidates were seen voting against the casinos.

The final results -- verified as they were by fully independent monitors -- showed a clear majority opposing predatory gambling within 1,000 feet of residential areas.

So I just wanted to say that the parallel ballot box dilemma tactic has been tried before. And it worked.

As I listen to birds chirpin' and singin' in my neck of the woods, I think they too seem to feel the tactic may work for our amig@s in Honduras.

Philippe Duhamel

See 
http://www.casinofreephila.org/campaigns/2007/phillys-ballot-box

The regime’s power in Honduras is afraid to relinquish their power over the citizens of Honduras. They ordered the Supreme Court to remove President Manuel Zelaya. Therefore they have the power to order the Supreme Court to reinstate him. It appears the Supreme Court is only puppets holding a lot red tape for the rich and powerful.

They want complete control over the citizens they think they are clever

I.e. pay a few teachers, and then use it as propaganda, saying Manuel Zelaya never paid the teachers we did.

I.e. they canceled all Zelaya’s projects like the one in Northeastern Honduras. Using humanitarian aid monies they were building a hospital. The coup canceled this project and several projects so they could proclaim the money was missing under President Manuel Zelaya rein. It doesn’t take a genius to see through that one.

I.e. they abuse, torture, and attempt to control their citizens who disagree with them. They proclaim they are diplomatic when they set curfews, control the media, use military force to intimidate their citizens. They want the people poor, starving, and uneducated so they can control them. The coup regime will never relinquish their power in a civilized manner.

I.e. they slander President Manuel Zelaya for increasing the minimum wage. What the heck the old wage was no better than slavery controlled by the rich. Like the rich expatriate living in Honduras paying a few dollars a day for a maid. From factory workers to maids they are all being taking advantage of. Keep them poor so they cannot afford going to school past grade six. The facto government and their rich dictator allies want to continue skimming off the workers pay-cheque. What the heck they can’t do the math anyway.  

Even battered and weak the citizens are not fooled by their lies. What is sad is that some people are blind and believe the dictators and their few rich supports.

In conclusion the rich tell the government what to do. The government tells the courts what to do. The citizens are smarter than the regime government. I say to the people getup stand up, standup for your rights because together you are the power.  Demand a new Constitution and a constituent assembly (“constituente”) of elected representatives from every sector of society to write it democratically. The good people of Honduras will prevail.

Betsy:

I don't know where you're "here" is, but there is nothing odd about the mechanics of voting in Honduras.  It's a lot simpler to count ballots when the Presidential ballots are in one box, the municipal ballots in another,  Most of the world does it this way.

It's an excellent idea, much more constructive than the ballot nullification idea I was kicking around in August.  The kernel of both proposals is to make use of the elections as a mobilizing opportunity.

Beyond its organizing potential, a Primera Urna people's referendum has flat-out support in electoral terms: An Oct 13-19 poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, released today, shows majority support for constitutional reform as a solution to the political crisis rather than the elections.  Let's see whether this one gets any more media or pundit attention than the deafening silence with which the COIMER & OP survey was received.

@Betsy:  The three different ballots are different colors.  The presidential ballots are counted first, and any legislative or mayoral ballots wrongly placed in those boxes are sorted out first and added to the correct box.  Same when they move to the congressional ballots; I don't know if incorrectly cast presidential ballots get added to the pres. totals or not, but any mayoral votes get moved to the right box and are counted when it's time to process them.

I think, Mr. Giordano, that before you could publish your assertion that all the people of Honduras want is a Contitutional Assembly, you would cite or conduct a statistically significant survey of a cross-section of Honduran society. Then I would believe you.

If you ask even the supporters of a constitutional assembly WHY they want a constitutional assembly, you might be dissapointed in their sheepish answers.

Aaron - You posted that comment even after Nell provided a link to the Greenberg poll which demonstrates that a majority of Honduran citizens as of last week do indeed want a constituente!

Your comments consistently have been in defense of the coup d'etat, ignoring or glossing over its authoritarian anti-democracy repressions, but you can't be seriously claiming with a straight face that a majority of Hondurans don't want a new Constitution: or are you that dense in your partisanship that it makes you blind to the obvious?

The Greenberg poll asked if the solution to the political crisis should be to "hold an assembly to reform the constitution."

