I have a confession to make. I did not watch the last presidential debate last night. I just couldn’t. I figured I would just read the synopsis and news accounts afterwards and spare myself the pain of watching it. My ballot was sent in last week so there was nothing that was going to happen in the debate that was going to affect my vote anyway.
Given the record turnout for early voting in many states, it appears that the debate and all of the disgusting, misleading and false political ads polluting the airwaves will have little affect on most voters. I suppose there are a few ‘fence-sitters’ who will wait until the last minute to flip their coin to decide who they will vote for, but I suspect for the majority of Americans, the die is cast. The real question is, how will all of the external forces affect the vote counting?
There are intelligence reports that Iran is behind emails trying to intimidate voters and that Russia has actually hacked into election computers. Couple these efforts with all of the lawsuits that are being brought by Republicans around the country designed to suppress the vote and who the hell knows what will come out as the certified vote count in the end. It is a 100 percent probability that Trump will not win the popular vote so if he does eke out a victory, it will be through the arcane workings of the electoral college or through legislative chicanery.
Virtually all of the US intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the express goal of helping get Trump elected. The only people that are disputing this fact are Trump, a few of those close to him and, of course, Russia. Even Trump’s own appointed FBI director, Christopher Wray, agreed that the Russians interfered in 2016 and were mounting a similar campaign to interfere in the 2020 election.
The government has had 4 years to address this problem and what has been done – zip! Why not? You can draw your own conclusions. But the bottom line is that it is unconscionable to know a problem like this exists and to do absolutely nothing about it.
The House of Representatives has passed at least 10 bills to address election security and all of them were blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate.1 Some of these bills just seem to be common sense things and it is beyond me (and probably most Americans) why they cannot be passed. For example, “Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission (FEC) about foreign offers of assistance, as well as legislation to provide more election funding and ban voting machines from being connected to the internet”.1 Election security should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue. It is fundamental to our democracy.
So, why the hell does it not make sense to alert the FBI about offers from foreign entities to help in an election? And we know that hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated so why the hell are we risking connecting voting machines to the internet? Even common-sense measures like these have run into a brick wall in the Republican-controlled Senate. It just boggles the mind.
Here we are less than two weeks from another presidential election and we seem to be right back where we were in 2016. It’s really criminal. In my opinion, the Republican Party has become so corrupt under Trump and Mitch McConnell that they are willing to do absolutely anything to retain power. And when I use the term ‘corrupt’ I am talking about the corruption of morals and principles. There was a time when, even when there were policy differences, it was pretty much universally understood that it was ‘country first – party and individual agendas second.’ Now, it has become completely the opposite – individual and party agendas first and ‘the country’ coming in a distant second.
I’m not saying the Democrats are without sin, however, the majority of gerrymandering has been done by Republicans; the majority of voter suppression efforts have been undertaken by Republicans; the refusal to put any kind of Constitutional checks on Trump are Republican led; and this latest effort to ram through the Supreme Court nominee is the absolute height of hypocrisy. The party has just become morally corrupt and has cast aside any semblance of principles.
There is no doubt that regardless of what the vote count is, Trump and the Republicans will mount numerous challenges around the country which will do nothing but add to Putin’s effort to undermine the election in the eyes of many Americans. That is Putin’s whole strategy and Trump and the Republican party are his best agents.
It is well past time that significant election security legislation is enacted. Free and fair elections that Americans trust are the cornerstone of our democracy and if we don’t have that, the ‘great American experiment’ is doomed.
- https://thehill.com/homenews/house/482569-senate-gop-blocks-three-election-security-bills