Thursday, October 22, 2020

Trump Plans To Win 6-3 Or 5-4… In Overtime

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From Newsmax


-by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Trump's Kampf (German for struggle) has been clear since before he got in the White House:

Endlessly scream Big Lies about a “fake” election.

Pack the Court with flunkies, culminating with Amy Barrett.

Create chaos in the swing states.

Use gerrymandered TrumpCult state legislatures to override the popular vote (see below for the 1887 Electoral Count Act).

Sabotage the Electoral College past its “Safe Harbor” date. Let all the deadlines pass.

Get the whole mess in front of the Trump-owned Supreme Court. Win either 6-3 or 5-4, depending on a wavering John Roberts.

The stage was set in 2010, when the Koch Brothers gerrymandered fascist legislatures into 29 states, including Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and other Electoral College pivots.

In a well-funded covert operation known as the Redmap Coup, GOP agents took state power throughout the US. The Obama Democrats said and did nothing (see David Daley’s Ratf**ked).





Since 2016, Trump has screeched that millions of Mexicans swam the Rio Grande to vote for Hillary Clinton. Defeated by obvious election thefts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Clinton said and did nothing.

From 2010 to now, GOP Dirty Tricksters have filched a thousand elected offices, including at least six US Senate seats and those three on the Supreme Court. The Democrats have said and done nothing.

A Florida referendum decisively re-enfranchised more than a million ex-felons, only to be trashed by a governor and legislature empowered in a stolen 2018 election.

Nationwide, the TrumpCult has stripped some 17 million citizens from the voter rolls.

It has budgeted $20 million for 50,000 armed White Supremacist militias to intimidate voters.

It has assaulted vote-by-mail, gutted the US Postal Service, obliterated drop boxes, misdirected voters, subverted ballots, intimidated citizens, trashed precincts, sabotaged reception and recount deadlines, and done all else possible to sabotage this year’s vote count.

Inside the voting centers, they’re disqualifying countless ballots without significant opposition from the supine Democrats.

And they’re sabotaging digital scanners set to count virtually all of 2020’s ballots, illegally destroying electronic ballot images, which can supply an accurate vote count quickly and easily.

Instead, in virtually any state, those machines (many linked to the internet) could be hacked to produce any tally the TrumpCult might want.

Trump does face significant opposition.

Polls showing a massive public rejection may understate the power of 86 million millennials who generally despise Trump, but have been slow to vote. Their younger Gen Z siblings also hate him, but are just starting to come to the polls.

Overall, Trump’s imperial white misogynist hate-base is on a demographic death march. Whites will soon be a minority in this country. A strong woman of color like Kamela Harris-- a “monster” in Trump’s eyes-- embodies their worst nightmare... and the tangible future they will fight to resist.

So the Millennial/Z’s diverse, tolerant, Solartopian mega-generation must flood the polls to overcome Trump’s election theft breakwater.

To start, as elders shun infectious voting centers, Millennial/Zs may transform the ranks of poll workers.

The epic shift to vote-by-mail and early voting is at last moving our elections away from hackable electronic touchscreens and onto hand-marked paper ballots.

With protected chains of custody and preserved digital images, we could get quick, accurate, reliable vote counts.

But tens of millions of youthful voters must arise, especially in the gerrymandered swing states.

Only overwhelming margins like those run up by Obama in 2008 and 2012-- at least 5%, probably more-- can prevent these fascist legislatures from voiding the popular vote and sticking Trump delegations into the Electoral College.

That means winning the 2020 Trifecta by restocking the registration rolls, protecting early voting and vote-by-mail, and preserving the digital vote count.

Otherwise, amidst the choreographed chaos, by a count of 6-3 or 5-4, Donald Trump will become President for Life.

Postscript: The Electoral Count Act of 1887

The US Constitution gives legislatures the power to choose their state’s Electoral College delegations, no matter what the public wants.

This became an issue when the 1876-1877 election devolved into the kind of chaos Trump aims to create this year.

Democrat Samuel Tilden got 250,000 more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, whose Republicans stole enough Electoral College votes to force a five-month stalemate. Hayes finally cut a deal to end southern Reconstruction, disenfranchising the African-American population.

Ten years later, the Electoral Count Act set a “safe harbor” date-- this year an entirely unworkable December 8-- by which legislatures must certify their state’s Electoral College delegation. The role of the state governors is murky and untested.

An obvious Trump strategy would be to sabotage state vote counts and delay definitive tallies beyond the legal deadline. The Roberts-Kavanaugh-Barrett “Brooks Brothers Mob” did that in 2000 by physically assaulting Florida’s recount, allowing the Supreme Court to throw the election to George W. Bush.

This year, Trump could repeat history in Florida (not to mention Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and/or Arizona) delaying the certification of enough Electoral votes to deny Biden the presidency, even if he wins the popular vote by many millions.

Electoral votes must be delivered to the Vice President by December 23. On January 6, a joint session of the newly-elected Congress counts them, with a dizzying array of variables in between.

Any Senator can join with a Representative to force a closed two-hour joint session evaluating any state’s Electoral College delegation.

In 2001, then-VP Al Gore prevented the Congressional Black Caucus from challenging the Florida delegation that had been seated by armed thugs who got the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount. Gore also stopped Rev. Jesse Jackson from staging a national demonstration demanding the popular vote be honored.

In 2005, with then-VP Dick Cheney presiding, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Cleveland) to challenge Ohio’s fraudulent delegation. Congress didn’t care. Bush got a second term.
This year, Trump has his armed White Supremacists-- his Hitlerian Brown Shirts-- on “standby.”  Their orders are to create chaos at the polls and in the vote count.  The country’s laws are antiquated, contradictory, often incomprehensible.

But Trump's “November Surprise” bottom line is obvious: delay the vote counts, hijack the state legislatures, steal the Electoral College delegations, get it all to his “safe harbor” Supremes, who will crown him 6-3 or 5-4... or at least try.

Because the key questions have now become:

Could a huge popular landslide prevent this coup from happening?  How big does it need to be?  How much election protection will it require?
What (if anything) will the Democrats do about all this?

And, most importantly...what will YOU do about it?



