20 Ways Vote By Mail Could Revolutionize Our Democracy And Save Our Nation-- if Election Protection Activists Make It Happen

-by Harvey Wasserman

Vote by Mail will decide the 2020 election. Trump and 50,000 of his armed backers will try to say otherwise.

But VBM could turn us forever from hackable touch screens to paper ballots. To make that happen, election protection activists must overcome Vote by Mail’s many vulnerabilities to make mail-in paper ballots an instrument of real democracy.

The odds are long, but the chances are real.

To follow an ongoing compendium of stories on this election as they unfold, go to the Election Protection portal at the Free Press website. You can also join our national COVID-19 Emergency Zoom call on election protection this Tuesday 5:00-6:30 p.m. Eastern Time (2:00-3:30 Pacific Time) by writing to me via www.solartopia.org.

In the Big Picture, Trump loudly hates VBM. But his followers LOVE it in states they control.

They fear Vote by Mail in swing states because it might deliver actual ballots to the Millennials and minorities who’ll decide this election, and it might actually lead to them being fairly counted.

US senators Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden have proposed a bill to support VBM nationwide. It includes key funding and deadline provisions that are essential to its proper use.

But Trump’s Republicans have already pledged $20 million to hire 50,000 “volunteers” to “patrol” the polls this fall. Many are likely to be carrying guns. Their mission will be to intimidate and assault “suspicious” or “fraudulent” voters, i.e. citizens of youth, color, and limited means.





To neutralize them, a half-million democracy activists must come out before, during, and after election day. They must be “armed” with a firm grip on voting with VBM’s many challenges in each individual state and county. (Our weekly Zooms-- upcoming on Tuesday-- discuss this in great detail.)

The election protectors must be prepared to stand across from these intimidators at the polls and make voters feel safe and protected. They must safeguard paper ballots arriving in the mail, make sure they are safely stored, and guarantee that they’re fairly counted.

Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Hawai have long voted by mail. So will California this fall. (Trump has complained that with VBM “no Republican in this country will ever win another election,” but a California Republican Congressional candidate just did.)

All states have long provided absentee ballots. But this fall most will be severely stretched to handle massively increased VBM volume, and to deal with a system being used on this scale for the first time in their history.

Anyone committed to a fair 2020 election must consider immediately joining local election boards, becoming a poll worker and/or a vote counter, etc. Above all, they must know every detail of how voting will proceed in every state and county.

Here is some of what the election protection movement must overcome in just five months:

1. Printing and Publishing

Paper VBM ballots must first be designed, printed, and published. Ballots can be extremely complex, especially where referenda are involved. Accidental typos and deliberate manipulations are common.

The infamous “butterfly ballots” printed in south Florida in 2000 induced thousands of elderly voters to choose Pat Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Al Gore. Absentee ballots mailed to voters in southwestern Ohio in 2004 omitted the name of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Democratic primary ballots in California 2016 and 2020 omitted Bernie Sanders, costing him more than a half-million votes, according to Greg Palast.

Legitimate complications can arise when candidates drop out, with other technicalities as deadlines approach, or with simple incompetence or overwork.

Election protection activists must proofread all ballots BEFORE they go to the printing houses.

They must also guarantee that enough paper ballots are printed to enfranchise all voters slated to receive them by mail, and to be available at voting stations for all new registrants and for other unforeseen challenges.

Hackable touchscreens must NOT be allowed to swing this election on the excuse that enough paper ballots are not available.

Computerized machines that may be needed to print out ballots in multiple languages at polling stations require heavy independent scrutiny and mechanical maintenance.

Ink specifications must verified so ballots will be readable in electronic imaging machines. Barcoded ballots can be especially susceptible to disarray from the use of inferior printing materials.

Once printed, the ballots must be carefully protected during delivery from the print houses to the election boards, and then be safely stored, with clear chain of custody.

2. Protecting the Voter Registration Rolls

Researcher Greg Palast estimates some 17 million Americans have been stripped from the voter rolls based on age, race and class. Andrea Miller’s People Demanding Action is among those working on this. Stripping the voter rolls has become a huge potential pitfall in the coming election, and will be discussed in detail in a future report.

