The hoopla surrounding Kamela Harris needs a cold dose of grassroots/election protection reality. Amidst a prevailing aura of certain victory, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election by 3 million votes. But we still wound up with Donald Trump in the White House.
If that history repeats itself, we will never, as Trump promises, “need to vote again.”
So whatever her policy shortcomings---and there are many---Kamala Harris cannot win a 2024 election that is not conducted primarily with hand-marked and digitally scanned paper ballots…many millions of which must be sent out and back by a United States Postal Service that desperately needs a new boss.
A Trump defeat also can’t happen without a massive grassroots campaign whose progressive donations will fund tens of thousands of dedicated organizers working at the local level, with community democracy centers and door-to-door relational campaigning. To win, this kind of campaigning must divert much of the money the Democrats would otherwise squander on media buys.
Key elements of the 2000 Florida debacle that put George W. Bush in the White House, the 2004 Ohio debacle that kept him there, and the 2016 debacles in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that made Trump President, have today devolved into the potential election theft we now face in 2024.
That mass disenfranchisement means to empower a future defined by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” and Donald Trump’s “Agenda 47,” meant to doom America’s democracy, freedom and ecological survival.
In 2020, Trump’s defeat came with hand-marked, hand-counted, digitally scanned paper ballots….empowered by a fierce nationwide battle to protect voter registration rolls….and by a massive grassroots organizing campaign that inspired citizens to vote in record numbers… with those votes reliably protected once cast. Amidst the Covid Pandemic, election protection came with paper ballots that were mailed out and back mostly through the US Postal Service.
Without all that, Donald Trump would today be in the White House….and there’d likely be no election happening this year…or ever again in the US.
With the 2024 vote now just three months away, these are the core elements that will determine our future:
PROTECTING THE VOTER ROLLS:
In the lead-up to the 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush purged at least 90,000 suspected black and Hispanic voters from Florida’s registration, feeding an official Bush victory of 537 ballots. Getting there required a violent “Brooks Brothers Mob” assault on the vote count run in part by three current US Supreme Court Justices—-John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett.
As reported at the time by Greg Palast, Jeb’s computerized cross burning put his brother in the White House. As reported by Bob Fitrakis and I, the process was repeated in Ohio 2004. .
In 2024, the Trump Crusade again has MAGA Republicans stripping anti-Trump voters, usually identified by race. Swing state Georgia lets any single citizen disenfranchise thousands of registered voters with no justifying evidence required. (See “Vigilantes” by Greg Palast).
Victims may have the right to re-register. But such state-sanctioned attacks could swing any state.
SAVING THE PRECINCTS:
MAGA mastermind Steve Bannon (currently in prison) advocates a war on local election boards and staff in the 3,000+ local precincts where presidency will be decided.
Bannon wants those precincts filled with Tump cultists who’ll terrorize and disenfranchise non-MAGA voters while seizing the vote count.
The current Harris boom has prompted 200,000 citizens are reportedly volunteering to work this election. Hopefully, in opposition to the thousands Bannon already has in place, they’ll work the polls while protecting the voter rolls and making sure the precincts rightfully deliver all authorized ballots while accurately counting and then auditing them when they return.
GUARANTEEING HAND-MARKED, DIGITALLY-SCANNED, RELIABLY AUDITED PAPER BALLOTS
In Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2016, massive “irregularities” tainted the computerized vote counts in many electronic balloting devices.
As reported by Bev Harris, wild electronic fluctuations in Volusia and other counties corrupted more than enough votes to swing the 2000 outcome. Robert Fitrakis documented similar malfunctions in scores of machines in Ohio 2004 and again in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016.
In the wake of Florida/Ohio 2000-4, a national grassroots demand erupted for hand-marked paper ballots that would be digitally scanned. Amidst the 2020 Covid epidemic, more than 80% of the nation’s ballots were cast on paper.
In 2020 those digitally scanned hand-marked paper ballots produced a vote count that survived more than sixty Trump lawsuits. In swing state Arizona, transparent accounting from AUDIT USA helped certify an accurate state-wide tally despite high-profile MAGA attacks.
In 2024, a national grassroots movement will again be required to work precinct-by-precinct to protect the voter rolls and produce a reliably audited tally based on digitally scanned hand-marked paper ballots.
SAVING THE US POSTAL SERVICE
According to the US Election Assistance Agency, a majority of the 2020 ballots cast came through a USPS which is STILL being run by Trump appointee Louis DeJoy, whose conduct this year demands thorough scrutiny.
GRASSROOTS RELATIONAL ORGANIZING
The Democratic Party regularly squanders countless millions on electronic advertising from which top campaign insiders scam kickbacks.
But grassroots, “relational” organizing in 2020-2 produced a “Georgia Miracle” that, against all odds, filled two key US Senate seats with a black man and a Jew, shifting the Congressional power balance. Using what Atlanta-based organizer Ray McClendon calls “targeted messaging from targeted messengers,” on-the-ground organizers focused on the neighborhoods where they live and the issues that made a tangible difference to voters.
The glib belief that this year’s election can be won by clever advertising and standardized anti-Trump messaging blared repeatedly through the media and social networks is a suicidal illusion.
PRESERVING A NON-VIOLENT CONSTITUTIONAL TRANSITION
Steve Bannon and the MAGA core believe a 2024 Trump victory to be a divine certainty. Winning a Christian Nationalist state by any means necessary will most certainly feed multiple re-runs of the kinds of bloodshed that poisoned January 6, 2021.
Violence at the polls, manipulated vote counts, refusal to certify returns, anointing fake electors, denying a full Electoral College vote count defaulting the final vote to a Congress in which Trump could win…all the above would certainly be upheld by the Trump-run Supreme Court. The one 2024 certainty is that Bannon and his MAGA minions will “fill the commons with sh*t,” and nothing will be “normal.”
Whether you like it or not, democracy means you ARE involved, now more than ever.
So prepare to be intensely active at least through January 20, 2025.
Please see the PEOPLE’S HUB for Grassroots Election Organizing ( www.usgrassroots.org ) and join our Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms most Mondays 2-4pm PT / 5-7 ET . ( https://grassrootsep.org/ )
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Harvey Wasserman wrote THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY & SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN POWERED EARTH (www.solartopia.org) and, with Bob Fitrakis, HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION…(www.freepress.org)