I Had A Dream

I had a weird dream the other morning. You know, after you've woken up earlier and then fall back asleep. I dreamed that it was January 21, and I was looking back and reflecting on the events of earlier in the month leading up to the inauguration and its aftermath. The Congress had voted on the electors after senators and representatives objected in their houses, and because of the chicanery in several states, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote regardless of population. Because more state delegations have a majority of Republican representatives, the vote went to Trump and Pence.

The resultant outrage led to huge demonstrations in pretty much every major city that started peacefully during the days but escalated into violence at night. This rioting and rampaging went on for almost two weeks and including on January 20th, Inauguration Day. In many cities, the violence jumped from property destruction to armed encounters between the different sides, and then, in Portland something happened and someone fired a shot, and the confrontation broke out into a firefight with large numbers of deaths on both sides. Finally, the governor of Oregon declared a state of emergency and the NG was sent in to restore order. The inauguration happened inside the Capital with limited attendance and there was a huge police and NG presence surrounding the Capital and large riotous crowds throughout downtown DC. The inauguration was quickly over... but the violence started to swell. The NG was out in force and quickly suppressed outbreaks of violence, but smoke and tear gas lingered as the evening came. Everyone knew it was going to get worse.

That evening, the newly-sworn in President Trump asked for and received airtime to talk to the nation. The networks announced that the President would be appealing for calm and unity, and that he would make a special announcement, but although there was considerable speculation no one was really sure. The nation tuned in to watch. Trump appeared in the White House, in the Oval Office, and greeted the public with the typical "Good evening, my fellow Americans." He paused, and the camera view widened to show the Oval Office. Trump was not alone. VP Pence was there, as well as Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy... and also Senators Mitt Romney, Josh Hawley, Joe Mancin, and former GA Democrat representative Vernon Jones, an African-American who had defied his party and endorsed Trump for the presidency and then was forced into resigning by the GA state Democrat Party for "not sharing our values." George W Bush and Bill Clinton were there as well... but not Obama. Chief Justice John Roberts was there as well, dressed in his black robe.

Trump spoke briefly, thanked his supporters, and then shocked the nation by telling them that he was going to be resigning the presidency immediately, leaving Mike Pence as president. Trump quoted parts of MLK's famous "I've seen the Mountain Top" speech, telling America that better days are coming if we all come together, and that "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land, the future, and it will be bright. We have the vaccine, we'll put the pandemic behind us, and America will be greater than ever. The fraudulent election has been fixed, yet just as we couldn't stand to see the presidency stolen, setting it right will require sacrifice from all of us, including me. I've set the stage, and while I will not be your president, I'm leaving you in good hands, and I'm doing so in a way that is meant to put the partisanship behind us and get past this. The people I leave behind have pledged to fix our election system so what happened never happens again, and America will be able to trust in the fairness of our elections. I understand Dr King, and as he said, I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land, America the Great. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything." And then he offered his resignation and it was accepted.

VP Pence was then sworn in to be America's 46th president, his wife joining him as Melania Trump joined her husband, and the other presidents' wives joined them. Immediately afterward, he announced a full pardon for Trump and his family... and for the Bidens, and for the Clintons... saying that while he didn't presume that any of the recipients necessarily had done something illegal that would be shielded by a pardon, the time for using the legal system to attack political enemies was over, and though he knew no one would agree on all of the pardons he was granting, it was the only way to start from a clean slate and to put the past behind us. He also said that this would likely never happen again, but that unusual times called for unusual methods. He mused on how, perhaps, things might have been done differently if our leaders back in the fall of 1860 had been able to look ahead and see 600,000 dead Americans and the resultant bitterness leading to over a century of African-American oppression and disenfranchisement... that there had to have been a better way, a way to not kill off 3% of the population with civil war and leave the country divided in spirit leaving aftereffects that linger today. This was our chance to learn from our ancestors' mistakes instead of going down the same path, he said. And then he thanked Trump for having the courage to put the country before himself by resigning and sacrificing his presidency when he wasn't obligated to do so. He finished by asking the nation to put the country before self, to put aside the anger from the election and its outcome, to reject violence, and to join together to help make America the best version of itself. "I know, half of you didn't vote for me, but I need to be your president too, and that means I'll have to earn it by addressing your concerns. It's time for the American people, all of them to win, not some politician running for office. Help me, help your fellow Americans... let us all help each other."

