Advice from a Sanders campaign veteran: How to Combat Caucus Crap in 2020

By Laurie Dobson

As a seasoned politician/political Democratic candidate, since 2002, I have seen my share of efforts by the Democratic Party to subvert my campaigns. Most recently, when I ran as a 2016 'Bernie Democrat' candidate for state rep in Maine, I saw up close that my campaign, and the Sanders campaign too, were defrauded of our legitimate votes. I am writing this to draw attention to the different methods that I saw being used by party officials to destroy the Sander's presidential campaign.

I hope that this time, the level of criminal fraud that happened in 2016 has been thoroughly recognized and taken into account. Going forward, we must improve our response to these threats to the electoral system.

I believe that the playbook for these kinds of malicious tactics come straight from the DNC, and funneled out to state parties too, becoming a kind of script on how to subvert results. At the local and state level, the repeated treacheries against Sanders were so egregious, so blatant and reprehensible, they represented a new moral low for election procedure.

At every level, I found illegal practices being used. Prevention is best, but you must actively oppose and publicly denounce vote suppression tactics as they occur. Ballot access should be protected and conducted in a respectable way. We are the ones who must uphold these practices, which is another reason why Sander's winning is so important.

At the 2016 Maine Democratic Party State Convention, I spoke against the corruptive influence of superdelegates:

https://youtu.be/KpyRvUwZQV0. This will be a critical issue to resolve.

Those who have the most to lose economically are treated differently in their communities and this extends to the way leaders are selected. Some of the ways can be effectively countered; you can prevail against them at your specific election sites.

Many bad faith practices in 2016 were exactly described in emails (Pied Piper) exposed by Wikileaks. Sanders staff have responded with corrective measures now, in 2020, but they may not be able to do enough to catch the many ways they will be defrauded.

Bad faith actions will happen right from the start, including when people are selected and how they are treated by their co-members of the Democratic Party during the process. What this means is that it boils down to me and you, individually, at times, being picked off and intimidated by those holding 'power'. You must reject this!

When I ran as a Bernie candidate in 2016, I was already aware firsthand of the many ways that the local party wanted their status quo candidate Hillary Clinton to win. I knew how determined they would be to deny Sanders delegates. At the local caucus so many efforts were used that I recorded them on video.

This was done at the time I was a caucus chair for Bernie Sanders, and there was an attempt to stop me from recording this voter disenfranchisement by someone on the lookout for those taking pictures. She is now a superdelegate in Maine, and she was trying very hard to show her loyalties to the elites in the Party!

It was lonely, and, at times, thankless, but I maintained these efforts, which stand as a record to what occurred. This is my best piece of advice: record everything and bring battery chargers so you do not run out of juice. Don't let these people tell you to stop recording the things you see!

I had to oppose efforts to undermine Sander's vote by making changes on the blackboard, with obvious errors of math. There were deliberate attempts to merge lines of the voters from one camp to another, and efforts to select or deselect people to be caucus members.

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