Protecting the Vote

We have a serious problem ahead.  The voting experience in Georgia and several other states yesterday is an ominous warning as to the prospect of an electoral catastrophe in November.  What we saw were lines, especially in minority precincts, that were 2-5 hours in length.  Election officials rolled out new voting machines purposefully at the last minute and the predictable result was non-functioning machines; shortages of ballots; insufficient personnel support because of the Covid-19 emergency. 

Governor Kemp (formerly Sec. of State Kemp who was responsible for voting in Georgia while he was running for Governor in 2018) has done all he can to frustrate voting, especially in minority districts in Georgia, even going so far as to purge over 500,000 voters from predominantly African American districts from the voting rolls prior to the election in 2018.

In Iowa, last week’s primary was a huge success due mostly to the use of absentee ballots.  The state took the initiative to spearhead an effort to make voting efficient and easy at a time when the Corona virus and the George Floyd demonstrations would have made it incredibly difficult to have in-person balloting. The Secretary of State in Iowa send out applications for absentee ballots to all citizens.  That was the reason they had the best turnout of voters ever in Iowa.  No hitches.   No problems.  

Less than a week later, Republicans in the Iowa legislature had drafted a bill to never permit that kind of voting again.  They apparently believe that making voting easy and efficient is a practice that MUST BE STOPPED!   The Republican Party is intent on making voting as difficult as possible for all Iowans.  So, the Republicans in Iowa, who are afraid that if everyone can vote they will lose elections, decided that they must do everything they can to keep Iowans from voting.  Why else would they agressively oppose a system that made their election smoothly efficient?

The President spends a lot of time decrying mail-in balloting in his tweets and pronouncements.  His Press Secretary, his advisors, AG Barr and others in his administration are coming out aggressively with warnings that mail in balloting doesn’t work, isn’t fair, is prone to fraud, and is just not good.  And, of course, all these people have voted by mail repeatedly without any problems.  

Even worse, Republicans nationwide have allocated over $20M to oppose efforts to make voting easier.  They anticipate recruiting over 50,000 volunteers to ‘monitor’ polling places; create a media campaign to suppress efforts to pass vote by mail initiatives—all supported by the Trump administration.

It is clear to many that only if the Republicans can thwart the democratic process by making it as hard as possible for all to vote will they be able to hold on to power in a free and fair election.

We must do everything we can to stop them.

What can we do?  Well, for starters, every one of us must write or call each of our Congressmen and Senators from our state and demand that they support vote-by-mail initiatives.  Then we need to find out who is our municipal or county Supervisor of Elections and tell them that we will not stand for any suppression of voting rights.  Badger them to make sure that all the voting machines and polling places are ready for voting and are tested and prepared in advance of Election Day.  Make sure that they understand that if they do not support vote-by-mail initiatives that we will do everything in our power to rally citizens to make sure that they are thrown out of office or fired from their jobs.  I think that ultimately this is a local issue.  With pressure on local officials, we can make sure that in our little corner of the world we are doing everything we can to support free and fair elections.

These efforts are actions that we must take NOW!  If we allow those who seek to suppress the vote of a free democratic people to succeed, then we are the ones who will have surrendered our democracy to the forces of autocracy and authoritarianism.