John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LEE CAMP IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Trump Will Win Re-election Unless We Do One Thing
“Donald Trump will likely prove victorious because nearly 17 million Americans have been purged from the voter rolls over the past four years and your corporate media doesn’t have the balls to effectively report on it”
Contrary to one view in the article, I think mail-in ballots, given the right set of controls, are a good idea.
They avoid a lot of costs.
They open voting to those with difficulties, such as the old and infirm and those lacking transportation.
They are an effective measure against disease, and it is almost certain America will see a second wave of the pandemic ahead, in the fall or winter.
The trouble with them is the same as for every other form of voting in America, lack of adequate security and controls and, most importantly, a large underlying culture embracing shady methods.
Cheating is part of the way things have been done in American elections since I was a boy, and that's a long time ago. Purging voter rolls is just one of many methods used over the years. People get deliberately misdirected to polls in some locations. Polls close early in some locations.
In the days of paper ballots, dishonest officials used to have a bit of lead from a lead pencil under a fingernail in order to invalidate some ballots with a second mark. We all remember the horror of counting “hanging chads” with the weird ballots used by Florida during the 2000 election.
There are countless ways to cheat if the will is there, and it certainly often is.
Just having fifty different states administer voting for a national election has always been a poor concept. Uniformity in how things are done, in the nature of ballots and how they are counted and how voter registration is done, is important. But we will likely never see that in America.
And let’s not forget that other “hidden” method of cheating, gerrymandering the shapes of electoral districts. Changing boundaries goes on regularly with shifts in population driving it, but it is often done with the intention of giving a party an election advantage.
I'm sorry to say it, but the ugly values Trump openly espouses in his talks and tweets, are pretty common in the country. He wouldn’t say the things he says if that weren’t the case. To me, it is an inescapable and sad truth.
Those values are the values Mike Pompeo joked about a while back in a talk at Texas A & M University. “Lying, cheating, and stealing” brought a big smile to his face. Or how about Trump bragging about stealing oil? Giving away or taking other people’s national assets, whether gold from Venezuela or homes and land in Palestine? Putting a bounty on an elected leader’s head? Assassinating a country’s national hero?
Just look at what America is doing across the world – in Venezuela, China, Iran, Bolivia, Cuba, Palestine, Nicaragua, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Brazil, Ukraine, Somalia, and still other places.
Why does anyone not expect the same values to be applied at home?
And they are, of course they are. So, I see little prospect for better, fairer American elections.
Both parties engage in the various frauds as circumstances permit.
The will to change things really is not there for a great many. And there certainly is no leadership.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
George Bush’s victory in 2000 reflected vote fraud in Florida, where his brother was Governor. Even with that, Bush was a minority President, as is Trump, owing to the workings of the antiquated Electoral College.
Hillary Clinton used numerous kinds of vote fraud in various state primaries to deprive Bernie Sanders of the 2016 Democratic nomination.
John Kennedy, who in a number of ways proved to be a great President, was in fact elected with vote fraud. Mayor Daley’s Chicago political machine assured him victory in Illinois while Lyndon Johnson’s bunch did the same in Texas.
Lyndon Johnson himself won his first election to Congress through vote fraud, as documented by great biographer, Robert Caro.