 

 
 
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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman co-wrote The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections, which resides at www.freepress.org along with Bob’s Fitrakis Files.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2020

As Everyone Knows, Trump-- Like The Mafia-- Is An Enemy Of Law And Order... But Why Did The Republican Party Go Down That Path With Him?

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The box on the right is the official one. The box on the left was put up by the Republican Party to steal your ballot and burn it. Be careful of Republicans; they hate democracy

No one has been arrested in the Republican scheme to steal ballots and burn them by setting up phony drop-off boxes around California. It seems to have begun in Fresno County in an attempt for the local Republican Party to steal ballots from Hispanic voters, although the coordinated Republican fraud has been detected in Los Angeles and in Orange County where it may be part of an effort by sleazy Republican congressional candidate Michelle Steel, who Kevin McCarthy's Congressional Leadership Fund SuperPAC has supported with $1,980,734 so far this cycle. This is just the kind of felony McCarthy-- an ethics-free Trump stalwart-- would get behind. It appears that Jordan Tygh, a regional field director for the California Republican Party and part of the Steel campaign, is the designated fall guy for the GOP higher-ups. Steel has not been disqualified, let alone arrested, for her decision to steal ballots.

Republicans are freaking out as they stare at the dimensions of the tsunami headed their way. Yesterday, Wall Street Journal reporters Danny Dougherty and Chad Day looked at the early voting data that helps explain the GOP freakout. "Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia," the wrote, "have already received more early ballots than they did in the 2016 presidential election. Several other states have topped 2016 numbers for mail ballots returned, even as in-person early voting is opening up in much of the country. So far, 8.2 million people have voted by mail in the general election and 835,000 headed to polling places early to cast ballots, according to figures from 35 states and the District of Columbia compiled by the Associated Press. For comparison, more than 58 million early ballots were cast in 2016... North Carolina, another presidential battleground and host to a competitive Senate race, received more mail-in votes by September than it saw for all of the 2016 general election... In both North Carolina and Florida, registered Democrats have cast more ballots than registered Republicans so far. In North Carolina, independent voters have also cast more early ballots than registered Republicans.


Presumably, it was just rogue elements in the Trump coalition and not officials of the Republican Party who are behind the thwarted plot to kidnap Democratic governors. Yes, governors (plural)-- not just Gretchen Whitmer. Washington Post reporters Kayla Ruble and Devlin Barrett wrote that according to sworn FBI testimony, the same right-wing terrorists in Ohio who plotted to kidnap the Michigan governor, also talked about kidnapping Virginia Governor Ralph Northam.

Trump continually smeared and attacked both governors in a way than any violent, low-IQ follower of his might believe he was being called on by the president total action against them to "liberate" their states.
Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said the FBI “alerted key members of the Governor’s security team throughout the course of their investigation,” but to keep tight control of information about such a sensitive matter, neither the governor nor other members of his staff were told.

“At no time was the Governor or his family in imminent danger,” said Yarmosky, adding that extra security measures “have been in place for Governor Northam and his family for quite some time, and they will remain.”

The spokeswoman also faulted Trump for fueling anger.

“Here’s the reality: President Trump called upon his supporters to ‘LIBERATE VIRGINIA’ in April-- just like Michigan. In fact, the President regularly encourages violence against those who disagree with him. The rhetoric coming out of this White House has serious and potentially deadly consequences. It must stop,” said Yarmosky.

Tuesday’s hearing is to determine if some of those charged in the alleged Whitmer plot can be released on bond. Separately, seven others are charged by state authorities in Michigan with providing support to terrorist acts.

Don Don-- Criminals hate regulations

Trask, the FBI agent, described in great detail how federal agents became concerned about the accused, particularly after a June meeting in Dublin, Ohio, where self-styled militia members from four or five states gathered to discuss possible plans.

It was at that meeting, Trask said, that the notion of grabbing governors was raised, specifically mentioning the governors of Virginia and Michigan. One of the suspects, Adam Fox, then returned to Michigan and began recruiting possible accomplices for such a kidnapping, Trask said.

Fox and others conducted surveillance on the governor’s lakeside vacation home, Trask said, and at one point Fox told the others that he wanted to abduct the governor, take her away from the home by boat, and then “leave her out in the boat” so others would have to come rescue her, according to testimony at the hearing. Another option discussed was to take Whitmer to a secret location where they would put her “on trial,” Trask said, possibly in Wisconsin.

...Trask also detailed the ways in which the half-dozen suspects repeatedly discussed plans to attack law enforcement. At one point, a member of the group mentioned the possibility of attacking Michigan State Police buildings.

At another point, one of the defendants, Brandon Caserta, became irate that he had been pulled over and ticketed for driving without insurance.

“An injustice just happened to me,” Caserta messaged the other suspects, according to evidence introduced at the hearing, and he wrote he could find out where the two police officers lived and “tap them,” which the FBI agent said was slang for killing them.

Even as the FBI closed in on the group, the defendants became increasingly concerned they might be under investigation by federal agents. At one point, the accused collaborators scanned each other’s bodies for radio signals, to see if anyone was wearing a recording device, the agent said. While the scans turned up nothing, the group’s alleged plot was infiltrated by two informants and two undercover agents, Trask said, and the FBI secretly recorded more than 100 hours of the suspects’ conversations.





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Friday, September 04, 2020

Trump Blatantly Urges His Supporters In North Carolina To Commit A Felony By Voting Twice

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Today, presidential voting kicked off and the first state to send out absentee ballot was North Carolina. Much to Trump's chagrin, 618,000 requested ballots went out today that's 16 times the number the state sent out at the same time four years ago. AP reported that "the requests came overwhelmingly from Democratic and independent voters, a reflection of a new partisan divide over mail voting... Democrats requested more than 326,000 ballots, and independents 192,000, while only 92,000 were sought by Republicans. Voters in the state can continue to request the ballots up until Oct. 27." Two days earlier, on Wednesday evening, Fox News released a new poll that shows Biden leading Trump-- albeit narrowly-- among likely voters in North Carolina by 4 points. This may have been depressing for Trump, who desperately needs North Carolina's 15 electoral votes if he's to have any hope at all of eking out any kind of path to victory in November.



