Stolen elections and gerrymandering

I am beyond angry at Hillary Clinton for not displaying focused fury over charges by Donald Trump that the election will be 'rigged.' 

This is a poison pill aimed at de-legitimizing her presidency, from the start. And our entire republic. It must be answered, right away, with a challenge. With a dare. 

With a wager.

This is so important that I will say it in several postings:

Hillary Clinton needs to declare this as a crisis! She should demand that Donald Trump put up or shut up, on electoral fraud. 

Insist that he appoint 6 friends who are “sages beyond reproach” to join six she would appoint, plus six chose by retired US Supreme Court Justice and GOP appointee Sandra Day O’Conner. And have that commission investigate electoral rigging charges right now!  

No delays. No excuses. And they should look at everything from voting machines to voter suppression to gerrymandering. And no time for sage perfection. Report back in two weeks!

It would be an aggressive, assertive action and she’d look decisive, presidential. And it is utterly necessary, lest her presidency begin less valuable than a bucket of tepid spit.

== Might voting machines be rigged? ==

We'll get back to that. But it is part of a bigger context. Because Donald Trump is already concocting face-saving excuses. 

Betrayal by his own party’s establishment? Check. Debates scheduled opposite football? His falling poll numbers are a plot and the election is rigged? Check. So how might he rationalize at the very last moment dropping out of the race, in order to evade being the Biggest Loser?

I know someone who suggested one plausible scenario…

“I have been threatened with something so terrible – it really is huge – so huge, so amazing that I can’t tell you about it! Believe me, I'm a fighter, but I’ll take this one in the gut, for the sake of my country!”

Sound plausible? Sure, but let’s get back to the old standby. The real fallback position that’s already being prepared. Which is “the other side cheated!”

Asserting that there is already “widespread voter fraud,” Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone said Trump should declare that “if there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate . . . we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government…. and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath.”  And yes, that is a Trump confidant.

(In contrast look at a case where the election was genuinely stolen, much to our subsequent, injury, pain and loss. Sixteen years ago, after the contentious 2000 recount, Al Gore gave a gracious concession speech that invoked Stephen Douglas’s words to Abraham Lincoln: “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”)

Let’s put aside the blatant calls to treason, that will be heard and obeyed by parts of the revived confederacy, just as such calls were heeded when the slave states went volcanically crazy in wrath over losing the White House for the first time in 30 years, in 1860.  Oh, Trump’s defeat could unleash a wave of Timothy McVeighs. But no… let’s put off (for now) such dark nightmares. Instead take the question at face value and ask:

Can that happen? Can the vote be warped or manipulated? 

Of course it can! Though the biggest cheats – like gerrymandering and voter suppression -- are all perfected and done-most by Red States, where Donald Trump has most of his strength. Likewise, most of the companies making voting machines used to be owned (I have not checked lately) by Republican Party factotums and major donors.

But zero in on the machines. After the year 2000 punch card fiascos, those systems were largely replaced with electronic voting systems. “The intentions were pure. The consequences were a technological train wreck.”

This article from Wired relates some scary stories. “Verified Voting also has a handy map of who votes using what equipment, which lets you drill down both to specific counties and machine brands, so you can see what’s in use at your polling station.” 

Good news: More than half of the states conduct post-election auditing, by checking vote totals against paper records, to ensure that the votes are accurate.  Citizen volunteers can take part in these hand audits.

Even better news, Florida and Ohio – two of the three main decider battleground states – have auditing. Pennsylvania, not so much.

But this article ignores a crucial point. That cheating via voting machines would not be aimed at the closely monitored presidential race. Rather, the most effective and vital cheating will happen where the real political power and money are at stake… down ticket races for state offices and Assembly. Because if statehouses change hands, then the voting systems (and cheats) may be reformed. 

If you can cheat, then that is where you decidedly will. 