3. Who Gets a Ballot & How?

The most democratic VBM procedure is for the state and county election boards to simply send ballots to all registered voters.

But in Ohio and elsewhere, partisan legislators, secretaries of state, governors, etc. have contrived to first send a postcard ... then (maybe) an application ... then (maybe) a ballot. All must meet firm deadlines.

Such flimsy, complex, time-consuming procedures add to the risk of document(s) being lost in the mail, ignored at home, trashed at the election board, etc. Where inner city voters are involved, that seems in many cases to be the partisan purpose.

This multi-layered process can mean many citizens get no ballot, or get them too late to mail back in time to be accepted and counted.

All democracy activists in all states and counties need thorough knowledge of these procedures. Their ability to monitor and act on them could decide the fall election’s outcome.

4. The Military, Diplomats, and Other Overseas Americans

The US military votes by mail, or electronically. There are always widespread reports that some officers may illegally intimidate soldiers into voting a certain way. Deadlines and counting procedures can be problematic.

Former diplomat Jennifer Roberts says others voting from afar include overseas workers with the US Commercial Service, USDA, USIA, AID, and more; corporate executives and contractors working overseas with international companies; students studying abroad; teachers. Hundreds of thousands of ballots can be involved. Unless protected, these votes can be lost, stolen or manipulated.

5. Will Return Applications & Ballots Be Pre-stamped or Mass Harvested?

Mailed-in applications and ballots require pre-paid envelopes. To do otherwise is to levy a poll tax. Democracy advocates must guarantee voters get a stamp for mailing in their ballots, or help in hand-delivering them to VBM boxes or the election boards themselves.

But “ballot-harvesting” (i.e. the mass gathering of ballots) has already been linked to criminal fraud in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Gray areas include “ballot parties” in elder/nursing homes conducted by partisan activists, where witnessing and/or notarizing can be accomplished.

Overall, the complex and often corrupted ways ways VBM ballots go to voters and back to election boards and voting stations demands extreme vigilance from those who would protect the franchise.

6. Will There Be a Postal Service?

Technically, if the US Postal Service is gone or compromised, ballots could go both ways with UPS, FedEx, or other private services. But prices would certainly be affected.

Nor do UPS & FedEx deliver first-class mail to rural areas. Many Indigenous, impoverished and homeless have P.O. boxes, not street addresses. FedEx/UPS would be unlikely to handle them, or senior centers, or those in prison, or students on campus, etc.

Post Office box addresses are also problematic for voter registration where election boards require a street address.

In sum: a destroyed/undermined USPS will pose huge challenges to a fair VBM election.

7. Where Will the Ballots Go, and When?

VBM ballots mostly need to be returned to election boards, whose offices can be few and far between. Some may offer special drop boxes, which will require special security to keep them from being stolen and/or destroyed.

Ohio’s 2020 primary featured a single election center per each of the state’s 88 counties. The one in Franklin County (population: 1.5 million) was in an abandoned Kohl’s department store in a remote corner of Columbus. There were no drop boxes. Long lines (mostly in cars) built up through election day with voters trying to drop off their ballot or to obtain one. (Rural counties had no such problems.)

To properly serve the voting public, election centers must open at least two weeks before the election. Plentiful, secure drop boxes must be well-advertised and easy to find for a fair VBM outcome.

8. Chain of Custody

Convenient, decentralized voting centers should be universally available two or three weeks prior to election day. But those ballots demand serious protection.

Chain of control must be clearly established so ballots in certain key areas don’t wind up in rivers and trash burners.

9. Voting Centers

Most VBM voting goes without face-to-face exposure. But well-advertised and convenient voting centers are still needed.

For two or three weeks prior to election day, at universally known voting centers, citizens should be able to pick up and/or drop off ballots, register, consult with poll workers to straighten out registration issues, etc. Centers should be open and staffed with long hours to avoid long lines that cause deadly back-ups, and to provide services in a timely, accurate, friendly way. If Trump does mobilize thousands of armed thugs, election protection activists must be at the voting centers to meet them.

