James Fisher, Daily Times

March 27, 2005

SALISBURY -- After John Kerry lost his bid for the presidency last November, Shelton Lankford was down in the dumps. Don Singleton and Joel Roache felt the same way.

Now, months later, the three are spearheading a liberal organization more active than any that existed on the Eastern Shore in the run up to the 2004 elections. They have leveraged an Internet presence to secure a weekly public affairs show on local television, held a meeting of the politically like-minded at Lankford's home and targeted letter-writing campaigns to elected officials.

In an interview this month, national issues -- the war in Iraq, Social Security and health care -- held their attention, mostly to the exclusion of more humdrum local politics. But one state controversy has their full attention: a push to make Maryland's electronic ballots produce paper receipts for each voter. Until that goal is accomplished, the three said there's little point in taking sides on smaller-scale issues.

"If you control the machines, you control the vote," Singleton said.

The left-leaning group -- its mission statement excludes no political parties, but all three say President Bush was the wrong choice for president -- is an outpost in Maryland's traditionally conservative Eastern Shore. Counties here held majorities for Bush in November, although statewide, Kerry was favored.

Lankford, a retired Marine pilot and computer programmer, said the region's political center is inching away from its traditional conservatism but acknowledges there are plenty of people left to persuade.

"We don't find ourselves preaching to the choir," Lankford said.

Post-election push

Lankford, Roache and Singleton belong to the Salisbury chapter of Democracy for America, a group that is mostly organized through an Internet site, Meetup.com, that facilitates local-level meetings of people interested in any subject. There are Salisbury Meetup groups for Great Danes, Lyme disease, pagan home schooling, stay-at-home moms and scrapbooking.

Many can account for their members on one hand, but Democracy for America, or DFA, boasts the longest membership rolls, with 71 people. Interest in it has actually risen since the November election, which was not an inspirational moment for any of its members.

"My frustration following the election was pretty high," Lankford said. "My wife said stop whining and get active."

Singleton, a retired Salisbury University media professor, was also at loose ends in 2004. "I was the coordinator for the (Howard) Dean group," he said. "After that campaign cratered, DFA moved on to other things."

Roache, a retired English professor, has lived on the Eastern Shore since 1972. He is the host for the group's weekly interview program on public access channel 14, or PAC 14, with new episodes airing Thursdays at 7 p.m. He said he's frustrated that issues he cares about -- social justice, the plight of the poor, the ill effects of Social Security privatization -- are ignored by much of the wider world.

"The right-wing extremists control the image of everything," Roache said. "None of this gets sufficient coverage in the corporate media."

They conducted TV interviews with Wicomico County Council President Anthony Sarbanes and TrueVoteMD founder Linda Schade, among others.

The group has also encouraged its members to write letters on national and state issues to elected officials when legislation they are concerned about nears a vote. Coordinating with a larger liberal group, Moveon.org, they made calls to U.S. senators one day in mid-March, encouraging opposition to support a change in Senate rules that would prevent filibusters.

The television show, though, is the most concrete evidence of the group's new urgency.

"It kind of fell together," said Singleton, who helps to produce the program. "Joel gets in there and channels Edward R. Murrow."

For Schade, whose group champions the paper-receipts-for-electronic-ballots cause, an appearance on the show was her first foray to the Eastern Shore to drum up support. Local supporters of the statewide issue are important, she said.

"We have a couple of people in every county in Maryland," Schade said in an interview. "It's a miracle, because some counties don't have a lot of people."

National focus

Lankford, Roache and Singleton, during a 50-minute interview, returned often to the national political developments that are most disturbing to them. Singleton, who served in the U.S. Army for three years before his career in academics, says support for armed forces shouldn't be linked to approval of the war in Iraq, which he opposes and says is a boondoggle for private companies like Halliburton.

"We've stumbled into another Vietnam. You just watch," Singleton said.

Roache said the Bush administration's fiscal policies concern him and should also worry his neighbors.

"The Eastern Shore has a great many older people who must be beginning to wonder just how much debt the Bush administration is going to saddle our children and grandchildren with," Roache said.

They admit that DFA's portfolio of positions on local issues is much thinner.

"The local issues aren't as obvious to us," Lankford said. "They don't get dug out." While news of U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes' decision not to seek another term in 2006 threw many political minds in Maryland into high gear recently, they say they haven't given much thought to who should be elected to that seat.

"We're not thinking about candidates. We're thinking about being able to vote," Roache said.

The sharp focus on verifiable election equipment isn't one on which liberals and progressives in Maryland all agree. Sean Dobson, executive director of Silver Spring-based Progressive Maryland, said his organization is more focused on raising the minimum wage and passing a bill that would publicly finance campaigning costs for candidates, replacing corporate and individual donations.

"I don't think the evidence is 100 percent clear that these machines are massively malfunctioning," Dobson said. "I'm not convinced they have evidence of that."

DFA is supporting state legislation, House Bill 107 and Senate Bill 109, that would require ballot machines to produce paper receipts for every individual vote. At present, the machines create printed tickets with vote tallies only after polls close.

Roache said that while the voting issue was important, it wasn't the only reason for the group's existence.

"If this issue were to go away, we won't," Roache said.