The 12-18 states that will decide the presidency this fall are already being primed for voter suppression and election theft by the Trump GOP. Our ability to overcome will decide the fate of the Earth.
Donald Trump is in the White House because in 2016 the vote count was stolen in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (plus, most likely, North Carolina and Florida). Hillary Clinton won the election nationwide by 2.8 million votes. But she and her corporate Democrats did and said nothing about the theft of the Electoral College in those key states.
At great personal expense the Green Party’s Jill Stein did go into WI, MI and PA with Bob Fitrakis and other activist/attorneys to demand recounts. All three states showed massive fraud on Trump’s behalf. Clinton was almost certainly the rightful winner of their Electoral votes—and thus the presidency. But she killed the recounts, then attacked Stein and the Greens.
The fiasco echoed Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, where election protectionists showed clearly the presidency had been stolen… and where loser corporate Democrats did nothing (except to scream at Ralph Nader and the activists who uncovered the fraud).
After all these years, Al Gore, John Kerry and Clinton still refuse to deal with the realities of a rigged election apparatus, and show no signs of being of any help in 2020.
This year we’re already seeing the groundwork laid for yet another stolen election, with the corporate Democrats doing little or nothing in opposition. They have also gutted the youth-based Sandernista movement, without which it will be much harder to gather the energy and momentum that could have been generated by a broad-based social movement enthusiastically working for a beloved candidate.
But the stakes are our actual survival, and we have no choice but to persist.
The swing states virtually certain to decide the Electoral College this fall are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Iowa. .
Six additional states may be in play: Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Montana, Kentucky and West Virginia.
In Wisconsin, the Republicans have shown their hand. Their corrupt, gerrymandered legislature sent the April 6 primary election into the deep chaos. With approval of the US Supreme Court, they made a mess of the vote-by-mail (VBM) system, denying ballots to thousands of non-millionaires of youth and color. They stripped Milwaukee and other urban areas of polling stations and forced countless citizens to stand in life-threatening lines for hours on end.
In North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere we already see the same strategy being rolled out. We’ll report on the details as they unfold over the coming weeks.
But Republican legislatures in swing states WI, MI, OH, PA, NC, FL, AZ, IA (like GA, TX, KS, MT, KY, WV) are all erecting impossible barriers against the fair distribution of paper mail-in ballots, and setting the stage for trashing them as they arrive. They’re also rigging (or abolishing) voting centers where citizens might deliver their votes or vote in person.
The astounding news is that citizen activists CRUSHED them in Wisconsin. The liberal (non-partisan) candidate for the state supreme court upset a Trump-endorsed incumbent by a staggering 160,000 votes.
Can it be done to Trump himself this fall?
It’ll demand a gargantuan grassroots effort. Every swing state must be home to deep, powerful, well-coordinated protect-the-vote organizations. Sophisticated, well-informed activists need to go through all the voter rolls to see who has been stripped (so far roughly a half-million each in NC and OH alone, representing ten percent of the vote there). Those being disenfranchised must be contacted and re-registered, with their ballot protected. With some 17 million citizens already stripped from the rolls, this will be a huge—but game-changing—effort.
At least one election protection activist must be embedded in every election board. Chain of custody must be established for the VBM ballots as they arrive. Tens of thousands who believe in democracy must become poll workers to make sure the voting stations function through the day. They then must stay into the night to make sure the votes are accurately counted.
There are mountains to be moved before November 3. The voter rolls must be examined, dissected and parsed among the millions who have been wrongly removed. Unregistered newcomers must be registered. Access to actual ballots must be guaranteed. Means of getting them back in must be established, chain of custody secured, reliable methods of counting and reporting (and possibly re-counted) guaranteed.
Depending on the state of the pandemic, voting stations must be secured, paper ballots used, counting and reporting guaranteed.
Many states have unrealistic reporting deadlines made even less attainable by the extraordinary use of paper ballots.
There is much more. We need to get to the bottom of all of it, fast, and in the face of furious opposition from the fanatic, fascist, hugely funded Trump Cult.
Contact me at solartopia@gmail.com to become part of the dialogue.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored six books on election protection, which are at www.freepress.org, along with Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES. HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE US is at www.solartopia.org, along with his SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH.