Then, he had McConnell and Pelosi come up to the podium with him, and he nominated Democrat Vernon Jones for the office of vice president. Both Leader Mitchell and Speaker Pelosi, and the minority leaders in both houses, pledged to support the nomination and have the vote by the end of the next day. The event ended with all of the leaders shaking hands and agreeing to work for the good of the country over the interests of their party, and asking everyone to do the same. The post-event commentators across all of the networks were floored.

I had the news on as I sipped on my first cup of coffee, switching from the broadcast networks to CNN to Fox to see how the country was taking all of it in. The riots had stopped, the protests had stopped, and all of the reporters and commentators seemed shocked by what had happened. Several ordinary people were interviewed, and all of them expressed hope for the country and for the future. Even Joe Biden, while angry about how the election had been decided, stated that he agreed that Trump did the right thing by stepping down instead of serving a second term as president after such a widely disputed election, and that having a Democrat as VP would help to heal the country... and then he said that the country needed to put this behind us and move on.

And then I woke fully, and realized that it was just a dream.

How To Steal an Election, Hypothetically(?)

“Those Who Cast The Votes Decide Nothing. Those Who Count The Votes, Decide Everything” – Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin, Circa 1950

Picture this:

It's in the fourth year of a wildly controversial presidential term. The current president is fiery, speaks bluntly and sometimes foolishly, has a record of success along with a record of repeatedly antagonizing his political opponents both in his party and among the opposition, and he is strongly disliked by many in the political ecosphere... reporters, analysts, pontificators... because he does not seek their approval or their advice. In fact, he often disregards and ridicules it, to the consternation of the so-called political establishment and to the delight of his base. His base is comprised of mostly lower and middle income White and minority voters who value independence, identify themselves as religious, and who generally support social and financial conservative values... small business owners, semi-skilled and skilled workers... as well as the majority of law enforcement and military members. He does not garner much support or respect among the professional class, those in academia, the tech industry, the financial sector, and especially from the media and entertainment industries. He is the butt of most late night comedy show hosts, and much if not most of their nightly routines center on finding something to ridicule the president about. The opposition party has tried and failed to remove him from office repeatedly, first by pushing a baseless investigation of him as a foreign agent based upon a known-false document prepared by the other presidential candidate during the last election cycle as if it were true, then by impeaching him on a party-line vote in the House on false, specious accusations of abuse of power and obstruction of justice only to see the impeachment fail on a party-line vote in the Senate. Neither the baseless collusion investigation or the baseless impeachment had wings once they became known as baseless, and thus have not been referred to by the opposition party against the president during his re-election campaign. The economy made a remarkable turnaround under this president's lead, reaching historic highs, then the nation and the world was hit by a pandemic caused by a virus from China that quickly spread world-wide with 10X the fatality rate of the common flu. The actions taken to combat this pandemic have significantly and negatively affected the world's economy; the nation's economy has also experienced a significant contraction due to the curtailing of economic activity as a preventative response to the pandemic.

In this environment, the primary season was abbreviated and the opposition kept any one candidate from taking an insurmountable lead until April, when all but the front-runner and the second-place candidate dropped out and endorsed the front-runner, ensuring the second-place candidate who openly supported socialism would not win for the second election in a row. Thus, the front-runner's eventual ascension to the nomination was inevitable. Yet, there were problems. The nominee had not done well in primary debates; many questioned his mental capabilities due to his performance and his advanced age of 77. Yet, the consensus among political ecosphere was that the nominee was the candidate who would best appeal to the American public based on his projected 'likable' persona and his political experience. In order to appeal to the special interest groups that comprise the Party faithful, the African-American woman primary candidate was chosen for the VP position. The idea was to create a 'balanced' ticket that appealed to all of the party's constituencies... men, women, White, or People of Color... while also being deemed preferable to the two distasteful current office-holders who were both openly White, male, conservative, and Christian (thus, bigoted, racist and homophobic). But it wasn't enough. The party had lost the last election even though their candidate won the nationwide popular vote. Typical party constituencies... working-class, union members, even minority voters... could not be relied upon. What to do?

