Have You Been Vaccinated?

Republicans Admit They Lose When Elections Are Fair and Free

https://billmoyers.com/story/coronavirus-voting-rights-election-gerrymandering/


Bill’s guest in this episode is the journalist David Daley. His best-selling first book, RATF**KED-WHY YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT showed how Republicans used gerrymandering to lock up control of many state and local government for years, possibly decades – and remains their strategy. In his most recent book – UNRIGGED –HOW AMERICANS ARE BATTLING BACK TO SAVE DEMOCRACY he travels America to report on the grassroots activists devoted to voting rights for all citizens.

He and Bill talked by phone on the eve of the Wisconsin primary where the governor of Wisconsin tried to postpone the election to help protect voters from the pandemic only to be blocked by the conservative dominated state supreme court and then by the five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

There’s a link to David’s Rolling Stone report on analysis of the Wisconsin fracas at billmoyers.com.

Here’s Bill Moyers.

BILL MOYERS: David, Are you comfortable talking about down and dirty politics, the very week a killer pandemic maybe reaching its peak?

DAVID DALEY: I am. Yes. I think that there is a really big connection between how we got here and down and dirty politics, and where we go from here. We have to be really careful that in this moment, a public health crisis doesn’t also turn into a full blown constitutional crisis. And there’s lots of evidence that it may well turn in that direction.

BILL MOYERS: You say in your Rolling Stone report that this is an urgent moment. What do you mean?

DAVID DALEY: If you look around the nation right now, [you see] the number of cancelled or postponed elections and primaries. If you look at the lack of preparation towards safeguarding the presidential election in the fall, my concern is that our elections in November may face the exact same chaos that elections in Ohio and Wisconsin are seeing now.



We have to be really careful that in this moment, a public health crisis doesn’t also turn into a full blown constitutional crisis.


There are really simple steps that we could take to guard against that happening. We could expand vote by mail, most importantly among them. And really ensure that every American have the right to vote without risking their health.

But what you see are Republicans who are talking about non-existent voter fraud in this moment, a state representative in Georgia talking about how increased turnout would be bad for the Republican party.

And what it adds up to is this intense politicization of democracy and voting rights itself. And that plays against a background of this last decade and longer, what has become extreme minority rule in this country. Fifty-nine million Americans right now live in a state in which one or both chambers of the state legislature are controlled by the party that won fewer votes in 2018.

So, this backdrop of toxic partisan gerrymandering, of voter roll purges, of voter ID, of disingenuous voter fraud commissions, precinct closures, all of which are designed to make it harder for specific people to vote. And if this is what is going to be the response to a pandemic, our election in the fall is in deep trouble.

BILL MOYERS: What’s your worst nightmare?

DAVID DALEY: My worst nightmare is that it is very difficult for individual states, perhaps in some swing states, to hold elections or that it is not safe for folks in big cities in swing states to line up. And you see some state legislatures invoking the right under Article II, section 1 of the constitution to appoint Electoral College electors themselves.

And if that were to happen from, say, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Arizona or Michigan or Ohio, you’re talking about swing states that have Republican legislatures that could, if they wanted, appoint electors that would vote in the opposite direction, perhaps, of the wishes of the people of that state.

BILL MOYERS: So your nightmare is that we still might not have a winner after the election ’til, say, December? And that the individual state legislatures have the constitutional opportunity to nullify the results if they wish, right? By exercising the authority to appoint the state’s representatives to the Electoral College so they could say, “We’re gonna reverse the decision of the majority of voters in November because of X, Y and Z.” Right?

DAVID DALEY: They most certainly could, and I fear that what we are hearing from many of those state legislators now, suggests that they are not of a mind not to do this. This would be one of the greatest crises of democracy that the nation has faced. And we could be staring at it.

You know, you wrote in Moyers on Democracy — maybe the very first line is — “A democracy is a series of narrow escapes. And we may be running out of luck.” I don’t know if we will have the luck to escape this particular crisis.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re not vesting any credibility in the speculation about Donald Trump cancelling the presidential election? You say it’s deeper than that. It’s more institutional and widespread throughout state by state.

That the speculation whether the president would just say, “We can’t have an election with conditions like this threatening people’s health. So I’m gonna remain on it ’til the situation is resolved.” You don’t see that happening?

DAVID DALEY: I hope that’s not what happens. The president I don’t think has the ability to do that. Election Day is set by Congress. I can’t see Congress changing Election Day. I think that it would be extraordinarily difficult to see where in any presidential emergency powers he would seize that authority from.

The bigger threat comes from state legislatures acting in such a way as to overturn or nullify the wishes of voters in those states, and awarding electoral college electors to the president. And giving him a second term in office that most voters may or may not want to see.

And it’s the very gerrymandered nature of those particular states that has given all of the power to Republicans. Republicans deeply gerrymandered in the legislature in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin. [In] all of these swing states, you see with regularity Democrats winning more statewide votes for the state house, and Republicans holding huge advantages, even sometimes veto-proof supermajorities. The lines they drew themselves have been that stout. So if you were to have those gerrymandered legislatures already representing a minority of the state able to pick electoral college electors, this is a huge crisis.


More from David Daley


<snip>

 

FOX News does not sway me in this regard.

I took my own position against mail voting, against voting outside one's state of residence, against all voting avenues that could be manipulated to advantage in an election, and did so before Trump was even elected in 2016. In fact, long before that I witnessed what I believed to be systematic election fraud by mail in the 2012 election, and wrote the Postmaster General about it . . . never did get a reply.

As for bottles of water or anything else being given to voters waiting in line . . . outlawing that is intended to eliminate an excuse for influencers to approach voters in line to discuss their favored candidates.

We are compelled to shuffle our work schedules to go to the polls, to wait in the long lines, in the cold rain or in the hot sun, all to cast our one vote. Voting is our civic duty, and is not supposed to be effortless or convenient. Doing so is clear evidence of our resolve to be actively involved in the selection of our government . . . unlike voting in comfort from an armchair.

 

BS

 

That's all you've ever got for responses . . . BS.

 

there you go projecting again. Washington state has had mail in voting for years.