Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
“For What It’s Worth” by Stephen Stills (1966), inspired by the “Sunset Strip riots.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Mary Trump (“Too Much and Never Enough“) Thursday night what her uncle Donald might do if he loses the November election. She might have asked what the acting president might do to ensure he does not lose.
How might Trump cheat thee? Rolling Stone’s Andy Kroll counts the ways. Including Trump’s setting expectations for his base that, should he lose, it was Democrats and who-knows-who voting illegally by mail that stole his righteous victory.
Republicans plan massive investments this year in rooting out supposed “voter fraud,” including $20 million on lawsuits aimed at stopping Democratic efforts to make voting easier and safer during the coronavirus pandemic. Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine law professor and proprietor of Election Law Blog, says they have a simple goal: “Casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Raising spurious fraud claims.”
On cue, the Washington Post reports this:
A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee said that attempts to “forcibly implement” policies that make it easier to vote absentee will “destroy public confidence in the integrity of our elections.”
Which is a strange complaint. Republicans have worked assiduously for decades to do just that.
Kroll notes that this is the first presidential election in 40 years that Republicans will not be restrained by the 1982 consent decree signed to resolve a case brought by Democrats over voter intimidation tactics the GOP deployed in the 1981 governor’s race in New Jersey:
On November 3rd, 1981, Lynette Monroe, who lived in northwest Trenton, headed out to her polling place. It was Election Day in New Jersey. When Monroe, a Democrat, arrived at the polling site, she was stopped outside by a member of a group called the National Ballot Security Task Force. Monroe was asked if she had her voter-registration card with her. She said she did not but that it didn’t matter — she was a registered voter. But the National Ballot Security Task Force members “turned her away, preventing her from casting her ballot,” according to a lawsuit later filed by the Democratic Party, Monroe, and several others.
When she was turned away, Monroe had no way of knowing that the National Ballot Security Task Force was a massive voter-suppression project funded and carried out by the Republican National Committee and the New Jersey Republican Party. Republicans hired county deputy sheriffs and local policemen with revolvers, two-way radios, and “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands to patrol predominantly black and Hispanic precincts in New Jersey. They posted large warning signs outside polling places saying that it was “a crime to falsify a ballot or to violate election laws.” The signs omitted any mention of the GOP’s role in this egregious intimidation scheme, but the intent was obvious: “to harass and intimidate duly qualified black and Hispanic voters for the purpose and with the effect of discouraging these voters from casting their ballots,” the lawsuit stated.
Listen to more on this saga from WNYC.
I’ve written about the RNC’s voter fraud campaign and consent decree multiple times, and about the March 2012 opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Joseph Greenaway wrote in denying the RNC’s appeal, “If the RNC does not hope to engage in conduct that would violate the Decree, it is puzzling that the RNC is pursuing vacatur so vigorously …”
Now that the decree has expired, Justin Clark, a senior Trump 2020 campaign attorney told a group of Republicans at a private meeting in November that the consent decree’s demise was “a huge, huge, huge, huge deal.” He told them, Kroll writes, that “it frees the RNC to directly coordinate with campaigns and political committees on so-called Election Day operations.”
For massive voter-suppression this coming Election Day, the events this week in Portland make New Jersey cops in armbands look like pikers. Might Portland be a trial run?
USA Today’s headline Friday night: ‘Secret police force’: Feds reportedly pull Portland protesters into unmarked vehicles, stirring outrage
“It’s like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay,” said civil rights attorney Juan Chavez. “You have laws regarding probable cause…. [This] sounds more like abduction. It sounds like they’re kidnapping people off the streets.”
Recall that Italy in 2009 convicted 23 CIA operatives (Americans) in absentia for involvement in abducting a Muslim cleric off the street in Milan in 2003. Several men dragged him into in an unmarked van. They “rendered” Abu Omar to Egypt where he claimed he was tortured.
If Trump gets away with this, Portland could end up a template for intimidating voters in blue cities in swing states, say, around Election Day. Before Trump, I might have considered that tinfoil hat territory.
But Election Day is just the denouement. For warm-ups, the president and his team are working to ensure the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to deliver those mailed ballots Trump distrusts is severely impaired (Paul Waldman):
For most of his time in office, President Trump has attacked and criticized the U.S. Postal Service, for reasons that range from the bizarre to the intensely personal. And lately, he has been waging a crusade against voting by mail, apparently out of the mistaken belief that it inherently benefits Democrats.
These two Trump wars — against the USPS and against mail voting — may be coming together to produce an election nightmare come November.
Have you noticed a slowdown in your mail delivery recently? Letters taking longer to reach you? Some days when you don’t get mail at all? If you have, you’re not alone. And that’s where our story starts.
Bottom line: If your state has a deadline for your vote-by-mail or absentee-by-mail ballot to arrive at the Board of Elections, DO NOT WAIT to mail it. Seriously, if you are reading this blog, are you really going to change your mind on candidates between the time your ballot arrives at your home and Election Day? Fill it out. Mail it back as soon as possible. Or don’t mail it at all. Place it in a nearby drop box. I plan on depositing mine in the drop box at the local Board office weeks ahead of Election Day.
To repeat:
We need to “flatten the curve” on how and when people vote this fall. Expand absentee voting as early as practicable to relieve pressure on in-person voting methods. COVID-19 means we expect to have trouble staffing polling places. Expanded use of absentee ballots means reducing lines and the risk of infection for early- and election-day voters. Think of it as a democratic strategic triad.
The Trump administration’s new postmaster general has eliminated overtime. If there aren’t enough hours in the day to handle today’s mail, it will sit until tomorrow. As ballots pile up … you get the idea.
Waldman again:
You may have heard that we need to be prepared for the vote count to take longer this year; because mail ballots take longer to process and there will be so many more of them, it could be a couple of days before we know who won the presidential election.
That’s bad enough, but we now face a situation in which hundreds of thousands of Americans could find their ballots tossed in the trash — which could not only interfere with the election, but also make people angry at the Postal Service itself. And that would make Trump very happy.
The Associated Press has more on Trump’s assault on the Postal Service.
Ignore the polls. Get your friends to vote. All of them. If you vote by mail or absentee, mail your ballot early or find a drop box. Everything is on the line.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.