WE SHOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION

The election of 2020 is under attack by those who want to unfairly influence the outcome. This danger is unprecedented in our lifetimes, and should concern every American. Free and fair elections are the bedrock of American democracy, and the right to vote for all women and non-white men was won through hard struggle and sacrifice. 

The dangers we face for the 2020 election are:

• a concerted campaign by Donald Trump and his minions to undermine faith in vote-by-mail processes using a false claim that it is rife with fraud (he recently suggested to his supporters that they vote by mail, and then try to go and vote in person to test the system—-in other words try to confirm fraud by committing fraud);
• attacks by Trump and his minions on the U.S. Postal Service, with claims that it will not be able to handle the expected volume of mail-in ballots;
• cyber attacks by Russia and other state actors (China, Iran) against the U.S. election system and the dissemination of false information to voters using social media;
• orders by the Trump White House to U.S. intelligence agencies not to disseminate information gathered about Russian cyber attacks to other federal and state agencies (U.S. intelligence agencies are warning that Russian attacks against our election this year are worse than in 2016, and favor Donald Trump);
• voter disenfranchisement efforts by Republican-controlled state legislators and governors targeting BIPOC and Democratic voters;
• efforts by Republican state and local officials to make voting more difficult in majority Democratic districts and districts with majority BIPOC voters (limited polling locations, long waiting times, elimination of voters from voting rolls, use of provisional ballots that are not counted, and other methods);
• apparent efforts by the Justice Department, under Attorney General William Barr, to favor and assist the candidacy of Donald Trump;
• attempts by Donald Trump and his minions to get foreign governments to assist the Trump campaign by spreading negative information about Joe Biden and his family;
• using false claims (outright lies) about Democrats, liberals, and Joe Biden in campaign literature, video commercials, and social media posts;
• possible violations of campaign laws by the Trump campaign (as in 2016);
• and—-strangely—-Donald Trump is in a sense committing mass murder of his supporters and possibly many thousands of other Americans by holding mass campaign rallies during a pandemic at which most people are not wearing masks and are violating every recommendation by public health experts about avoiding crowds.

Am I forgetting anything? Yes, what does Trump do if he loses? This is a scenario many people are thinking about. All of the items above are ways that Trump and his minions are trying to swing the election his way by enlisting the help of foreign powers and by keeping Democratic voters from voting. He is also setting up the scenario for his loss by putting forward the idea that the election could be fraudulent or "rigged" against him, and therefore not a valid election. The Trump MO, after all, is: tell a lie often enough and it becomes a truth. So if Trump loses, will he go gently into that good night? There is a good probability that he will not. And he has set up his more militant supporters---you know, the ones who refuse to wear masks (COVID) and carry AR-15s and drive big trucks with American, Confederate and even Nazi flags flying---to defend him when he refuses to leave the People's House (a.k.a. the White House). Civil war? Yes.

We know, based on the past 3-1/2 years of Trump, that his sole objective is to make himself great again, again. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the people of America. And he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about free and fair elections, as long as he wins again, again. So how do we stop him?

Other than divine intervention (not likely in my opinion), it is up to us, we the people, to run the crime family patriarch out of the White House. Have a plan for voting. If you can vote early and/or by mail, do it as soon as you have your ballot. Talk to others about voting, and help people who need assistance to register and/or vote. Talk to anyone you know who might not vote because they don’t see a reason to, and convince them about the critical nature of this election. Let’s give Donald Trump the thing he craves the most, the biggest thing ever in the history of this country—-the biggest landslide loss of any previous election! 

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Note: this post has been edited on Sep. 13, 2020, to add the third from last paragraph.