PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

More photos here. Blogger Stephan Sharkansky spoke to the rally. Here's a taste:

My name is Stefan Sharkansky and .. I�ve never given a speech to this large of a crowd before. Unlike most of the people up here who really are distinguished in their fields, I�m just an ordinary citizen; a husband, a father, a small business owner; a citizen with a computer and some opinions. But that can be pretty powerful, can�t it.

Because we really are in the middle of a kind of citizen�s revolution, aren�t we. No, it�s not of the scale of the American Revolution of 1776, or the current revolution in Ukraine. But if you use the word revolution to describe any exceptional change to the established order of things, then yes, this is something of a revolution. Because the established order of things is broken and we�re changing it. We can all see how our elections process, the core of our democracy, has broken down ..

it�s only fitting that this citizen�s revolution for clean elections and a legitimate government is playing out not in the mainstream media, but in the alternative media. Not the one-way media of the big-haired pontificators of network TV news or the cocooned editorial boards. But the citizen�s media. Talk radio .. And the blogs. And of course it�s not just me and .. the other local bloggers .. It�s our readers, who post comments and send us tips. You know it was our readers who helped us break the story of double voting. A �freeper� who uses the nickname Hanna sent us that tip. She also sent us the tip that found the first documented case of a ballot cast in the name of a deceased person ..

Because our establishment media has grown partisan and credulous and as lazy and complacent as the local government it�s supposed to be watching. �It�s in the P-I� .. When was the last time you looked in the P-I expecting to find something you both needed to know and didn�t know already? There�s very little in the P-I about how badly botched this election was, only how we should accept the result and move on. But we Americans are a resourceful people, an inventive people, a self-reliant people. When our institutions stop serving us well, we fix the ones we can and must fix, and create new institutions to supplant the ones we can�t fix.

And that�s where these two revolutions converge. The citizen�s revolution for clean elections and legitimate government and the revolution of citizen�s media. And each and every one of us is part of both. And we�re going to continue to work for election reform. And I don�t mean trusting Sam Reed, Frank Chopp and the Seattle Democrats to bring us some girly-man symbolic gesture they call election reform. I�m talking about a citizen�s initiative for real reforms. Like you can only register to vote if you have proof of citizenship. You can�t vote unless you have both a photo ID and a pulse. And you can�t certify an election unless the number of votes equals the number of voters.