Hours earlier, Rep Jamie Raskin (D-MD), in reference to Trump, told his own supporters that there is a "massive assault on the Post Office to sabotage the election" and that "We will have our hands full defending a November victory against every trick in the fascist playbook...These brutal times are trying to our souls." Maybe Trump saw it because he almost immediately reached for one of his most blatant proposals to his fans to help him sabotage the election yet.

Lauren Egan and Pete Williams of NBC News reported that while Stumping in North Carolina Trumo just urged his supporters to vote twice-- once by mail and once in person. That's illegal and I assume urging people to do so is also illegal. Egan and Williams noted that this is an escalation of "his attempts to cast confusion and doubt on the validity of the result."

Trump: "So let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote... If it's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote. So that's the way it is. And that's what they should do."
Asked about Trump's comments during an interview later Wednesday on CNN, Attorney General William Barr argued that a 2005 bipartisan report on election reform found that mail-in voting is "fraught with the risk of fraud and coercion."

Asked why there have been no findings, however, of widespread fraud, Barr responded, "We haven't had the kind of widespread use of mail-in ballots that's being proposed."

Barr said he was unaware of the specific laws in North Carolina, and he did not respond directly to questions about Trump's earlier comments.

Trump made similar claims about mail-in ballots during his 2016 campaign, essentially encouraging his supporters to commit voter fraud.


While the House House scurried to explain that Trump didn't actually mean what he said and wasn't really urging his supporters in North Carolina to break any laws, he flew off to Pennsylvania, where he urged supporters there to also vote twice. "Sign your mail-in ballot, OK? You sign it and send it in and then you have to follow it. And if on Election Day or early voting, that is not tabulated and counted, you go vote. And if for some reason after that-- it shouldn’t take that long-- they’re not going to be able to tabulate it because you would have voted. But you have to make sure your vote counts, because the only way they are going to be able to beat us is by doing that kind of stuff."

We began with Jamie Raskin-- and we'll end with him as well. "Trump’s open-air invitation to his supporters to vote twice," he told me yesterday, "is a plan for massive criminal voter fraud and chaos at the polls to justify other offenses against American democracy. Every elected official in America must denounce this criminal solicitation by the President or be considered complicit by history in this conspiracy against our government and Constitution."

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Monday, August 24, 2020

If the Margin of Victory Is Smaller Than the Number of Rejected Ballots, the Courts Will Decide the Election

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by Thomas Neuburger

The November election is shaping up as a mess no matter what happens. Forget the politics for a moment and consider just the logistics. From a practical standpoint, it will be next to impossible for any state that doesn't already do full-on vote-by-mail — which is most of them ­— to even conduct it.

Almost all of the post-Covid primaries produced questionable results, even though Biden was by then the shoe-in nominee. Were there enough polling places? Not in most states. Were there enough poll workers? Not in most states. Does that not by itself mean the system prevented voting, even if unintentionally? Of course it does.

Systemic disenfranchisement — a system that prevents voting — yields doubtful outcomes at best, litigation and charges of illegitimacy at worst.

The Logistical Mail-In Mess

Now add in the task, greater by an order-of-magnitude, faced by states new to mail-in voting — and also by voters themselves. Each state has to actually manage this election — provide ballots to everyone who wants to vote, receive those ballots, verify them, and count them. Every one of those steps will give critics cause to complain, especially in "battleground" states.

Mailing out ballots to the entire electorate will be costly, especially in more populous states, and these costs fall on the states themselves. That's the reason many wanted the Covid relief packages to contain additional funding to states to run this election. That effort failed.

Receiving those ballots will burden the already lumbered Post Office to an previously unanticipated degree. Will ballots be mailed in time to be received? Laws that determine the mailing deadline vary from state to state, some allowing more time, some less. Laws covering when ballots must be received vary as well. "Election day" will turn into election month, which allows for sowing of much confusion and distrust.

Will there be accusations of political interference in those deliveries? We're already seeing them, teed up and ready to go. And those problems are present before votes are even counted.

Not Just Logistics, But Fraud

As to verifying and tallying votes, states face another mess. Voters in most states aren't used to voting by mail, and a great many of them will make "mistakes" that could cause their ballots to be disqualified.

Some of those disqualifications will be easy to justify — forgetting to sign the envelope, for example. But some disqualification may be capricious — for example, if the signature "doesn't match" the one on the registration card in the judgment of some (perhaps partisan) election official. Many Republican officials will seek to disqualify as many ballots in "Democratic" districts as they can, just as they worked to disqualify as many Democratic "hanging chad" ballots as possible in Florida during the stolen election of 2000.

Does this mean I don't think Democrats don't steal elections? Far from it; check out this recent piece. But unless the result is a blowout in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, this election will be different: Biden enters this race with a lead, so Democratic interests will be to protect that lead, not diminish the other side's total.

Any Close Election Will Be Litigated

This leads to one conclusion:

• If the margin of victory in November is smaller than the number of disqualified ballots, the courts will decide the election.

According to NPR, "An extraordinarily high number of ballots — more than 550,000 — have been rejected in this year's presidential primaries." That was just the primary, and that total is larger by half than the number of disqualified ballots in the entire 2016 general election, roughly 320,000. In addition, the writers note that "voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count."

Which means, if the election is close, litigation is sure to come from the losing side, whichever side is declared the winner. Yes, Republicans are likely, if past is prologue, to cheat. But given the cluster that will undoubtedly occur, both sides' partisans will have ample cause to complain.

Hillary Clinton eventually won the 2016 popular vote by close to 3,000,000 votes, but lost the Electoral College 304-227 — not even close. In contrast, George Bush lost the popular vote by just 500,000 in 2000, and won the Electoral College by just five, 271-266.

If the year 2000 repeats itself in just this respect, its closeness (ignoring the Supreme Court's unopposed theft of it), November will be a nightmare, as will December and January. And if the courts do make the final decision, watch out.

It will be great for ratings if a protracted battle occurs — those who channel Les Moonves are already salivating — but our close-to-failed-state democracy, already on the ropes, may well go down for the count.
  

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

How Existential A Threat To Democracy Is Trump And What Do We Do About It?

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I don't trust the voting machines... never did, never will. They're too easily hackable. And I've thought that Trump's hysteria over vote-by-mail was because he had it all down exactly how the election would be stolen via machine tampering. With the appointment of future federal penitentiary inhabitant Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, Trump may have handled the vote-by-mail threat to his November plans.

