With all the focus on George Lakoff's efforts to help the left gain the rhetorical upper hand by putting their arguments in the most advantageous and persuasive context, it's a bit surprising to me that no one as yet has apparently seen fit to apply this principle to the ongoing debate over possible election fraud.
First, I want to say that if you have even the most remote interest in this issue, you owe it to yourself to read
The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy, by Thom Hartmann. Hartmann truly does "get it", and makes his case more forcefully and with greater clarity than anyone else I've read on the subject to date.
The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all - it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Bingo! By all means we should do everything possible to assemble evidence of fraud, as Bev Harris and others are now attempting to do. But realistically, there's a very good chance any evidence that comes to light will be at best inconclusive, and will be spun by the media as thus "vindicating" the election outcome.
But far and away the more compelling argument, in my view, is that the current system - far from being fraud-proofed to the maximum extent possible - is instead almost an open invitation to fraud. A system that in many jurisdictions offers zero in the way of effective oversight or accountability. And beyond dishonest vote-counting, offers partisan election officials a virtual cornucopia of ways to skewer the results of an election by blocking, discouraging or undercounting the votes of designated "undesirables".
Really, it doesn't require a Ph.D. in Political Science in order to figure out how it should be done, if the ultimate goal is equal access to the voting process by all citizens, and fair, complete and impartial tallying of the returns. Alas, that is most emphatically not the ultimate goal of those currently in control of the process, and as long as they are able to continue to dictate the terms under which voters are allowed to exercise their franchise, I very much fear that the cherished right Mr. Paine speaks of in the quote below will be a mere illusion rather than a reality.
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery." -- Thomas Paine
The real question is, what exactly are we prepared to do about it? I'm convinced that the critical first step is to frame the issue exactly the way Hartmann has in his article: That to allow partisan hacks and private corporations to usurp the public's control of the process of exercising its own checks and balances over its elected representatives is a base betrayal of the Social Contract, and a subversion of the democratic process in the deepest and most profound sense.