I am a "rinky-dinky non-credible person" from Utah, barely even a bug. Nobody believes me because I am a sky-blue petunia in an onion patch of rabid Republicans. I committed the unpardonable sin in my neck of the woods and I voted for John Kerry. However, I'm glad that I did.

Once upon a time I was a Republican and I was ready to leap off any high-rise building for my cause -- a Right-wingy-dingy fundamentalist world. I even almost started hating the very place that brought my family together in the first place -- Yellowstone National Park. I, as an at the time only child, was raised for nearly a month on the ground in Yellowstone by two protective parents, but that's another story for another time.

When I was in college, after my freshman year, Mom and Dad were rotten, I thought, because "Mom and Dad were stupid Democrats" and I thought that I knew so much more than they did. I was ready to disown them and in fact, some kids I went to college with were ready to revolt against their more sane Democratic parents because the "hate Democrats" attitude had arrived on campus. Please do not judge the whole university, the whole state or Utah, or the whole anything else because of the actions of spoilers. It's just that at one time I almost succumbed!

However, that is not how I ended up. I am now an avid Democrat with a message. If the election were fair, I think Kerry would still win. I don't know by how much, but I think he would win. Personally, I think he and Edwards ran a good and noble campaign. Early in the evening on election night, I felt things were going my way.

If we want four more years of hell, if any of us survives it, we will NOT do what I am about to suggest. If we want black skies, extinct forests, extinct polar bears and Laplanders and Eskimos and other circumpolar peoples committing suicide because, like the lemmings, there is no place to go but into the sea -- if we want war without end with nuclear war almost a certainty -- if we want to die for what we believe which would also save the rest of the world -- if we want the poor and elderly to be robbed right into the grave -- if we want to rob our children of any sense of decency or dignity at all and to rob them of an earth full of wonder and ennoblement -- if we want a country where family fights family, neighbor fights neighbor, sibling fights sibling, husband fights wife and visa versa, town fights town -- county fights county -- all because of political strife and unrest due do gross divisiveness -- if we want to be gunned down by adults and sub adults with assault weapons which people were once children who got toy assault weapons and practiced going around shooting people in public -- if we want to live in a hell on earth, so morally bankrupt, that will not end in our lifetime or even in the lifetimes of future generations, provided there are any or few future generations left -- and I will scream -- (along with Howard Dean gladly) WE WILL NOT DO WHAT WE SHOULD DO!

Now here is the point -- we will never know how many people never got to vote, how many ballots were destroyed or lost or thrown out, how many people were turned away or intimidated away from the polls, how many people were told to vote on the wrong day or were threatened with arrest if they did not get their paychecks to pay their utility bills by election day and they voted first! I kid you not! I heard some of this on C-SPAN. Just ask the NAACP for reports if you do not believe me. Therefore, we need to redo the whole election with paper and pencil trail, we need a recount, we need a revote in states where any election irregularities occurred at all. We need to replace all machines and chads with paper trail. We need to do it before the election is irreversibly conceded and certified for Bush.

The bottom line -- in every state where the election was stolen, as described above and similar, the party that stole the election does NOT deserve to win. Not only that if character, integrity and moral values were put into play, the party of theft should NEVER be allowed to take the victory. No one who stole the election in the first place should get a second term in office, either.

If we are really the nation that the world, until recently at least, looked up to as the "greatest nation of all time" then we will rise up, take courage as a people and especially as a party (because this goes far beyond politics), take the above actions with an honest election oversight and recount by someone who is not biased politically and maybe, just maybe, we can turn things around.

Cordially,
Marilyn Dinger Utah