The results: 43 percent strongly feel that a constitutional assembly should be held, to 33 percent who strongly feel it should not be held. Add in those that "somewhat approve" or "somewhat disapprove" (11 percent each) and the tally is 54 percent in favor of the constituente to 43 opposed.

In a democracy, that is called a majority.

You phrase your mealy mouthed trolling question in a dishonest manner when you claim that it is my "assertion that all the people of Honduras want is a Contitutional Assembly," when I have never claimed that "all" people in such a polarized society want anything. I said, above, and so many times before, that a majority want it.

Are you deaf to that? Blind? Or just really really dumb, Aaron?

The Greenberg results echo the Coimer results and the Gallup results. What hard data do you have to back up your authoritarian anti-democracy claims, Aaron? None. That's what you have in support your knowing falsehoods. Zilch. So what is your real problem with democracy?

- Al Giordano

I know that Nell and Al have already mentioned this, but Mel Zelaya has in essence just won the non-binding referendum that the coup was hastily triggered to thwart.

Back in June, as those of us who have been following this story know, a non-binding referendum -- essentially a public opinion poll taken of the whole nation -- was set to see what Hondurans thought of amending their constitution to allow the re-election of presidents.  But bare hours before the referendum was to take place, the coup plotters made their move, seizing control of the government in order to prevent the expression of popular opinion they feared would back Zelaya and his efforts to improve the people's lot.

Well, guess what:  The voice of the people is being heard anyway, despite the blood shed by the golpistas, despite the $400,000 and more in lobbying money paid out by the golpistas, despite the spitting on and contempt for journalists and the constitution by the golpistas (whose claims to wuuuuv the constitution have been summarily debunked by their own foul actions).

Phoenix Woman - The proposed wording of the non-binding "consulta" for June 28 said nothing at all about "amending their constitution to allow the re-election of presidents" and was never about that.

Here is the exact wording (translated) of what people were to vote on:

"Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?"

It's an important distinction because the suggestion that this was at all about reelection of presidents is the legaloid pretext that the coup mongers used to kidnap and deport the president in the first place. The quest for a new Constitution - as you yourself have mentioned on other days - is about many big matters of the human and civil rights of the people, agrarian reform, labor and farmer protections, Indigenous, Garifuna and Afro-Honduran rights... whether or not a new constitution keeps or discards the no reelection clause on presidents was and remains way down the list of priorities on most peoples' agendas.

to see phoenixwoman write the "term limit" argument myself, Al.  I think it was a simple faux pas, having been a fan of "Mercury Rising" all along.  But I was more surprised to read that Hondurans want to change the "stone" term limit article in the constitution, vis a vis the new Greenburg poll.  I wish that poll had a larger sampling.  At any rate, I have argued on various blogs my opinion that Hondurans may not want more than one term for its presidents - apparently I am wrong.

I've made than argument in support a general argument against the claim that "Mel was trying to extend term limits,"  a claim that is still circulating, with legs, in the MSM and right-wing press (and a minority in the US Congress).  In my view, the best counter argument to that claim is showing that a majority of Hondurans want a new constitution, and Mel was responding to that will of the people.  But it is a difficult argument to make without strong and concrete evidence that such is the case.  Personally, I am convinced of the truth of this matter - I've picked up enough bits and pieces from web sites such as yours to lead me to that conclusion.

This is a general critique of the whole discourse on Honduras: we need to strengthen the argument.  I have blogged the information that Mel was presented with a petitions with 600,000 signatures asking for a constituent assembly, for example, but I don't have a citation, date, or detailed commentary about this historical event.  I have read that the matter of the assembly was introduced into congress before June 28, but by whom, at what date etc.  I believe that this is work that needs to be done - not to preach to the choir, as it were, but to try to penetrate the incredible illogic of the coup apologists in our MSM.

I blog regularly on Honduras @ Talking Points Memo's TPMcafe under "neoboho", and I circulate quite a bit of your material there with links to NarcoNews.  I admire the reporting you are doing greatly.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/neoboho/

And really, when you look at the golpistas' claims -- that Zelaya was going to do Icky Nasty Things to the Constitution -- and contrast them with the non-binding reality, it makes them look pathetically petty.

Let's play their game for a moment and focus on the whole "change the constitution to allow for another term" question.  If you're an American, and you see all of the Extreme! Manufactured! Poutrage! by the golpistas' fellow travelers on this, you're very likely thinking: "But hey, why not allow a president two terms?  Most modern American presidents need two terms to get anything done -- it takes one term just to feel your way around the corridors of power in DC!"