10. The Surrender Rule

The “surrender rule” requires that voters who do receive their paper ballots in the mail but want to vote at a voter center bring the ballot in with them to use to vote, or to “surrender” for a different kind of ballot.

Those who show up without the ballot that’s been sent to them will almost certainly be forced to vote provisionally, meaning their ballot will likely be pitched in the trash.

11. Election Protection at the Voting Centers

Trump’s hired “volunteers” are likeliest to threaten intimidation and violence at the voting centers. Nonviolent election protection activists must be present in great numbers to neutralize the expected Trump assault.

12. Will Vote by Mail Mean Universal Paper Ballots?

True election protection requires that all voting centers provide paper ballots for hand-marking by those capable of doing so.

Voting machines can serve those with special needs. But hand-markable paper ballots must be available for all those who want them and who don’t want or need to vote on hackable electronic machines.

Especially during this pandemic, touchscreens can spread infection. So election protection activists must be present to guarantee that paper ballots are universally available both by mail and at voting stations to all those who are eligible and capable of casting them.

13. When Will the Ballots Be Mailed Out?

Deadlines for ballot mail-out, postmarking, and/or receipt can vary widely. The courts defeated attempts in Wisconsin’s 2020 primary to extend postmarking deadlines for returned VBM ballots. But many ballots arriving with no postmark were apparently accepted for counting in some precincts, while being rejected in others.

Thus an entire election could be turned by an arbitrary decision by a single county official. A US Supreme Court decision left some 30,000 ballots in play in this spring’s Wisconsin primary.

In many elections over the years, thousands of ballots were never actually sent to voters, or were sent too late to come back on time. Thousands have been stolen after being sent. Thousands more never arrived for various reasons. All this demands extreme scrutiny from election protection activists.

Guaranteeing timely delivery and return of legitimate ballots is at the heart of election protection and the VBM system.

14. When Are the Ballots Due Back?

Deadlines vary from state-to-state and county-to-county for when a ballot must be postmarked and/or received to be counted.

With this year’s expected massive influx of VBM paper ballots (especially in states that haven’t done VBM before, or which are corrupted with partisan legislatures), many state and local deadlines for reception and final tabulation are unrealistic.

In Florida 2000 and 2018, tens of thousands of votes were simply trashed because arbitrary counting and recounting deadlines weren’t met. Such deadlines have had decisive impacts on races for the presidency, governorships, US Senate seats, and more.

Election protection demands litigation to make deadlines for returns and reporting as realistic as possible.

15. Voter ID, Signature Verification, and Witness & Notarization Requirements

Some states have imposed arbitrary photo ID and other requirements that can allow election boards to trash as many ballots as they want, in highly discriminatory ways.

First-time Wisconsin voters must submit a photo ID to get a ballot. In Texas a hunting or gun license gets you a ballot, but a student ID does not. Photo IDs and other screens can be used to thin the voter rolls by race, gender, age, class, etc.

A signature on an electronic device at a motor vehicle bureau or voting station can be a wavy line rendered by a fingernail or a stylus. But a signature on another type of document might be entirely different.

Many states have set demands for notarization, one or two witnesses, etc. In some elder homes, where voters are immobile, signatures from employees and attendants are banned, making getting a witness virtually impossible.

16. Internet Voting, Vote by Phone, and Digital Divide

Voter registration and voting by phone or internet are all being proposed in some states. Theft, manipulation and disappearance are possible side effects. Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were both significantly turned by electronic manipulation.

Rural, elderly, uneducated, and low-income households can be disenfranchised by their lack of computer/internet capability.

17. Early Counting

In addition to the challenges of safely storing them, early VBM ballots could tempt locals officials to do early counting, and then to leak results (real or imagined) that could affect the remainder of the election. This must not be allowed to happen!

18. Counted How?

Paper ballots must be counted either by hand or machine or both, either as mail-in ballots or when deposited in person at election centers. This year’s volume will be immense. Hand-counts could require days or weeks, especially in a time of social distancing. Sufficient work forces may not be readily available for timely tallies, especially in urban centers.

