Free Press Election Reporting
If you live in a poor or even a middle class neighborhood, Donald Trump does not want you to vote, and if you do vote, he does not want your vote counted. Greg Palast, in his new book “How Trump Stole 2020” estimates that, in Georgia alone in the governors election (2018) 665,677 voters were purged, which equates to 2/3 of a million voters, or 1 in 8 Georgians. Of those 340,134 voters were wrongly purged who had not moved from their last registered address.
In cooperation with the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition (grassrootsep.org)
Original at Reader Supported News
The 2020 election is not likely to be cancelled or postponed.
But it CAN be sabotaged or stolen.
It will not be enough this year merely to register and vote. Nowhere near.
Those hoping for a fair outcome in the fall must NOW join election boards, become poll workers and poll watchers, and more. Wherever possible, all citizens committed to American democracy must be present for every aspect of the 2020 election process, including the post-election ballot counting and recounting.
This Guide is meant to lay out 2020’s vital details as simply as possible so YOU can ACT to make things right:
This fall’s outcome turns on the Election Protection Trifecta:
To stop Donald Trump from becoming President for Life, democracy activists must win this fall's election protection "trifecta"-- restore the voter registration rolls, make it possible for everyone to vote by mail and guarantee a fair and accurate ballot count.
The odds are formidable.
In 2000, 2004 and 2016, Republicans deregistered millions of potential voters in order to put George W. Bush and Donald Trump in the White House. In 2020, the nationwide total has been estimated in the range of 16 million. The disenfranchised would-be voters, of course, are predominantly young, low income and people of color.
In years past, the pretexts for making voting harder have been varied and creative. They range from suspicion of voting twice, to being an ex-felon, to voting in more than one state-- things that almost never happen.
This year, Republican lawmakers are stripping the registration rolls of citizens they suspect of having skipped two previous federal elections. Their determination to "clean" the voter rolls has been fierce, especially when applied to voting blocs that lean Democratic.
This fall the citizens of Franklin County should vote in Nationwide Arena.
As we saw in the spring primaries, there is huge confusion about where our citizens can vote. The shabby, little-known, woefully inadequate voting center on Morse Road is a shameful disgrace to our democracy. With the Pandemic we will not have the ability to staff and maintain the usual wide range of neighborhood voting facilities that have been traditionally spread around the county.
Instead, as will be done in Atlanta, our largest indoor sports arena offers an ideal alternative. Should we opt for two locations, the Schottenstein Center on campus might also be used.
Nationwide Arena is owned by the public. The decision to use it for the fall election can be made by city council, in concert with the county election board.
Nationwide is secure, safe and centrally located. It has plenty of parking. Everybody knows where it is.
A Florida election protection lawsuit filed July 1 could help decide the fall 2020 vote count.
Signed by three Florida Democratic legislators, the suit demands that electronic ballot images be preserved in accordance with federal law. The images are created when computerized scanning devices process paper ballots. Those images can then be counted to give a complete ballot tally within six seconds. The paper ballots are preserved for possible recounts.
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.
he 2020 election will be decided by 3 factors: Registration Rolls, Vote by Mail, and Ballot Counting.
How effectively a national grassroots election-protection upheaval can affect them will decide the fate of the Earth.
THE REGISTRATION ROLLS have been stripped of 16 million or more citizens mostly of youth and color, but many have been re-registered.
Election Protection (EP) activists must fight to make voter registration as easy and fair as possible, contact and re-register the disenfranchised, confirm the registrations of those who think they’re registered but are not, and register millions of new voters, especially among those who have just marched for racial justice and police reform.
VOTE BY MAIL (VBM) has successfully provided paper ballots in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon & Hawaii. All states have always provided absentee ballots. But the virus could force 2020 VBM totals from 5% overall to 40-80%, overwhelming unprepared counties & states.
Imagine if Adolf Hitler had staged one of his infamous 1930s fascist Nuremberg hate-fests … and the stands were less than full, his speech fell flat, his flawless phalanxes dissolved into chaos, the fighting flags failed to unfurl.
That’s what just happened to Trump in Tulsa. The implications are Earth-shattering.
When Hitler staged his ritual witch burnings, the masses were hypnotized. The synchronized film crews, the adoring media, the groveling sycophants, the murderous hate-the-Jew mobs … all were perfectly in place.
In apocalyptic unison, the Silent Majority (his phrase) panted for Der Führer to Make Germany Great Again (also his phrase). They goose-stepped in precision, all decked out in their fascist finest … the jackboots, the armbands, the billowing banners, the iron formations, the buzzcut hairdos … willing executioners flocking to Stalingrad and Auschwitz.
There were no empty seats. Every inch of every stadium was packed to the gills.
AFTER THE WI-OH-GA PRIMARY FIASCOS:
How to Avert a Fall Coup
Emergency Election Protection 2020
Info-Webinar on Zoom & Facebook Live
This webinar means to provide activists, organizers, citizens with core information on the conduct of the 2020 elections
Wed., June 17, 3:00 -4:30pm Eastern / noon-1:30 Pacific
Unless election protection activists rise up, primary election disasters in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Georgia could signal the death of American democracy this fall.
In all three states, gerrymandered Republican legislatures successfully sabotaged attempts to stage free and fair elections. They specifically targeted communities of color with mass disenfranchisement and degrading mistreatment at the polls.
In Wisconsin, attempts to deal with the coronavirus with Vote by Mail and reasonable postponements were aggressively assaulted by legislative fiat and partisan court decisions.
Recognizing the danger of having large numbers of people vote in person, in long lines and crowded conditions, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, moved the state’s planned primary back to June. Plans were in place to make sure the state’s Vote by Mail systems would function properly, that there was plenty of time to get ballots out to voters and back to the election boards, and that there were sufficient polling stations with enough personnel to handle problems that needed to be solved in person without backups and machine failures.