So even their favorite argument, argued according to their specifications, fails upon even the most basic examination.

But I was more surprised to read that Hondurans want to change the "stone" term limit article in the constitution, vis a vis the new Greenburg poll.

The whole reason that GGQR asked that question is because of the publicity the golpistas gave it.  Now, with the poll results showing that most Hondurans favor allowing a president to run again, suddenly the golpistas' favorite argument has been blown to smithereens.

Dear Al,

Thanks for all your soulful work in Honduras, man!

Just sending you this so that you can see the extents to which golpistas go in trying to hurt the Resistencia.

Arturo 'Tuky' Bendaña is running, again, for mayor of San Pedro Sula, though in past elections he barely got any votes at all.

His partner, Hector 'Tito' Guillen, is a former San Pedro Sula mayor, and is now running for congress.

Dario Gamez is also running for Congress.

The three of them are paying corrupt police agents to beat up protesters.

We have the testimony of Resistance member Mr. Alcino Alcerro.

Here you go:

Members of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) denounced today to Habla Honduras that well known golpistas Tuky Bendaña, Tito Guillén, and Darío Gamez have been paying corrupt agents of the National Police to savagely beat up members of the Resistencia, in retribution for the loss of the electoral publicity that the Resistencia is not willing to contemplate in the public spaces of San Pedro Sula.

The following is the testimony of Mr. Alcino Alcerro for Habla Honduras:

“It is regrettable that the mentioned golpistas forget that city regulations expressly and clearly forbid the use of public utilities such as electricity poles, bridges, and public roads to place their sterile electoral propaganda on them. The law is much clear about this: electoral candidates must pay for their space on signs and billboards where they can place their nonsensical and vulgar publicity.

In this way, members of the Resistencia dedicated to cleaning the city from this kind of garbage are simply doing what the law commands, which is the immediate removal of any electoral material that violates the legal provisions.

But… who informed the FNRP that Tuky, Tito, and Darío are the model and abiding citizens that paid our very professional police agents to repress and savagely beat them?

Why, the police agents themselves!

Golpistas have a useless memory, one that they operate by means of a logical process that seems to have been trained at the same spots where hens go to pee.

They quickly forget that poor police agents taking on their bribes are neighbors with the members of the Resistencia, that their families share the same tortilla with salt and bitter coffee in the ghettos and shantytowns that surround our undeveloped cities, and that they may buy some actions from those agents, but they will never buy their true loyalty, because that is not a commercial good, since it is born in the heart.

It would be foolish, then, not to imagine that among the same police agents paid to savagely beat up members of the Resistencia are active members of the Resistencia who constantly send information to the Resistencia about who orders and who carries those orders.

Same thing with the military, most golpistas forget that when President Zelaya entered our country again there were wide sectors in the military that called him to guarantee his personal safety immediately.

It would be absolutely naïve to ignore that the Resistencia permeates all structures and hierarchies.

But… what can the arrogant know about observation?

Nothing!

You only need to watch for a few seconds the boss of this gang to understand the situation:

Certainly, an intelligent observation, with due caution, cannot be expected from a violent schizophrenic such as Tuky Bendaña, ‘small but dangerous’, according to his own words, in the best style of Grumpy Dwarf, who was hated by his other six comrades for being a drunkard and a bully.

You see, what old Tuky lacks in body, mind, soul, and heart he more than makes up for with abundant arrogance, fury, unconsciousness, and stupidity, specially when one remembers the many chicken quarrels that this poor fool has provoked with so many individuals along the many years that we have had to tolerate his teenage tantrums.

In the shower rooms of the Morazán Soccer Stadium in San Pedro Sula are the records of all those times when, in the embrace of alcohol, arrogance, and the lack of light bulbs, the naughty Tuky has crawled from behind, not like zorro, but like a skunk, and upon the humanity of the humble players to hit them hard on their backs, with his equally arrogant son, whom the family charges with the sorrowful task of watching his little father’s alcoholic flights, watching his back, surrounded by bodyguards who make sure Tuky can afford the luxury of beating up and threatening without fearing retribution in any way.