In an OpEd for The Hill, Al Hunt wrote that "The charge by Trump and his attorney general that mail voting risks massive fraud is a canard. Spencer Cox, the conservative Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, who oversees voting in one of five states that exclusively votes by mail, says it's a 'tremendous success' with little fraud. The stated reason for going after the Postal Service is red ink which totaled $8.8 billion last year. A little bit of context on Donald Trump worrying about deficits: As a businessman, he bragged about being 'the King of Debt,' and on his watch, the federal deficit has almost doubled to close to $1 trillion, before the pandemic.
The new postmaster general is a Trump loyalist. He has given $2 million to Republicans and Trump campaigns since 2016, the latest being a $210,000 contribution to the Trump Victory Fund in February. He was going to be finance chair of the Republicans’ Charlotte convention before it was curtailed; his wife has been nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Canada.


DeJoy told the Postal Board of Governors Friday that he's not making any changes that will impede voting by mail and declared: although he has a "a good relationship" with the president, any assertion he'd make decisions at the direction of Trump "is wholly off-base."

In response to an email from me, he wouldn't say whether he spoke with Trump about the job prior to his appointment or has communicated with him since taking over.

He has not assuaged Democrats.

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, told me: "Trump has appointed a donor and political crony to undermine the postal service for partisan gain."

In the first month and half under DeJoy, instructions have gone out to the more than 600,000 postal workers to curb any overtime and cut back services.

There's a more pressing need for overtime during this health crisis. Most postal workers are out every day, exposed to the virus. Three months ago-- the latest data-- some 2,400 postal employees had tested positive for the virus; 17,000 had been quarantined, and scores died. Those numbers undoubtedly have risen since then.

DeJoy is playing with political fire.

In a recent Hart Research-North Star Opinion Research national survey, 94 percent of Americans say the Postal Service is important to them, and there's widespread backing of federal support. A large number of the 31,000 post offices are in rural America, areas that are generally more dependent on mail delivery and that are represented by Republicans.
This morning I woke up to this ominous tweet by by friend Frank Schaeffer:




Jamelle Bouie's NY Times column, published at the same time, came to a similar conclusion: To keep a crooked authoritarian threat to democracy from claiming victory on Nov. 3, Americans patriots who can vote in person may well have to. This is gettin' serious, friends.
There’s no mystery about what President Trump intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November. He’s practically broadcasting it.

First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country.


He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Fewer pickups and deliveries could mean more late-arriving ballots and a better shot at dismissing votes before they’re even opened, especially if the campaign has successfully sued to block states from extending deadlines. We might even see a Brooks Brothers riot or two, where well-heeled Republican operatives stage angry and voluble protests against ballot counts and recounts.

If Trump is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends-- if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in-- the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news.”

The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Trump and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery-- going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box”-- will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit.

...There are reforms that could keep the president from taking this tack. To account for postal delays, states can pledge to count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3, so that they’re included in the total even if they arrive late. To speed up the process, states could permit election officials to verify and count mail-in ballots even before Election Day. They could also decline to release results until all polls close and all votes are in. News organizations, similarly, could set expectations for viewers and bring as much transparency as possible to vote counts and other forms of election analysis.

Nonetheless, there is a chance that the president takes this path regardless of state officials and the media. And there’s every reason to think that some portion of the Republican Party will back him. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are already challenging mail-in voting laws and suing to keep states like Nevada and Pennsylvania from enlarging their scope. It is easy to imagine a replay of Florida 2000, except on a national scale.


The best defense for the president’s political opponents is, if possible, to vote in person. For some, this will mean going to the polls in November, in the middle of flu season, when the spread of Covid-19 may worsen. In most states, however, there are multiple ways to cast or hand in a ballot. Every state offers some form of early or absentee voting, and 33 states-- including swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin-- allow absentee voting without an excuse. Trump supports absentee voting-- it’s how his older supporters in Florida vote-- and his opponents should take advantage of the fact that those systems won’t be under the same kind of attack. Many vote-by-mail states also offer drop boxes so that voters can deliver ballots directly to the registrar. And if you must mail in your ballot, the best practice would be to post it as early as possible, to account for potential delays.

Earlier this year, a group of more than 100 people-- Republicans, Democrats, senior political operatives and members of the media-- gathered to role play the November election, using predetermined rules and procedures. “In each scenario other than a Biden landslide,” writes Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, who helped organize the exercise, “we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition.”

There you have it. To head off the worst outcomes, Trump must go down in a decisive defeat. He’s on that path already. The task for his opponents is to sustain that momentum and work to make his defeat as obvious as possible, as early as possible. The pandemic makes that a risk, but it’s a risk many of us may have to take.





Christine Pellegrino is favored to replace a worthless Republican Trumpist on Long Island. This morning she mentioned to me that "Trump's popularity or lack there-of is absolutely going to drive people to the polls, or their mailboxes, to vote. But I'm not taking my foot off the gas. At the end of the day, voters care about common sense issues: good jobs, good schools, and healthcare. Talking to voters about the change Albany can create for all of us is empowering for the disaffected. The voters want a real representative. They’re tired of lazy, lifetime politicians and they’re demanding more than they just show up for photos. Down ballot candidates like me need to make sure that people mobilized by the 'Trump factor' fill out their entire ballots."

My old friend, Jerry Leichtling, came up with a brilliant idea-- that's what brilliant people like Jerry do... come up with brilliant ideas. Take look at this proposal he just sent me:
Inasmuch as E-Commerce companies have benefitted tremendously from the Covid-19 Pandemic, these same companies should be willing to do the people of the United States a massive public service. Given the Trump-ordered slowdown of the United States Postal Service there is no reason why federally-bonded companies like Amazon, Fedex and UPS should not, as a patriotic public service, pick up all voters' ballots and deliver them to Local Boards of Elections. These companies, and hundreds more, already do massive business with the Postal Service. They have literally millions of employees and are NOT slowing down. Please write to the CEO’s of Amazon-- Jeff Bezos (Jeff@Amazon.com); Fedex-- Fred Smith (Fredric.Smith@Fedex.Com) and UPS, Carol Tome (CTome@UPS.com) with the heading or hashtag Special Delivery Democracy. and send copies to your elected representatives as well. Let’s see if we can derail Trump’s express train to tyranny.

