From every side they urged him to be gracious and to come out and concede defeat. But the truth, which we all know, was that this election was won by Gore, and that President-elect Bush is usurping the position of the presidency. He has stolen the presidency from Gore. I think a lot of people are frightened and too cautious of using plain English. It is important for Americans who believe in democracy, its principles and independent legal institutions to speak up.
Electoral reform is imperative, but that comes after.
George W. Bush will never have respect or legitimacy. America has to address and face up to that because the rest of the world is already speaking about it. In America, people are using conciliatory language about how we need to unite the country. But no matter how conciliatory the language is, you cannot erase the fact that these elections were fraudulent, that there was intimidation and that the vote of minorities was constrained. In any other place where I have been an observer to the elections and have seen that, we have cried foul.