Such is the world of this meaningless bully, who is still fooled by the delusion that he can beat up anyone he fancies. His actions remind us of ‘Gollum’, that hurtful, poisonous, and deformed pestilence that plagued the adventurous hobbits in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, that masterful story by J.R.R. Tolkien, successfully carried on to the big screen by New Zealander Peter Jackson.

The saddest thing about this coward character is the fact that his poisoned mind is also plagued by the fetish of cruelty, he likes to drive up his green SUV to watch, from a safe distance, how his paid police agents beat up the humble people who destroys his signs and billboards out of a sense of dignity and rejection of his presence.

Like my grandpa said, ‘what a ruinous little man!’”

My co-blogger Charles and I both posted accurate, citation-laden comments on Gwynne Dyer's amazingly wrongheaded Georgia Straight article (Dyer sets forth a whole passel of nonsense straight from the Golpista Talking Points Manual, including the whole "Zelaya's massively unpopular so the coup was justified" schtick that of course the polling shows to be untrue).  Those comments got downrated, whereas PRO-COUP ALL-CAPS SHOUTING WITHOUT ANY CITES got heavily uprated.  I suspect that, since other pieces by Dyer haven't been quite as infested by the right-wing trolls that often squat at media websites, this is a concerted effort by golpistas monitoring the media for Honduras mentions.

Here's the link to the Georgia Straight piece, if anyone feels like giving Dyer a piece of their minds: http://www.straight.com/node/262507

has this documentry been posted anywhere on the field. i didnt see it. a steady look at issues around the constitutional movement in honduras.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2009/10/2009101596502...

Greetings and Salutations, Al Giordano,

A warlord is a warlord. The names have been changed into such as duly elected or appointed -- often by themselves using force -- who are running every country and nation on this earth.

Then I was thinking about Mahatma Gandhi, India, and the British Raj.

Anyway, Al, good of you spreading the truth to as many as you can.

I wish the people of Honduras success in bringing their country back into their own hands and use.

Cordially,

Harry (whose comment wasn't approved and now pouts) - Start your own blog and build your own audience if you want to base your comments on falsehoods, rather than insisting you have an entitlement to parasite off of others' work to do it. Sense of entitlement is for spoiled brats and oligarchs. Come to think of it, I guess that explains your submission.

Philippe above references our experience developing and running our own ballot.  After suffering a major defeat when our Supreme Court stripped citizens from voting on an important question (with no explanation and no precedent), we organized our own election.

We called it Philly's Ballot Box.  We set up ballot boxes outside of polling places (and some at other high-traffic areas) on the same day as the "other" election.  Our ballot boxes were gorgeous 5-foot tall ballot boxes that we called our shining receptacles of liberty.

We drew lessons from studying other shadow elections, like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and drew some conclusions:

1) talk about it and treat it as a real election, bring in outside monitors, figure out a genuine system to track voters, make it more public and open than the current polling system ("not legally binding but politically binding" was our catch phrase);

2) give yourself time to set it up -- it's a major, major undertaking and so playing it out longer than, say, trying to mimick the Nov 29th election would be necessary.

In our case, we had a bias in the outcome of the election, so we internally set up a whole separate organization that was separate from our outreach goals.  We invited, at numerous stages and very publicly, our opposition to join us in that election running organization (they refused, but the press clearly reported our invitations).

And we found that using a symbol that carried so much meaning was very, very inspirational.  So in terms of political power, I fully agree with Al's reasoning for with it would work.  We unleashed a ton of pent up energy, especially as regular people feel -- like in Honduras -- unable to make an impact on the outcome of things.  It's the perfect idea to tap all that passion into an action.

A couple other things we did:

1) set-up a system to vote by phone and online but in a way which people had to verify their voter information, which increased turnout (our online system, for example, we created as an open-source piece of software; it's very rigorous);

2) make our vote counting visible on-line via webcam so in addition to representatives watching the ballot count in person, anybody could watch the results streaming over the internet;

3) work closely with the traditional election officials to make sure they understood us and our goals (our opposition was spreading rumors about us) -- our training for our volunteers included understanding the rules of the other election, too (so each polling place that had one of our volunteers had a *lower* incident of problems).

If anyone is interested in doing it, we'd be happy to share more about what we did, how we did it.

A few legacy articles/photos are left online at: http://phillysballotbox.org/

Warmly,

- Daniel Hunter (daniel@casinofreephila.org)