Counting Sheep by Nancy Ohanian

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Monday, July 27, 2020

Why Don't Democratic Leaders Support Verifiable Elections? The Reason Is Simple and Obvious

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The original Mayor Daley wasn't the first, but he was the best at election manipulation. Daley would have not supported verifiable elections for the obvious reason. Why don't today's Democrats support verifiable elections?

by Thomas Neuburger

"Everyone I know wants Trump to lose. Do you know anyone who actually wants Biden to win?"
—Howie Klein, here

I've often contended that neither political party — not the Democrats, not the Republicans — wants free, open, verifiable and uncorrupted elections.

Both parties, of course, say they want fair elections. The Republicans use these pronouncements, though, as cover for creating obstacles to voting by Democratic-leaning citizens based on demographics like race and place of residence. That much is a given, and this hypocrisy is obvious to everyone, including Republicans.

But what about the Democratic Party? There the situation is more mixed, but it's not unmixed. I cut my adult teeth in Chicago, the perfect model, if not ground zero, for election manipulation, and there are many Chicago's in the country.

There are also many approaches to stealing elections, but one of the most common is faked and manipulated vote totals, and for that, the solution is well known: hand-counted paper ballots. Given that fact, you have to ask yourself: If Democratic leaders really wanted uncorrupted elections — as opposed to just elections they could win — wouldn't they demand a national return to hand-counted paper ballots, the gold standard for honest elections?

And yet they don't. Year after year they keep the same corruptible voting systems in place, often expanding them, and focus their fire instead on Republican gerrymandering and voter list purges as evidence of the other party's evil and their own goodness.

It's likely there's a simple and obvious reason for Democratic leadership not seeking to secure our elections with hand-counted ballots, but it's not a pretty one: Like the Republicans, Democratic leaders, many or most of whom hate progressives with a passion, also want the ability to "fix" elections when they wish to.

"Ballot-Stuffing" in Philadelphia

For example, consider this, from the Philly Voice:
South Philly judge of elections pleads guilty to stuffing ballot boxes, accepting bribes

Prosecutors say Domenick DeMuro, 73, inflated results for Democratic primary candidates

A former judge of elections in South Philadelphia pleaded guilty this week to fraudulently stuffing ballot boxes for Democratic candidates in recent primary elections, accepting bribes from a political consultant hired to help influence local election results.

...During the 2014, 2015 and 2016 primary elections, DeMuro admitted that he accepted bribes ranging from $300 to $5,000 per election. A political consultant hired by specific Democratic candidates gave DeMuro a cut of his fee to add votes for these candidates, who were running for judicial and various state, federal and local elected offices.

DeMuro would "ring up" extras votes on machines at his polling station, add them to the totals and later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain said, "DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear."

This happens all the time and is rarely caught and punished. In this case, it's likely the bribes from a "political consultant hired by specific Democratic candidates" were the only reason DeMoro was prosecuted. A number of hand-made videos during the 2016 primary showed similar corrupt "certifications" at the local level, all of them disadvantaging Bernie Sanders, yet none of these videos sparked an ounce of indignation from "free election" Democratic leaders — whose preferred candidate, it should be noted, Hillary Clinton, benefited every time.

"Progressive Democrat" Blocks Gerrymandering Reform in Nevada

Or consider this sordid tale from Nevada, in which the local League of Women Voters attempted to eliminate gerrymandering following a recent Supreme Court decision that returned gerrymandering lawsuits to the states to resolve.

From the Nevada Current (emphasis added):
Apparently some Democrats think gerrymandering is fine in blue states

In June of 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that federal courts will no longer accept partisan gerrymandering cases. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority that partisan gerrymandering is a political issue that must be resolved at the state level. In response, the League of Women Voters U.S. launched a People Powered Fair Maps plan to create barriers to partisan gerrymandering in each state.

The League of Women Voters of Nevada adopted the plan and reached out to our democracy partners to form the Fair Maps Nevada coalition. On November 4, 2019, Fair Maps Nevada filed a constitutional amendment ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission. Nevada’s constitution protects the right to circulate a ballot initiative as well as the right to vote on ballot questions.
So far, so good. But wait:
On November 27, 2019, Mr. Kevin Benson, a Carson City attorney, filed a lawsuit challenging the ballot question’s summary of effect for a “progressive Democrat.” His client argued that the summary of the amendment that appears on each signature sheet was misleading. Fair Maps Nevada offered to edit the summary to clarify the amendment’s intent, but Mr. Benson refused. The Judge James Russell ultimately agreed with Mr. Benson’s client and asked both parties to submit new versions of the summary to address the plaintiff’s complaints. 
It's suspicious that a self-proclaimed "progressive Democrat" would try to monkey-wrench the process, but still, so far, so good. However: 
Fair Maps Nevada submitted a new summary, but Mr. Benson did not. Instead, he argued that the whole amendment was misleading and so should be blocked completely from moving forward.
In other words, the whole exercise was a sham to get the entire process thrown out by the local judge.
Essentially, Mr. Benson was asking Judge Russell to deny the Fair Maps Nevada coalition our constitutionally protected right to circulate a petition. Judge Russell accepted Fair Maps Nevada’s new summary of the amendment and closed the case [in favor of Fair Maps Nevada].
Still, the issue didn't die there. Benson took his appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, which allowed it to go ahead. Fair Maps Nevada eventually won, but not before they realized (wasn't it already obvious?) that this mystery litigant's real goal was to run out the signature-gathering clock on the initiative. Further, the state Supreme Court failed to close the legal loophole that allowed the appeal in the first place, preparing the way for similar future challenges on the same spurious grounds.

Why would a Democrat, in Democratic-controlled Nevada, want to block gerrymandering reform, if not to continue to benefit from the unreformed system?

The Danger for Democrats

The danger for Democrats in tolerating and continuing their own vote corruption is great. When voters say "both parties do it" — they're right. Perhaps Party leaders, national and local, think they can get away with these acts given that most of the mainstream media — busy people's only source of news — protects listeners and viewers from information that supports the "both are corrupt" frame.