Electronic ballot image machines can convert inserted paper ballots to electronic images which are then readily readable for a quick vote count. The original ballot itself is preserved for a hard, reliable recount if necessary.

According to John Brakey, such machines are already available in more than 80 percent of the nation’s voting centers.

Many election protection activists worry about these machines being hacked or breaking down, accidentally or otherwise.

If they preserve the actual paper ballots, recounts could be made fair and reliable. But for ballot imaging machines to work, they must be turned on, which many local officials refuse to do.

19. (Re)Counted by When?

Even if ballot imaging is used for a fast initial vote count, recounts using the preserved paper ballots are inevitable. And reporting deadlines which must be met to validate the (re)counts vary widely.

In southern Florida 2000, the US Supreme Court infamously stopped the process in urban areas, making George W. Bush president. In Ohio 2004, the legally-mandated recount never happened. US Senate and governor’s races in Florida 2018 were decided when dense southern counties couldn’t meet recount deadlines.

In 2020, election protection activists must guarantee that thorough, reliable recounts happen in a timely manner.

20. The Six, Twelve or Eighteen Swing States

There is widespread speculation on which key swing states will make the definitive difference in the final 2020 Electoral College vote count. National Popular Vote says it could all boil down to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Other swing states in play may include Minnesota, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and Iowa. Given Trump’s volatility and the instability of our national scene, even Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Montana, Kentucky, and West Virginia could become critical.

In all of them, how the ballots are mailed out, brought back in and counted will be key.

Five months remain to produce a workable VBM infrastructure with reliable standards and procedures, created in many states this year virtually from scratch.

Mundane stuff like warehousing, security, registration checking, tabling, ballot collection, counting, and other details could decide the fate of the Earth.

VBM’s challenges are daunting, but reasonably clear. They’ll turn on the strength of grassroots election protection organizations in each key state, and how quickly they can get up and running.

Just weeks ago, few could see how thoroughly COVID-19 would demand the birth of a nationwide Vote by Mail system.

But its effective implementation and protection-- state by state, county by county-- will depend on an unprecedented national grassroots movement dedicated to a fair outcome for the 2020 election. That movement has just five months to produce a system, mostly based on Vote by Mail, that will reasonably reflect the will of the People.

And it will apparently have to be done in the face of intense, well-paid opposition, much it heavily armed.

Trump And His Enablers Are Headed For Historic Landslide Losses-- But There's No Blue Wave

And the winner is... Not-Trump

The Democratic candidate for president its probably the worst in my lifetime-- and I'm old. Let me think for a second. Worse than Adlai Stevenson-- check; worse than JFK-- check; worse than LBJ-- check; worse than Humphrey-- check; worse than McGovern-- check; worse than Carter-- check; worse than Mondale-- check; worse than Dukakis-- check; worse than Bill Clinton-- check; worse than Gore-- hmmmm, yeah, check; worse than Kerry-- Jesus, Democrats nominated some really bad candidates, but, yeah, check; worse than Obama-- check; worse than Hillary-- oy, but, yes, Biden is worse than Hillary. It would seem Biden is utterly unelectable-- horribly conservative to an increasingly progressive Democratic base, a little bit racist, a lot corporatist, a warmonger, perhaps more senile and incapable than Trump, a family almost as corrupt as Trump's, a reflexive liar nearly as bad as Trump... If this election is a referendum on the incumbent, all Biden has to do is keep breathing.