What if... the current pandemic was used to justify the wholesale indiscriminate mailing out of ballots to all registered voters whether requested or not? What if a subset of those ballets were duplicated, say, ballots for registered voters who had not voted in the past couple of elections, and stashed away? What if the election WERE held, the mail-in ballots plus day-of-voting ballots resulted in the party's candidate losing to the current office-holder? Well, we know who voted because we have their ballots... and thus we know who hasn't yet voted. We can bet that the vast majority of registered voters who didn't vote are represented in our stash... and we don't need them all. Just enough. So, we pause the voting, use our list of returned votes to exclude those from our stash, and take enough votes from our stash, mark them for the votes that matter in the time we have (mostly the presidential ballot, maybe in a few states throw in a senator because we're not worried about the House... no way we're losing that!) and throw them into the mix? What would that look like? Of course, we can't let observers see all this, so we block windows, we sequester them away so they can't look closely at piles of ballots we bring in from the stash or we can mix them in with ordinary ballets, we tell observers to go home because we're done counting... and when they go home we resume counting.

It would look like the incumbent is leading with significant margins in several states, only to see that lead whittle away and then disappear, giving the election in these states to our candidate. It would look like the vote swinging in favor of our presidential candidate, but lower races on the ballot not changing so that state races don't change and most Senate and House races don't change. Remember, we don't have to do this in every state, or even every precinct or county in every state... just enough precincts and counties in just enough states to push the election our way.

I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm saying that it certainly looks like what happened. And, brought to us by the party that vigorously opposes any form of establishing certainty that a registered voter cast the vote being counted, denying full transparency and openness on the vote tabulation process, and pushing processes and practices that only enhance the capability for vote fraud. The same party that tried to tell us that the Russians changed the course of the 2016 election yet denies any such thing could possibly have happened in 2020. Or, that 150K+/- ballots suddenly appearing in the middle of the night, almost all for their candidate (which is statistically highly unlikely) is normal. The problem is, we don't know and we CAN'T know that the election was fair, that only legitimate votes were counted... because one party doesn't want us to know and has done what it could to ensure we don't know and will NEVER know. That is the problem. Joe Biden has declared himself as the winner and the media is supporting him, yet Joe and the media know that the election results are not finalized... but they are trying to create the impression that the election is over when it's not. Why?

I would like to live in a country where, whether my candidate wins or loses, I have full and complete confidence in the integrity of the election system and processes. I cannot say that today, can you? THAT is the problem. The solution is simple: do in the US what we did to ensure fair and honest elections in Iraq. Make the first Tuesday in November a mandatory federal holiday (get rid of one of the other ones), require everyone to vote in person absent a valid reason for a mailed ballot, require voter ID (driver's license, passport) at the polls, put the voter's thumbprint on their ballot at the polls (have an ink pad in the booth, they thumbprint the ballot before leaving the booth and this is checked against the voter's thumbprint on record by the ballot-registering computer), provide voters a receipt for their ballot with their recorded votes, require ID for registration including a valid government ID (driver's license, passport), expire voter registrations every five years and require re-registration otherwise the voter is removed from the rolls to clean out the moved and dead voters. This would support automatic ballot confirmation, reduce the cost and effort of voting, ensure that only qualified citizens voted, and let us know who won the election by the end of the day. You know one party would be supporting this, while the other party would vigorously oppose it... and you know why, having seen what has happened during this election cycle. Because campaigns, platforms, positions, outreach... none of it matters if you control a voting process that is open to fraud.