But that protection can't be effective forever. While most Sanders supporters, for example, will vote for Joe Biden, most won't give him money, under the assumption perhaps that his billionaires have that covered. And this is widely seen as a race that most want neither candidate to win — especially if you include non-voters — even though even more voters want Trump to lose.

The bottom line is this: While Democratic leaders may think the situation — their current and safe control of their share of power — is well managed, the nation may easily become so alienated by both parties, and by the people's inability to vote outside the two-corrupt-parties framework, that they seek "other avenues" for change.

Ironically, a "back to the normal" Biden administration may be just the match Americans need to spark an active rebellion against the corruption of both political parties. One more round of mainstream Democrats in charge, may be the last straw for that national beast of burden, our suffering governed, to bear.

If that's the case, watch out. Democratic leaders are running out of time, as are we all. When a nation seeks "other avenues" for reform, that nation's in trouble.
 

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Wednesday, July 08, 2020

Florida Is Once Again At The Legal Vortex Of A Potential Stolen Election

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-by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Florida has long been a vortex for stealing elections. Now a Florida-based legal case that is likely to go to the US Supreme Court could once again decide the presidency.

The case centers on how our votes will be counted in an election that will be conducted largely with mailed-in paper ballots. In particular, its focus is on electronic scanning machines that are in at least 80% of US precincts.

From a paper ballot, the scanners produce a digital image. That image can then be electronically read, yielding an overall election result in less than ten seconds. The paper ballots themselves are preserved for recounts.

But according to a lawsuit filed July 1, election boards are illegally choosing to discard the images. The plaintiffs want the courts to stop that.

Signed by three Florida Democratic legislators, the suit demands that electronic ballot images be preserved in accordance with federal law.

By federal law the ballot images are considered part of the public record and, like the actual paper ballots, must be retained at least 22 months. The machines are used in at least 80 percent of the nation's voting stations.

But many Secretary of States and/or State election boards around the country simply erase the images, allowing local officials considerable leeway in determining the vote count. In Florida, which has been notoriously fluid in the accuracy of its outcomes, only 27 out of the 67 counties that we know of are preserving the ballot images.

This suit was filed under the leadership of John Brakey, founder and director of AUDIT Elections USA, a nationwide election protection coalition specializing in digital imaging.

"These records called ballot images will help verify the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election," says State Representative Joseph S. Geller (D-Aventura). Geller is joined in the lawsuit by State Representative Geraldine Thompson (D-Windermere) and State Senator Victor M. Torres (D-Kissimmee) as well as Dan Helm, a candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Pinellas County. Geller said the destruction of these images is clearly in violation of state and federal law.

"Governor DeSantis has just signed a new law that allows digital ballot images to be used in recounts," says Susan Pynchon, Director of Florida Fair Elections Coalition, "and yet there is nothing in the law requiring the ballot images to be preserved for 22 months. This new law adds urgency to the preservation of ballot images as vital election records."

Says Brakey: "Florida been the scene of numerous razor-close elections, including the 2000 presidential election decided by just 537 votes and the 2018 U.S. Senate election decided by only 10,033 votes.

Preservation of voting materials has been a widespread problem. In 2004 the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville civic organization sued the state of Ohio to preserve ballots for audits and a recount. Ohio’s then-Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered all county election boards to bring all ballots and other related materials to a special repository in Columbus. The demand was supported by the federal courts.

But 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties failed to comply, claiming they were missing all or some of the necessary election material needed for a recount. There were no ensuing prosecutions.

Allen County claimed some of its materials got water damage, and then all were destroyed by a contractor. Guernsey County said a trash collector picked up the ballot boxes in error. The Mahoning County Board of Elections blamed environmentalists who "accidentally" picked up ballots when recycling. Hamilton County "accidentally" shredded its ballots. Holmes County took the "dog ate my homework" prize by claiming a carafe of coffee spilled on the ballots as they were stored in a vault.

Goal ThermometerIn Florida, 2018, Broward County "lost" 2,040 ballots. Brakey noted that the voting machine companies themselves have marketed digital voting equipment that creates ballot images that can help in "auditing and adjudication….Had Broward County saved their ballot images in 2018, the mystery of the missing 2,040 ballots could have been solved."

Florida defendants include the Supervisors of Elections in Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval, Orange, Lee, Pinellas, Palm Beach, and Hillsborough Counties, who say they have no legal obligation to save the ballot images, and admit to destroying them.

"The ballot images are a critical component for system diagnostics," said Ray Lutz, an electrical engineer who is one of the nation's top experts on ballot images. "If errors or discrepancies are discovered, the images are needed to pinpoint the source of those errors, whether it's faulty equipment, software bugs, or other external reasons.

"Ballot images can also be a check on the paper ballots," Lutz added. "Paper ballots can be modified with a pen, accidentally destroyed or inappropriately shredded. Having the original image created when the vote is cast protects against modification of the paper ballots."

Ballot images are public records that can easily allow anyone to verify election results. Some places, such as Dane County, WI, and San Francisco, CA, and 15 counties in Florida, provide ballot images with a public records request or post all the ballot images on their websites so that voters can verify election results for themselves.

“Unfortunately, at least one vendor has built a self-destruct mechanism into their voting systems that allows election officials to destroy evidence that is public records that can help determine if election results are accurate,” Brakey said. “Our success in this lawsuit will go a long way towards reducing cynicism about elections. Our country needs elections that are transparent, trackable, and publicly verified.”

Links to Case # 2020 CA 001238:

The Complaint Filing # 109701662, E-Filed 07/01/2020 09:55:22 PM

This Complaint with Hyperlinks to all Exhibits.



UPDATE From Howie:

I asked three of the most prominent Democratic challengers running for office, congressional candidates Adam Christensen and Cindy Banyai and Bob Lynch who is running for a Republican-held state legislative seat in a south Florida swing district, about the danger of election theft Wasserman and Fitrakis are warning about. Adam told me that "the largest election frauds that have occurred in history involved the incumbent governments (and dictatorships) burning the boxes of ballots so that no one could ever verify that the votes were counted correctly. This is the digital version of burning ballots to hide results. If you care about living in a democracy then destroying election results is something that we cannot allow to happen."

