- support the right of individuals to bear arms -- certainly at least hunting rifles;
- support the rebuilding of US infrastructure -- though we can certainly argue the details; and
- agree that Washington and financial elites have way too much control at the expense of real democracy;
- and agree that all U.S. citizens should have the right to vote -- and for that vote to be counted in a transparent and auditable manner.
Clearly, some Donald Trump voters are racists, xenophobes and misogynists. Millions, though, are none of those things -- they are hard-working, patriotic Americans who are trying to do the right thing. We may disagree with them, but that doesn't mean we can never agree to work together for the common good. Thus, rather than vilifying ALL Trump voters, progressives would be much better served by reaching out, listening carefully, and striving to find common ground. It is there!
I think the time for that conversation has come.
III. VOTER SUPPRESSION AND ELECTION INTEGRITY
Voter suppression alone could have cost Clinton the election. Perhaps the biggest, but by no means the only example, came courtesy of Kansas Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whose Crosscheck software was used in an insidious and anti-democratic manner to remove more than one million Americans voters from the voting rolls in Republican-controlled states. The excuse was that similar names appeared on the voting roles of multiple states! See Rolling Stone, Daily Kos and a more recent article by Greg Palast. According to Palast, in Michigan nearly 450,000 mostly voters of color were purged -- while Trump allegedly won by just over 13 thousand votes. In Arizona, 270 thousand were purged -- easily enough to overcome the alleged 85,000 vote Trump victory. And in North Carolina, 589,000 plus voters were stricken -- again enough to have potentially overcome the reported 177,000 vote Trump victory. The list of horror stories is long -- and for an informative overview of the many techniques used to "strip and flip" the election, see the article by historian Harvey Wasserman and Ohio election attorney Bob Fitrakis.
In addition, since 2004, copious credible evidence of electronic election manipulation by the Republicans has surfaced. Read the 2014 book, CodeRed by Jonathan Simon or the 2006 book Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen by Steve Freeman to find out more. To join in the current fray, join the Election Integrity Listserv. An excellent overview is presented by Josh Middledorf on OpEdNews.
Despite the facts, the "Election Integrity" movement has been unable to get a fair hearing. It's no surprise that the Republicans -- who have benefitted from the hacking -- are not interested. But even the Democrats and the liberal civil and voting rights organizations have shied away. That may be about to change. Here are some reasons for optimism:
Firstof all, there is widespread horror among many, that Mr. Trump has been elected. The level of shock in progressive and liberal circles is even greater than it was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was first elected President or when George Bush was re-selected in 2004. Millions of people are extremely motivated to take positive action of some kind. Immigrants, people of color, the LBGTQ community, and young people all across the country are terrified and horrified. There have been widespread and well-publicized protests. Thus, the potential exists to tap this outrage in favor of support for action to assure that future elections are held in a transparent, auditable, re-countable manner.
Second is the aforementioned alleged involvement of Vladimir Putin and the Russians in the DNC hack -- and the widespread pre-election fears that they might try to sow mayhem in the general election. While many of us have followed the clear signs of electronically stolen elections since 2004, now even many Republicans have expressed concern about our vulnerability to such manipulation. Many -- including the CIA and FBI -- said that the Russians used cyber espionage to "hack" the election for Donald Trump. See this CNN article to catch up. While they are not saying that this was done by changing vote totals electronically, how would we know? Read this Op Ed in the New York Times written on November 9, by Harvard cyber expert Bruce Schneier, American Elections Will Be Hacked, detailing vulnerability to electronic hacking. Then, put one and one together.
Third, Green Party candidate Jill Stein raised $7,000,000 in a few days to mount a high-profile challenge to the results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. As expected, she was thwarted, but the pathetic reasoning put forth by both the courts and the politicians in charge were seen by millions of Americans. Thus, though unsuccessful in the short term, Stein has already succeeding in further peeling back the veil of secrecy and denial that such hacking could occur.
Fourth is the increasingly obvious insecurity of electronic systems of all kinds. Even the biggest and most expert companies and federal agencies have had massive data hacks in recent months and years. These include Target, EBay, Home Depot, Sony, Wells Fargo, the IRS, the GSA, Yahoo, the Democratic National Committee, among many, many others. For a stunning compilation, click HERE. As a result, the baseline of public trust for the security of online systems has been drastically lowered, creating more of an opening for support by a truly transparent and auditable voting system.
Fifth, the Democratic Party may -- finally -- be forced to challenge electronic election hacking and promoting reforms. As mentioned, in the past, Party leaders have resisted all entreaties to weigh in on this issue. One of the most persuasive reasons given to explain the Democratic Party - and organized civil rights movement's - unwillingness to take allegations of electronic election manipulation seriously -- at least in public - is that they feared further suppressing the minority and Democratic vote and thus bringing more elections into the range of the stealable. This fear was not entirely unfounded, as there has been an observed pattern that the blow-out elections do not show the same level of evidence of hacking. The theory there is that some Democratic victories are too big to steal and get away with -- such as Obama's in 2008. Now, however, with the old leaders discredited by the loss of all three branches of government, there is an opening for the new leadership to take this issue on.
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