Presidents come and go.  But any state that ends gerrymandering never goes back.  And when enough do, well, then a day will come when the courts will have the guts to stop it, at long last. 

No, the cheaters are frantic.

And that is why it should be put right on the front burner.

== Why your party-affiliation should be pragmatic, geographic, and tactical ==

Reiterating that last point; In many ways, the down-ticket elections are more important, this year, than ever.  That is because we’ve had an executive and judicial branch for 8 years, trying to do their jobs, but the laziest, most worthless Congress in the history of the republic. 

I have long urged, for example, that Bernie-or-Bust characters should prove they aren’t useless-dreamy purists by doing the grittiest and most practically urgent kind of political activism… choosing some down ticket race for Congress or Assembly where a bit of extra effort by just one person might make a real difference!

Like in North San Diego County, where that piece-of-work Darrell Issa finally faces a real challenger – a retired Marine Colonel -- who might plausibly eject one of the worst representatives in U.S. history. And we are helping as we can.

Oh?  You say that local and down ticket elections are futile, where you live?  A lonely democrat in a gerrymandered Republican district?  Or vice versa?

Well, a district like yours is the ideal place to try the tactic that I recommend here.

Democrats who live in a hopelessly (and likely gerrymandered) Republican district... and yes Republicans in a hopelessly Democratic one should re-register with the whatever party "owns" the district. For example, in a heavily conservative district, your rep will be republican. Live with that fact. 

But local liberals can help protect a local moderate gopper rep from being savaged by tea partiers if he or she dares to actually negotiate with democrats. In other words, re-register in order to vote in the only election that matters, in your gerried district: the Primary.

It's been tested in California, where all voters can now vote in a shared, open primary. Often  the fall general election winds up between two demmies or two goppers, with an amazing side effect! 

The republican voters in a 2-demo race have gained influence, because they can no longer be ignored. They are listened-to, more than before.  The two dems running against each other seek out the local Republican clubs, and listen to moderate conservatives!  And vice versa. The chief casualty has been rabid partisanship, which has been largely killed, dead.

The California method required a citizen uprising. But YOU can emulate it, wherever you live, by convincing your pals to re-register tactically. Strategically.

I wish I had some way to make this a national movement. It is so simple and logical.  And it could rob cynical gerrymandering of HALF its power to harm practical and civil politics in America.  

== Fact-checking ==

Both sides in our current, fervid and fevered political frenzy accuse each other of being liars.  One party denounces all fact-checking services as “biased.” The other has all the scientists but still can be pretty fast and loose with too-easy generalizations.

Here are some “corrections” or comments on the acceptance speeches by Donald Trump…

and Hillary Clinton.

Oh, and Trump jokes he'll blame Pence if he loses the election. 

== The 4^th Branch of Government ==

Finally, one more factor for you to consider. Perhaps the most important one.

Every party has a shadow cabinet -- hundreds of factotums who line up for jobs in a new administration.  Despite frenetic GOP efforts to find vaunted "corruption" among Clinton and Obama appointees, those two are the only 8 year administrations in U.S. history never to see even a single high official - or even intermediate - convicted or even indicted for malfeasance of office. And not for lack of trumped-up, lame-o hearing after hearing and 24 years of relentless "investigations." 

Please read that paragraph again.  Not one allegation of malfeasance in office proved or even indictable against even one clintonite or obamite official, across 16 years, despite  upwards of $500million in witch hunts. The first time it’s ever happened. Facts are a bitch.

In contrast, the GOP brain trust consists - to a frightening degree - of Koch shills, child molesters and a conga line of orange prison jumpsuits.

You are actually gonna tell me that Trump will enter office and not go to to Washington GOP pols for advice on appointments? Or that those pols won't have thick folios of 'the usual suspects"? Factotums tanned and rested and ready from both Bush Administrations.

Dig it, this is why Ryan and McConnell et. al. are playing nice with DT!

Admit it, you never even thought about this fourth branch of government.  It matters.