Dr. Cindy Banyai has been raising awareness on issues in Florida elections since earlier this year recognizing that the DeSantis administration could use the COVID-19 pandemic to suppress votes. "We absolutely need to check every process and ensure there is integrity in our elections in Florida. There are simply too many people trying to skirt the system and use the bureaucracy to eliminate votes. These types of backups are needed to dissuade any potential vote suppression and check any discrepancies."

Bob Lynch noted that "Of all the people who have been spot on about what is happening right before our eyes, there has been no bigger Cassandra than Jenny Cohn. She has been talking to everyone about this since At least 2018. I realize that the cable news stations have decided that Malcolm Nance and Sarah Kendzior are bad for business, but Jenny never even got on. She has written the manual on all of the different ways our voting machines can be hacked or compromised and yet nobody on either side seems to care. It makes you wonder. There is a Pulitzer out there for any half-assed reporter who wants to chase down this story. Follow the money and the patents."

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Thursday, June 11, 2020

I Bet Election Theft And Voter Suppression Would Stop If They Were Capital Crimes And A Few People Got Executed For It

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Georgia's primary elections were a mess yesterday. Look at the race for the Democratic slot in Georgia's first district. Progressive Lisa Ring, the progressive in George's first district will be in a runoff with Joyce Griggs. With 96.89% of precincts reporting (204 out of 225), Lisa had 17,181 votes to Griggs' 17,164. Every vote counts. The Senate race looked like it was coming down to a runoff between a progressive (Teresa Tomlinson) and a nothing (Jon Ossoff) as well, but by last night, the nothing had avoided the runoff and is likely to lose the chance to beat Perdue; leave it to Schumer! The important race in GA-07 also looks like it will be determined in a runoff, as will Democratic primaries in GA-09 and in GA-13, where longtime incumbent and useless Blue Dog David Scott has been forced into a runoff, the only Georgia incumbent who was.

The Associated Press headline tells the real story of the Tuesday primary: 'Chaos in Georgia': Is messy primary a November harbinger?. Bill Barrow wrote that "The long-standing wrangle over voting rights and election security came to a head in Georgia, where a messy primary and partisan finger-pointing offered an unsettling preview of a November contest when battleground states could face potentially record turnout. Many Democrats blamed the Republican secretary of state for hours-long lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time for Tuesday’s elections. Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called it “completely unacceptable.” Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties, while President Donald Trump’s top campaign attorney decried 'the chaos in Georgia.'"

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the primary quickly turned into an ordeal for voters who waited for hours Tuesday when it became clear officials were unprepared for an election on new voting computers during the coronavirus pandemic. Poll workers couldn’t get voting machines to work. Precincts opened late. Social-distancing requirements created long lines. Some voters gave up and went home. The primary was a major test of Georgia’s ability to run a highly anticipated election in a potential battleground state ahead of November’s presidential election, when more than twice as many voters are expected. Elections officials fell short."



Is it just incompetence? Or is there more to Georgia's Republican-controlled dysfunctional voting system? The last Secretary of State, Brian Kemp blatantly stole the gubernatorial election from Stacey Abrams two years ago. Now he's governor. The new issue of Mother Jones carries an essay by election fraud expert Ari Berman, How the Coronavirus Handed the GOP New Ways to Squash the Vote, which isn't specifically about Georgia. In fact, he starts in Texas, where H. Drew Galloway is executive director of MOVE Texas and "spends his life trying to register young voters. Typi­cally, in the spring of an election year, Galloway would be overseeing a staff of about four dozen who, before classes end for the summer, register newly eligi­ble voters on 55 college campuses and at dozens of high schools. Last year, MOVE Texas signed up more than 25,000 new voters. It reached nearly 8,000 more this year before the state’s March 3 presidential primary. But then the coronavirus outbreak scattered students, and MOVE Texas, like every other political group, suspended in-person registration drives. 'We’ve gone from registering 2,000 people a week to registering maybe 100,' Galloway told me in April. 'Voter registration is decimated in Texas.'"

Texas is one of those states controlled by the GOP-- like Georgia-- where the state works hard to keep as many people from voting as they can, especially people of color, poor people and young people and, wrote Berman, "What’s happened in Texas is happening nationwide: The coronavirus has heightened the already considerable obstacles blocking citizens from exercising their right to vote. In the last decade, Republicans have enacted new voting restrictions in 25 states. The Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, unleashing new efforts in states with long histories of voting discrimination to make it harder for voters of color to cast ballots."


Even before the pandemic, Texas was a hard place to register. As of May, it was one of 10 states with no way to do so online. Anyone who wants to sign up voters must be deputized by each county they work in, every two years. Texas has an estimated 5.5 million unregistered but eligible voters-- more people than the individual populations of 28 other states. The majority of them, according to the Texas Demo­cratic Party, are young, people of color, or both, who would likely favor Democrats if they voted. Luke Warford, who directs the party’s efforts to expand voting, told me that Texas Democrats had hoped to see 2 million new people register this year as part of its push to tip the state blue. “We had plans to run the largest statewide voter registration program in history,” he said. “Introduce a pandemic and that makes everything you were planning to do in person quite a bit more difficult.”

Even if new voters succeed in registering, without changes to the existing system they’ll face unequal access to mail-in ballots. Texas limits mail-in voting for those under 65 to people who are out of town during the election, in jail, or have a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents them from going to the polls. Meanwhile, any voter 65 or older-- the strongest age demographic for Donald Trump in 2016-- can request an absentee ballot with no questions asked.

In April, a state judge ruled that people afraid of contracting the coronavirus while voting had a legitimate reason to get an absentee ballot. Texas’ Republican attorney general has opposed the ruling, claiming that “a fear of contracting COVID-19” is “an emotional condition and not a physical” one, and has raised the prospect of “criminal sanctions” for groups like MOVE Texas that help voters under 65 obtain mail-in ballots. In late May, the state’s all-Republican Supreme Court agreed a lack of immunity to the virus alone was not a valid reason, but said voters could weigh their health history and make their own decision-- a ruling that could cause confusion and leave some people requesting mail ballots open to prosecution. A separate appeal on the matter is pending in federal court.

...In key states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, the number of new voters who registered in March was half or less than it was during the same time period in 2016.

