Preserve and Protect Vote-By-Mail

It has been an interesting week, between the pandemic, the Republicans wanting austerity and protection for businesses during a pandemic, and Trump’s continued slide to oblivion in November. As has been noted by many people, complacency is dangerous, because Trump plans to steal the election.

It seems clear that Trump and his henchman Louis DeJoy, the total incompetent he appointed to be Postmaster General based on his multimillion-dollar contributions to Trump and the GOP and his absolute Trump sycophancy. DeJoy has instituted multiple processes that will do nothing but slow the USPS to a crawl. In the face of an uncontrolled pandemic (because Trump and the GOP refuse to act at a federal level, tossing all responsibility back to the states -- shades of the Articles of Confederation), it is hard for any reasonable person to imagine that this is because of anything except voter suppression through hitting vote-by-mail. Despite his stupid rhetoric (absentee ballots are ok but vote-by-mail isn’t -- there is NO difference) and the well-known fact that Trump and his minions have voted through the mails many times in the past, we are witnessing a blatant attempt at voter suppression in plain sight. It appears to me that Trump wants to come on TV on Election Night, declare victory, then scream “Fraud!” when the inevitable catch-up needed for mail-in ballots occurs over the following weeks. There is NO Constitutional requirement for a winner to be declared on Election Night (see: the election of 2000). Trump is such a creature of television that he cannot abide by any delay in getting before a camera and doing his Mussolini strut. This election the survival of our democracy will depend on mail-in ballots.

So, let the so-called president tweet away. This is NOT a rigged election because most ballots are likely to be cast by mail. There is NO requirement that a winner is announced on Election Night. What is important is that each voter’s vote be counted. When you hear people parroting Trump’s lies about voter fraud, election rigging, etc. please point them to the book Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Era of Extreme Inequality by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson. The Republican Party has long shifted to the right and now the fringe right. The three tenets that Republicans use to gain votes are resentment (us vs them), racialization, and rigging. The rigging has long proceeded with voter suppression at multiple levels, from gerrymandering to attempts to reinstitute a poll tax. Trump is the corpse flower atop the Amorphophallus titanum that the GOP has become. Enough. Vote this stinky mess out of power so that we can rebuild America internally and externally.