Like handing your ballot directly to the nasty guy

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported that the Postal Service slowdown engineered by the nasty guy and his toady at the head of the USPS has perhaps changed the outcome of an election. Michigan had a primary on August 4. For a race in Sterling Heights 165 ballots that were postmarked on July 30 arrived on August 10. They could not be counted. That race was decided by 87 votes. Sterling Heights clerk Melanie Ryska told Crain’s Detroit:

It's not uncommon for us to receive 10 or 20 (late absentee ballots) here and there. But just to get this number at this time is very unusual.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer reviewed the situation. The safest way to vote in a pandemic is by mail. The nasty guy started railing against the Postal Service, saying vote by mail would be a disaster. And now he is working to make sure it is a disaster.

In addition to that the nasty guy’s campaign, with help from the Pennsylvania GOP, are suing to sharply restrict the number available ballot drop boxes. They want only one box for Philadelphia’s 1.5 million voters. They want to force residents to put ballots in the mail as they go about killing the Postal Service.

So Bunch is not putting his ballot in the mail. Putting a stamp on it and hoping for the best is not a strategy, not after the nasty guy has put his stamp on the USPS. Putting a ballot in the mail is like handing it directly to the nasty guy. Better to vote in person. As for the risk, we already routinely go to the store.

Keith Knight of Kos has a cartoon of the nasty guy installing new mailboxes to help with the election. They have a little hum – because thy include a shredder.

Walter Einenkel of Kos has suggestions for making sure your vote is counted.

* Vote in person if you can and vote as early as you can.

* If you vote at home personally take your ballot to a drop box or the city’s election office.

Commenters to Einenkel’s post recommend going to vote.org to verify what’s possible in your location.

Jeremy tweeted:

Trump will declare victory early Nov 4th—after his fearless covid denying voters vote in person—while Dem mail in ballots take weeks to count—Trump’s harassing mob will stop counters early to force victory. Left must be in streets Nov-Dec till all votes are counted. Stop fascism!

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times.

If Trump is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends — if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in — the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news.”

The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Trump and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery — going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box” — will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit.

Some tweets by Benjamin Franklin:
One

In the next 83 days, you will be subject to an endless stream of diversions and distractions. Most of them are going to look like Ben Shapiro reading the lyrics to WAP - stuff to make you gawk, laugh, and most importantly mock. They’re there to suck up all your time and focus.

Trump will seek to distract you with big racisms. The point is to shock and awe us, to clog up our brains and feeds with crap, to “flood the zone with shit” as Bannon says. Take a step back from the day and your life will improve measurably. That’s why I don’t read the news.

There are only two important things to focus on:
1) register to vote and vote.
2) figure out where to show up on election night to protest. Find your local protest groups, wall of whatever, they’re already there. Ask them where to go on election night. And be ready to go.

Two

The people telling you not to worry about the integrity of the election, that this will be solved by just voting when trump has made it clear he will cheat to win, are enemies of the people. They want you unprepared for the contested election.
…
The most obvious sign that someone is not on our side is that they are attempting to discourage the idea that we will have to mass mobilize right after the election. Mass mobilization is the only thing our enemies fear and they will do anything to prevent it.

Three, speaking of Democrats

They’re going to contest the election but they’ll drag it out, zig and zag, to avoid crossing a “red line” that will make it obvious what they’re doing. There will always be a plausible solution to the crisis on the table to muzzle mass mobilization, and a network to push it.

Remember 2016? Remember the Jill Stein recount and the Hamilton electors? Those were both dead ends that were hyped up so people would feel like they didn’t need to protest. They’re going to do the same thing again for 2020 in the immediate aftermath.

Four, in response to a tweet about the nasty guy accusing his predecessor of treason and everyone seems to shrug.

In a functioning country, we’d have journalists pushing back on that. But the media has been taken over by the same criminal network that installed Trump. They will treat this crisis like it’s business as usual, they will normalize atrocities. Anything to keep people calm.

Five

With every day that passes, it should be clear that the people and institutions you were told were playing 4D chess never had a plan to solve the Trump problem. They weren’t on our side. The plan they had was to stall and lead us into a rigged election. A massive betrayal.

And a tweet from Emaz responding to a comment by Franklin about Americans thinking that laws will stop fascism. People have been saying:

Trump can’t win the primary.
Hillary is way ahead.
Mueller will save us.
The intelligence community will save us.
Pelosi will save us.
Our laws will save us.
Our institutions will save us.
Now it’s “Biden will win & Trump will be escorted out.”

I wrote all that, and similar stuff over the last few years, so that you are prepared. I’m also preparing myself. The election will be a mess. The nasty guy will claim victory, even though fraud by him and the GOP is and will be obvious.

This is a crime syndicate. The nasty guy is a member. It has infiltrated the GOP enough that junior members can’t speak out. It has likely infiltrated the Democrats (I’m particularly suspicious of Speaker Pelosi who has done a lot less than she could have).

We have to prepare ourselves to mobilize, starting before the election. The only thing this crime syndicate fears is massive ongoing protests. As a sign of that fear notice how they fought protesters in Portland, OR.