Near the end of just about every book on voting these days, the authors give you their Big Plan to save voting in America.
You know the list: Voting should be a national holiday. Block-chain internet voting. Lottery prizes for voters.
Pie in the sky. Forget it.
I could say: Stop screwing voters of color out of their votes. Or: Don’t put your right to vote in the hands of jackals like Kobach, Husted and Alito.
Or, I could give you some highfalutin stuff like: Recommit America to its founding principles.
Sure.
Let’s accept this: a candidate who fails to ask a billionaire, “Where do I kiss it?” is going to require more than 51% of the vote to be elected.
In Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, my detailed analysis put the 2008 election steal at 5.9 million votes—via purge, disqualifications, and the mass rejection of provisional, absentee and paper ballots.
Yet, Obama won.
In other words: they can’t steal all of the votes all of the time.
Whatever the steal in 2008, whether 5.9 million or more, Obama simply overwhelmed it. And so did progressives in 2018 in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and beyond.
This book is not an excuse to simply walk away in tears. If someone is trying to steal your car, would you say, “Oh, here’s the key”? You scream, holler, bite, scratch.
So, I’ve put together a no-BS list of practical stuff we can do to protect our vote . . . and overwhelm the steal.
End the purges. Let my people vote! No use-it-or-lose-it games. No Crosscheck, no stinky PEW “Movers list.” Enough with the lynchings by laptop.
There is no reason to purge voters. Period. Whether it’s whack-o claims of mass fraud by our President or the PEW Trust’s soft-core Jim Crow plan to make lists more “accurate” by selling inaccurate hit lists, I’ve yet to hear a reason to remove citizens from the rolls. So there’s a few extra names in the file. B.F.D.
Affidavit, not provisional, ballots. New York used to have “affidavit” ballots. If your name was missing from the rolls, you signed under penalty of prison that you are entitled to vote—and it counted unless someone swears to direct knowledge you lied. Why in the world did America disqualify over a million provisional votes in 2016—yet arrested not one of these provisional voters for fraud?
No more push-and-pray machines. Junk the paperless, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines whose counts can’t be verified. Los Angeles has launched a system in which an iPad prints out your ballot, and can warn of an over-vote or under-vote.
No registration, or, second best, make Same Day Registration universal. Also, every state should allow registration online. Almost all do now. And every state should follow Oregon and register every voter automatically unless they opt out: high school and college graduates, military and other service recruits and, of course, those applying for a driver’s license.
No ID requirement. From Dr. Minnite’s investigation, we know that you’re 540% more likely to get killed by a lightning strike than impersonate another voter. So, why have a law that costs literally hundreds of thousands of votes to prevent the average of one impersonation fraudster every two years?
Make early voting a right. Three weeks for Souls to the Polls, including evening hours. An early vote is a vote, not an “absentee vote”—on real machines with real ballots.
No gerrymandering of polling stations. Hours-long lines are the result of cutting back on locations in communities of color, and reducing the number of machines and workers. After Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union complained that 102-year-old Desiline Victor waited six hours to vote in Florida, the Pew Trust dissented. Pew reported that Florida lines were shorter on average than in other states, only 23 minutes.
But the problem isn’t the average wait, it’s the Black wait. As I filmed in Ohio, the “average” wait was two and a half hours—five hours for African-American early voters, zero minutes for white suburban Election Day voters.
The Pew op-ed had an invidious effect: written in defense of the impending defenestration of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, relieving the Old Confederacy of the legal requirement to have the feds review any voting access changes that cause long lines, like closing polling stations.
The Supreme Court 5-4 ruled that official Jim Crow has been “eradicated.” So how to explain the huge drop in Hispanic and minority turn-out in the South in 2012?
Easy: obesity. According to a column by Prof. Heather Gerken, who created the index for Pew Trust praising Florida’s short lines,
States in the Deep South with high obesity problems seem to be having a problem getting people to the polling place.
Got that? Deep South Black and Latinx voters are too fat to vote!
Maybe the wealthy Pew Trust can offer gym memberships to voters of color in Alabama.
In the alternative, designing polling locations to create long lines for voters of color should be considered a violation of the Voting Rights Act. But that requires Congress to . . .
Restore and expand the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, extend the requirement to pre-clear changes in voting and registration systems in every state, not just in the Old South.
Enforce Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. Everyone knows Section 1, the “Equal Protection Clause” of the Constitution. Not known, and never once enforced, is the reduction of a state’s electoral votes and loss of members of Congress for wrongful removal of legal voters. It was one of the demands of Martin Luther King for the 1963 March on Washington.
Ban required proof of citizenship to vote. It was banned by a lower court, but Kobach’s wish will be this Supreme Court’s command. Don’t kid yourself: it’s coming. Fight it now.
Let voter intent rule. Only America has millions of “residual” and “spoiled” ballots—uncounted. All ballots must be eyeball countable and re-countable. And most important, the voter’s intent must rule. No gotcha! games with bubbles and chads. The voter’s intent must rule. In 2000, in Gadsden County, Florida’s “Blackest” county, voters marked the bubble next to Al Gore’s name and also wrote in his name. The ballot said, “Write in candidate’s name” (as opposed to “Write-in candidate’s name). The 700 votes for Gore were disqualified . . . and Bush became president by 537 votes. Basta!
Mail-in voting. The “Emergency Alert” section details my proposals. Recap: No more crazy requirements for witnesses or notaries. Provide pre-printed and postage paid envelopes to end gotcha! errors on mail-ins. Count the votes in public. Voter intent rules.
If the Covid-19 pandemic continues, all voters should get a mail-in ballot without having to request one, as in Colorado. Voters can choose to ignore it if they insist on in-person voting. Repeat for Covid-20 and Covid-29.
End open primaries. The California Democratic Party Comintern has figured out how to use the “open” primary to screw a million independent voters out of their ballot. (See chapter “California Reamin.’”) But, to be fair, if you want to pick a party’s candidate, join the damn party.
Imprison fraudulent voters—and vote thieves. Double voters, ghost voters, voting for the dead, it just doesn’t happen. Almost. For those rare nutcases that vote when they ought not to, arrest them. If, Mr. Kobach, you really do have lists of fraudulent voters, cuff’m and book’m—don’t take away the registrations of millions. Vote fraud is a crime. If someone robs a bank, the bank does not close thousands of innocent bank customers’ accounts, they have the bank robber arrested.
I’ve no sympathy for the rare illegal voter. Lock’m up and throw away the key. Then put Kobach and Kemp in the next cell. As Tom Paine said, someone who takes away your right to vote is worse than a horse thief. You can always get another horse. But you can’t get another democracy.
Hack-free elections. I’m not talking about hacking electronic voting machines. I’m talking about eliminating political hacks—the Kobachs, Padillas, Kemps and Katherine Harrises—from running elections. Most voters don’t know who their Secretary of State is, even though they voted for them. You don’t notice these weasels until they run up your pants leg and bite your jewels.
It’s time to ban elected partisans from the office of Secretary of State and from elections boards. Only bipartisan boards of experts should direct our democracy. Is that such a crazy suggestion?
Respect the voters’ choice, and that includes the voters of Honduras and Venezuela. You can’t applaud overturning elections abroad, Ms. Pelosi, then complain when it happens here.
And keep Mike Pence away from your children and pets. That’s just common sense.