And the slate of DSCC Senate candidates? A whole pack of Kyrsten Sinemas... courtesy of Chuck Schumer. He's managed and continues managing to obliterate progressives in favor of corrupt, status quo establishment anti-leaders-- Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Sara Gideon in Maine, Barbara Bollier (an actual Republican) in Kansas, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Jamie Harrison in South Carolina, Frackenlooper in Colorado, Ben Ray Lujan in New Mexico, Al Gross (not a Democrat) in Alaska, Mark Kelly (maybe a Democrat?) in Arizona, and MJ Heger in Texas. Oh, don't get me wrong; I think most of them-- not Heger, Harrison or McGrath-- will win. I'm just sickened at the thought of a Senate filled with conservative Democrats on a Manchin/Sinema level of garbage redefining what means to be a Democrat. Schumer has continued fixing the polls so that the firms only ask about his candidates in match-ups and ignore progressives in states with tight primaries like Iowa, Colorado, Marine and Georgia. Look what Civiqs found today, something you'd never know if you only watched the corrupt polling firms being paid off by Schumer:

The DCCC is at least as bad as the DSCC, with Cheri Bustos pushing to recruit and push incredibly bad candidates. The DCCC just saw what that got them in CA-25. The last special election to fill an open House seat is next month and though Nate McMurray came incredibly close to winning in 2018, the DCCC has decided he's too progressive and refuses to back him now, when he's likely to flip the reddest (R+11) congressional district in New York.

McMurray has raised $517,768, while the Trumpist sociopath the GOP is running against him, Chris Jacobs has "raised" $1,250,506 ($446,000 from his own pocket). The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC have spent exactly zero dollars and the only outside money in the race came from Club for Growth backing another Republican even further right than Jacobs! Cheri Bustos is the worst DCCC chair since her mentor Rahm Emanuel.

Anyway, back to the point-- Dems will win by default in November... not because they have anything to offer anyone, but because they're not Trump and not his enablers. The promise is a wretched return to normalcy... the same putrid "normalcy" that allowed a profane and bigoted TV reality show crackpot to slither into the White House. His incompetence in regard to the pandemic has made him toxic in the minds of most voters. He will drag the GOP down the toilet in November and then Biden will drag the Democrats down the toilet in 2022.

CNN's Matt Egan: "The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness. Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection. The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a 'historic defeat' in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted... The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948 other than 1968 and 1976 (although two candidates lost the popular vote but won the presidency in that span, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016)."

The national election model assumes that the economy is still in bad shape this fall, with unemployment above 13%, real per capita incomes down nearly 6% from a year ago and brief period of falling prices, or deflation.

"The economy would still be in a worse state than at the depth of the Great Depression," the Oxford Economics report said.

A separate state-based election model run by Oxford Economics that incorporates local economic trends and gasoline prices predicts Trump will badly lose the electoral college by a margin of 328 to 210. That model forecasts that seven battleground states will flip to Democrats: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina.

"We would expect these states to experience significant economic contractions and traumatic job losses that would likely swing pocketbook vote," the report said.

I doubt they're right about Missouri, but no fears-- Trump will lose Arizona and possibly Florida or even Georgia. And if we look at the states where Trump is being judged inadequate to handle the pandemic-- in the 5am post this morning-- Trump would only get 61 electoral votes (so not even Texas, Utah or Alabama, which is, of course, absurd.) And actually 60 is the number, because Nebraska's second congressional district (Omaha) will give its single electoral vote to... not-Trump.

Bloomberg-- Oligarch... And Dangerous Predator

This could be labelled Part II of a post that began yesterday morning. The word "oligarch" comes from the Greek "rule by the few." The accepted definition today is "a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence." Michael Bloomberg's photo could easily be next to the definition in any American dictionary. Comcast TV political hack, Jason Johnson, can always be counted on to play the role of a sad fool but when he told Nina Turner that to call his beloved Bloomberg an oligarch is a misnomer, it just showed once again what a bad choice MSNBC made in hiring one of Bill O'Reilly's favorite commentators.

Washington Post reporter Allyson Chu looked at the spat between Johnson and Turner over whether Bloomberg should or shouldn't be labelled an oligarch. Chu begins by establishing that the use of the word is "pejorative" when used to describe Bloomberg and that Turner didn't invent the description on Monday night. "What started," she wrote, "as a routine interview between MSNBC host Chris Matthews and Nina Turner, a national campaign co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), turned into an argument after one of the network’s contributors took issue with Turner describing Bloomberg, a billionaire, as an “oligarch.”

