After witnessing the blatant election theft by members of the Pacific Green Party of the February 2024 Convention Opavote, it is time to stand up and push back! We will not allow this to happen in Oregon. It’s game over for those who have undermined the will of the voters. Power concedes nothing without a demand! It is time to demand free and fair elections.
Seth Woolley, who headed the unapproved election committee should have recused himself entirely from reviewing the final results, because he had several ballot proposals. None of his ballot proposals passed. Luckily, Chuck Fall had released the final election results, so when Seth first announced the results we knew he was lying. After complaining that nobody was supposed to see the election results because those results hadn’t been reviewed, Seth spent the next five days figuring out how to achieve the desired outcome. His solution was to disqualify over half of the voters claiming they had not been properly credentialed. All 39 of these voters had already been approved to vote at the convention before they received their Opavote ballots. Had there been any issue with their voting eligibility that should have been addressed prior to the convention.
Manipulating the votes wasn’t simply about passing ballot proposals. It was about guaranteeing that the Pacific Green Party hierarchy remains unchanged. Two of the newly elected State Coordinating Committee members would shift the balance of power. Natalie Paravicini could have voted not to approve the manipulated election results, but voted to approve them. She also seated two former SCC members, whose terms had expired in January, to insure the outcome. Her intentions to remain in absolute control of the Pacific Green Party couldn’t have been more obvious.
The foundations of Democracy and democratic rights have been under assault throughout the history of the United States. While the principles of Democracy have been enshrined in the US Constitution and our system of government, there have always been wealthy and powerful interests that have sought to undermine them.
If people had simply left it up to the government to protect and defend their rights, then minorities and women might still not be able to vote and have equal opportunities for education, employment and public access. Workers would still be at the mercy of their employers and have no right to demand better pay, safer working conditions or reasonable hours. It was through the struggles of the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement that progress was made and oppression was defeated.
It is through decades of struggle that we have come to where we are today. In spite of the progress made, there is still a concerted effort by the ruling class and deep state, to manipulate public opinion, censor critical voices and rig elections to install political shills for their agenda. The Kennedy Assassination, the Patriot Act and social media censorship are all efforts by both elected and unelected government officials to undermine our constitution and system of government.
Elections have been stolen throughout history. It became much easier to do so and hide the evidence thanks to electronic voting machines and computerized election systems connected to the internet.
The DNC rigged two Democratic Primaries to cheat Bernie Sanders and anoint Hillary Clinton. The DNC and Podesta emails, released by Wikileaks, show that the DNC colluded with the media to undermine the Sanders campaign in 2015, when he was having the largest campaign rallies of any candidate. Election integrity organizations and experts showed that exit polls in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Primaries were off by as much as 17% in nearly 16 different states. When the DNC allied media couldn’t convince people to support either Clinton or Biden, then state elections were rigged through a variety of methods including voter purging.
Many of us left the Democratic Party in 2016 because of the blatant election fraud that occurred and voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In 2020, we saw the DNC refuse to allow Tulsi Gabbard to debate, after her stunning takedown of Kamala Harris, who she exposed for lying about her criminal justice record as California Attorney General. Many Green Party members left decades earlier as they understood the corruption of the duopoly and how the two major parties can’t be reformed.
The Green Party became a place to find people and candidates who represented our values. Sadly, the assault on American democracy and election integrity has spread throughout America like a virus. It is an epidemic that threatens to strangle us with authoritarianism covered by a thinly veiled democratic facade. This assault on democracy included the 2020 Green Party Primary and the effort by the party establishment to undermine presidential candidate Dario Hunter.
We could easily become disillusioned with the malfeasance inside the Pacific Green Party of Oregon. The world is in a state of crisis as the Biden Administration is leading us into World War 3 in both the Middle East and Ukraine. The cost of living has become unaffordable for a growing number of Americans. The Green Party offers us an opportunity to work toward a better future of peace and prosperity. It also offers us a chance at real grassroots democracy. It is time to reclaim grassroots democracy.