Public health and election expert agree that voting by mail us the safest way to cast a ballot in a pandemic. Yet most states are unprepared to hold mail elections in a way that won’t lead to significant voter disenfranchisement. The six best-positioned states-- California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington-- ­have already put in place systems where a ballot is sent to every registered voter. In three other Western states-- Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico-- a majority of votes are cast by mail, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. With Florida and pockets of other mail-in voters added in, a quarter of Americans voted by mail in 2018, a record number. But in the 40 other states, mail-in ballots made up just 9 percent of votes cast. Fewer than 8 percent of people voted by mail in key states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Because it’s been a minor method of voting in a lot of the key states, the rules and practices involving mail voting have gotten less scrutiny and haven’t been thought out to make sure they’re fair and accessible,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice.


While quickly expanding voting by mail could help many people cast ballots in November, it poses its own risks. If election officials, especially in places unused to the method, are overwhelmed by a surge of requests, ballots might not reach voters in time. The United States Postal Service, which faces a major budget shortfall and attacks from the Trump administration (a major fundraiser for the Republican National Convention was just named postmaster general), could lack the resources to handle increases in sent and returned ballots. And a sizable chunk of the electorate will be unfamiliar with the intricate rules governing mail-in voting and could see their ballots thrown out on technicalities.

...While groups like Rock the Vote and Voto Latino have reported a major increase in voter registrations amid the protests over George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer, calls for young people and people of color to reshape the 2020 elections by voting in record numbers must contend with the reality that those communities most affected by racism and police brutality could also have the toughest time voting this year.

“As we push more people to vote by mail, which is a good thing, the number of ballots that aren’t counted is going to increase. And we know those ballots are not equally distributed. This burden is shared disproportionately by young and minority voters,” Elias said.

Wisconsin's disastrous election on April 7, when officials proceeded with a primary and state Supreme Court race despite a statewide shelter-in-place order, provided a vivid illustration of how not to vote during a pandemic. Republican leaders in the state legislature rebuffed calls by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, to postpone the election or mail an absentee ballot to every registered voter. With many people afraid to leave their homes, and cities closing the bulk of their polling places because of poll worker shortages-- Milwaukee opened just 5 of 180-- anxious Wisconsinites were forced to wait hours in line to vote. Just 6 percent of the state’s voters cast ballots by mail in 2018; this spring around 60 percent did.

While photos of masked voters and poll workers in protective gear drew national outrage, they may have obscured the fact that the state was ill-equipped to handle that huge increase. Though officials worked around the clock-- Madison’s city clerk said she logged more than 100 hours a week during the close of the election--121,000 mail-in ballots were not returned, as voters complained they didn’t receive them in time or at all, because of mistakes by election workers or the post office.

A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission confirmed that the dramatic increase in absentee voting “certainly caught us by surprise,” conceding that Milwaukee and Green Bay, both home to many Democratic voters, had failed to get every requester a ballot, unlike “the vast majority” of the states’ 1,850 municipalities.

Wisconsin also shined a light on the restrictive rules for mail-in ballots. Voters had to get a witness to watch them fill out their ballots, difficult for anyone living alone at a time of social distancing. Many voters had to include a copy of their photo ID to request an absentee ballot, which at a minimum required uploading a picture of their ID or photocopying it. Such rules, which Republicans refused to waive, helped lead to an estimated 23,000 absentee ballots being rejected-- almost the same number that Trump carried the state by in 2016.

... Despite Trump’s false claim that mail-in voting benefits Democrats, the parties’ voters made roughly equal use of the option in 2016, and it’s helped Republicans in key swing states like Arizona and Florida. Older and whiter voters tend to vote by mail more than the overall electorate. According to a Brennan Center analysis of voting in seven presidential battlegrounds, voters 65 or over were roughly twice as likely to vote by mail than those under 40. Nationwide, in 2018, just 11 percent of Black voters cast ballots by mail while 23 percent of white voters did.

Trump and the RNC have signaled they’ll fight expansions of mail-in voting that would make the process more accessible for younger and more diverse voters, but not for their most reliable voters, such as mailing absentee ballot applications to anyone over 64.




Ben Wikler, who helped thousands of voters cast their first mail-in ballots in April as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, warns that “the danger is Republicans will apply the ruthless cynicism they’ve used for in-person voter suppression to absentee voter suppression and we’ll be fighting against a whole new set of tactics.”

Another worry is the spread of disinformation about how to vote, which could be particularly disruptive in a year when Americans will have to adopt unfamiliar procedures. The potential methods go well beyond what’s known about Russia’s 2016 playbook. Shady political organizations could send people genuine-seeming but fake absentee ballots, set up bogus websites to trick people into thinking they’ve requested ballots, spread the wrong deadline for returning mail-in ballots, or give incorrect information about the type of documentation or identification needed to vote.

“The pandemic could likely be weaponized in the hands of those that already had the intent to suppress the vote,” said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “There are a lot more challenges now to conducting elections. There’s a lot more potential for mischief.”

“The silver lining” of Wisconsin, Gupta said, “was it raised the alarm for folks who weren’t necessarily focusing on the elections and democracy component of COVID. It certainly awakened local and state officials-- ­they don’t want those same Wisconsin photos on their watch.”

...The electoral response to the coronavirus mirrors the public health one, with little national leadership, and state action varying widely. Some states, like California, which is sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters, are doing a lot to make voting easier while others, like Texas, are fighting common­sense steps to expand voter access. Elements of the federal government and state-level Republicans may be working quietly to respond responsibly and ensure a free and fair election, but Trump is actively undermining that goal by lying about the prevalence of voter fraud and opposing mail-in voting.

The president’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus outbreak may have imperiled his reelection chances. But its disproportionate impacts could play to his advantage. The counties with the highest rates of covid-19 as of mid-April voted for Clinton by 19 points, while the areas with the lowest rates supported Trump by 15 points. If the virus surges or stay-at-home orders return for Election Day, residents of these large and staunchly Democratic cities could be afraid to vote in person-- and in most states, they’ll face untested election systems with their own potentially decisive faults. As Wikler noted in the wake of Wisconsin’s primary, “The harder it is to vote, the more people wind up getting pushed to the side.”





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