The term was defined originally as one who favors government by the few. In more modern times, an oligarch became “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence,”especially a corrupt actor in Russia.

The events leading to the on-air spat began when Matthews asked Turner how it could be possible to beat an opponent like Bloomberg, who has unlimited resources.

Turner instantly bristled at the notion that a wealthy presidential candidate could use his or her own money to make headway in the race, criticizing the Democratic National Committee’s recent decision to drop its grass-roots funding requirement for participation in debates, which could allow Bloomberg to make the cut.

“We should be ashamed of that as Americans, people who believe in democracy,” she said, “that the oligarchs, if you have more money you can buy your way.”

“Do you think Mike Bloomberg is an oligarch?” Matthews asked.

Turner didn’t hesitate to answer.

“He is,” said Turner, a frequent Sanders surrogate, during the live segment. “Buying his way into this race, period.”

Bloomberg, whose self-funded campaign has drawn scrutiny, was one of the few Democratic candidates not battling it out in Iowa Monday. Instead, the 77-year-old was more than 1,800 miles away campaigning in California, where he has hired more than 200 employees in addition to mounting an expensive national advertising effort worth more than $250 million, Reuters recently reported.

While Turner’s criticism of Bloomberg didn’t appear to shock Matthews, the “oligarch” label drew a fierce reaction from MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson, from the network’s main studio in New York. Johnson hit back at Turner on-air, accusing her of “name-calling” and adding that the word oligarch has “implications in this country that I think are unfair and unreasonable.”

“You’re working for somebody who’s part of the 1 percent,” Johnson told Turner, referencing Sanders. “Do you call him an oligarch? No, you don’t. You say he’s a rich guy. … Just because somebody has a tremendous amount of money doesn’t mean that they’re not necessarily representing the people.”

“Oligarch” trended on Twitter Monday night. By early Tuesday, various clips of the exchange had been watched hundreds of thousands of times. Bloomberg’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Johnson, a politics and journalism professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, kicked off the debate, launching into a lengthy rebuke of Turner’s reference to Bloomberg as an “oligarch.” Being rich doesn’t automatically mean “you’re an oligarch who abuses his power,” Johnson said, adding, “The power that Mike Bloomberg got access to was given to him by the voters of New York.”

He warned that Turner’s language could potentially be a problem for Sanders down the line.

“It’s dismissive, it’s unfair and it’s the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee and you have to work with Bloomberg three or four months from now,” Johnson said. “That’s the issue that Sanders’s people never seem to want to remember.”

A few minutes later, MSNBC had the pair on a split screen.

Turner immediately slammed Johnson for defending “the wealthiest people in this country over the working people in this country,” stressing that Sanders has always backed “the everyday people of this nation.” The MSNBC analyst responded by pointing out Sanders’s wealth, telling Turner that she should refocus her criticisms on the system that allows billionaires like Bloomberg to exist.

“At the end of the day, the enemy of this country, the enemy of the poor, is not just everybody who happens to be rich, it is a capitalistic system that abuses people,” he said. “If you want to speak about that, that’s fine, but if you want to name-call people that’s not going to help Bernie if he becomes the nominee and he’s going to need Mike Bloomberg’s money.”

Soon, Johnson and Turner were talking loudly over each other as they argued, carrying on until Matthews interrupted in an effort to bring the debate to a close.

“Do you want to change your word from oligarch?” the host asked Turner.

“No, I’m not changing,” Turner said emphatically. “He doesn’t tell me what to say and how to change my words. My words stand.”

Later Monday, Turner took to Twitter, retweeting people who supported her argument and tagging Johnson in a tweet sharing a link to an opinion article about Bloomberg in the Guardian titled, “An oligarch has bought his way into the 2020 race. Why is no one talking about this?” Turner also asserted in a separate tweet that she has “the good sense of knowing what makes for Oligarchy.”

Meanwhile, Johnson kept his commentary on the debate limited retweeting a post from one a viewer who wrote of Turner, “ … did she not respond to any of his actual points and instead chose to attack him specifically?”