I am so fed up with the obvious illegitimate elections that happen in this country. We need attention and persistence dedicated to this issue. Even here on Daily Kos, for the longest time people have been silenced whenever they brought up the obvious election fraud going on. Why? Some argue that people won’t vote if they think it’s bogus. Guess what? It’s bogus! Sweeping it under the rug needs to stop. It is high time that the media, elected officials, Democrats, and voters take this bullsh*t seriously. The Democrats, led by HRC, didn’t even support recounts and court fights in 2016 when it was clear things were fraudulent: more votes than voters, totals not adding up, etc. Those of us who were concerned had to give money to the freaking Jill Stein to try to make anything happen. Why doesn’t the Democratic Party take this seriously?
I believe that Democrats handily won the Senate elections in Florida and Texas, and the governors’ races in Georgia and Florida. Much thanks to the campaigns and people fighting right now for these races, but it should never come to this.
We need people to wake up. We need ideas and solutions. I have an idea that the national Democratic Party should establish a permanent Voting Integrity Institute, funded by all those corporate dollars flooding campaigns, that employs leaders and experts, has a strategy, and keeps visibility on this issue every year, all year long, in every state.
We need the Democratic Party to step up and spend some of the 100’s of millions of advertising $$ (such as goes to the DCCC) on lawsuits, recounts, lobbying, legislation, media, support for activists and statistical scientists.
In many places, our supposedly advanced country features:
1. Officials overseeing their own elections, and only recusing when taken to federal court.
2. Unbelievable statistical results such as massive undervotes (fewer votes for important races), red shifts that don’t make sense, last minute red surges, more votes for R’s the more populous the precinct.
3. No paper ballots to recount, and no automatic audits.
4. Ancient, unreliable, hackable, voting machines, and opaque, partisan voting machine companies and software.
5. Massive purging of voter rolls.
6. Radical, unfair gerrymandering.
7. Opaque, partisan, unverified counting of ballots.
8. Paper ballots being counted by hackable, black box, and un-audited machines.
9. Court decisions to strike down the right to vote.
10. Voting on Tuesdays! When you have to take off work!
11. Voting procedures and counting votes left up to individual states, with no standardization.
12. Severely unfair allocation of voting resources. 5-hour waits!
13. Archaic and unfair representation, like the Electoral College.
I scream and stress at every election because things are obviously corrupt.
If we want people to vote for Democrats and believe the votes will make a difference, we need the leaders in the party to wake up, keep this issue visible, educate people, spend money on it, and treat it with the gravity it requires. We need standards, paper ballots, audits, and non-partisan election administration. Nothing else matters in politics if we can’t count on clean elections.