My Interview With Missouri Congressional Candidate Byron DeLear

Yesterday I interviewed Byron DeLear who is running for Congress in Missouri's 2nd District. The current holder of the seat is the ultra-conservative war supporter and Bush crony, Todd Akin (R-MO), who last year infamously argued to keep sending reinforcements to Iraq by invoking Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

I found the intellectual DeLear, who supports the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, extremely knowledgeable on a wide range of issues including election integrity. DeLear even goes so far as to call for the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution to secure the vote:

“I talk about the necessity for the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution to be securing the most sacrosanct institution of our Republic which is the vote – the cornerstone of our democracy. And how is it that we can allow corporations to own the source code that instructs voting machines how to count the vote? How is it that in our supposedly popular and public owned electoral system can we have privatization occurring where the basic functions of our elections are in secret and are not available to the scrutiny of the American people?

So I think the 28th Amendment to the Constitution should be securing the vote, providing for independent verification of ballot results and I think we should explore the idea of perhaps standardizing the American voting experience. Because when you have 13,000 different methods of counting the vote littered across the landscape of our Republic – that essentially violates the essence of equal protection under the law. And I don’t think it’s fair that you can have African Americans waiting six hours in the rain in Ohio and then other people in other parts of the country just walk in and get their votes cast and there is no problem whatsoever.

So we got to end this kind of unequal, unfair playing field that is occurring in regards to counting our votes and getting our voice heard.”

You can find out more about DeLear and contribute to his campaign at his website - DeLear for Congress.

UPDATE: DeLear also spoke at length on Sunday with Gore Vidal. Below are some of the highlights from DeLear that had me thinking he should be running for President instead of Congress:

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Comments

[Big Dan]

This guy is unbelievable! You're not kidding! That he should be running for president!

[Big Dan]

It makes sense that this guy is not being shown on ANBCBSNNX, right?