#also even if you won’t vote in the presidential election you should go vote

[gender-fluidz]

Go vote for the conditions you want to protest in 👍

[phantom-of-the-memes]

⚠️ The general election in the Republic of Ireland is happening tomorrow, November 29th⚠️

Here’s what you need to know if you are a leftist/ just want Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael out of government.

Firstly, why do we need to get them out?

Because they have been in power for almost 100 years! 100 years of a “centre” right government. We have not even had a centre left government in all this time, never mind a left government. Something has to fucking change. Even if you’re not a socialist like me, you have to acknowledge that all the problems currently in Ireland have been caused, or at least not dealt with by them. They’re the ones in power! And yet they talk about the issues in Ireland and how something has to be done… Simon Harris is a joke with his “a new energy” signs. Cunt you’re the current fucking Taoiseach!

So, who should you vote for?

If you truly want change, and a government that is for the people, vote People Before Profit number one. They are actually putting actions behind their words. They have explicitly said that they will refuse to go into government with FF or FG. They want the other left parties to form a left coalition with them, and also make a stand to refuse a right government. Other left parties, however, are quite lukewarm on the situation, and won’t join the coalition. But still put other left parties for number two and three. Some are more preferable than others. But change is change.

Ok if you’re not a socialist like me, there are other options. Sinn Féin is centre left, so if a bit more conservative than others. This makes it the third most voted for party generally. It’s a bit more palatable to the general public than the commies I vote for lol. I don’t agree with the majority of their policies, especially with them dialling back their support for trans people. I assume to appeal to FF and FG supporters. As a trans person I wouldn’t personally vote for them. But I understand the logic of being strategic about your vote. They’re the most likely to win out of the left parties.

Why should you still vote for parties that likely won’t win the overall vote?

Because they will still get seats! This isn’t a presidential election where it’s all or nothing. The majority winner gets to be the ones in power. But this is a democracy. More votes for a party means more seats for them in the Dáil. So it does matter.

What is each party’s stance on taking action against Israel?

Here’s a very helpful graphic from the ucd bds group on Instagram (ucd_bds):

See FF and FG’s stance? Exactly.

Who you should definitely not vote for?

Aontú are literal nazis. Their main selling point is that they hate immigrants. They want to strip their rights and practically stop immigration all together. They also hate women, and want to criminalise abortion again. The members of the party were big parts of the pro life movement that tried to stop the abortion referendum. Of course they also hate trans and queer people. Basically any and all minorities. They aim to bring fascism to our government. Don’t let this happen. This is also why voting is so important, so we can prevent this.

And this should go without saying, but don’t fucking vote for the joker independent candidates that have signs around saying shit like “make crime illegal”. It’s not even a joke to vote for them. You’re an asshole if you throw your vote away like that.

Remember to find out where your local polling station is, and bring your polling card, on Friday the 29th of November.

[eowyntheavenger]

Me: We unfortunately live in a two-party system in the US. I’d like to change that, but I recognize that our two-party system won’t be going away before the 2024 election. I recognize that the Democrats have done a lot of truly awful things, but I also know that the Republicans are significantly worse for America AND the world, and that if they win the next presidential election they will destroy our democracy even more than they already have. Some Democrat policies have also been very beneficial, and having Democrats win elections is better than having Republicans win, even if it won’t fix everything. When Democrats win, we should put pressure on them to enact the policies we want. I support voting blue in primaries and in the general election. I also support many other ways of making change besides voting. Right now I’m concerned about the number of leftists who don’t want to vote, so I’d like to encourage people to vote, which is why I’m writing this post. Voting is the minimum requirement for participating in democracy. I’d like to remind people that anyone discouraging you from voting wants to suppress your vote. The tankie frothing at the mouth in my notes: SO YOU THINK BIDEN IS THE GOOD GUY? SO YOU SUPPORT GENOCIDE? SO YOU WANT TO SWEEP UNDER THE RUG ALL THE BAD THINGS DEMOCRATS HAVE DONE? SO ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS VOTE AND NOT USE DIRECT ACTION? VOTING IS INEFFECTUAL ANYWAY. YOU LIBERALS ARE ALL THE SAME. BTW I’M A FAN OF BRENDANICUS.

[lifewithchronicpain]

I said live/vote because some people are registered to vote in one place but are not living there for various reasons such as being military posted abroad.

I’m from a deep blue/red state, why should I vote?

I live in Massachusetts, my state will undoubtedly go blue for Harris and re-elect Senator Warren. Still, I will happily vote, not only to show my support for Harris and Warren, but also because there is so much more on your ballot and it’s just as important as the presidential election. You should vote because:

1) The House of Representatives is up for reelection every 2 years. While gerrymandering helps the GOP gain a majority, there are still many districts where they could flip blue if more left leaning voters turned out. In order for Harris to implement many of her promises, she needs a Democratic House to pass them.

2) 1/3 if all Senate seats are up for reelection. Once again, Harris needs a Democratic Senate to pass the bills with her plans in them.

3) Every state has local elections where maybe you won’t influence congress or the presidency, but you can still help elect progressive local candidates. In fact, these are some of the most important races. They pass laws that directly affect you, and for things like Secretary of State, they handle all elections. If your state is gerrymandered to hell and back, a progressive Secretary of State would be one way to combat voter suppression by the GOP.

4) Every state has ballot questions that directly impact your lives. Right now, 10 states have abortion questions on the ballot: (AZ, NV, CO, MD, NY, FL, MO, MT, NE, & SD) Ohio has a referendum that could end gerrymandering. They are one of the direct ways you can impact life in your state.

5) Last, but not least, even if you’re not in a swing state, every single vote still counts towards a popular vote. While it doesn’t decide the election, Trump is such a self absorbed ass that a huge popular vote against him will hurt just as much as losing the election via the electoral college. Vote to bruise is massive ego.

Vote.org is a wonderful site that can help you register, check that you are registered (been a lot of voter purges lately), see what’s on your ballot and more. Remember, if your vote didn’t matter, then the GOP wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you from voting!

[hikkikoaubrey]

Please read, don't scroll pass this. (II)

One the previous post I talked about the KOSA Bill and the TikTok Ban Bill as you can see above, but now for this post I'm going to talk about something of even greater importance. Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a plan from Republicans / Conservatives to seize total control of America from the inside out while destroying democracy in the process, ultimately turning America into a Christian nationalist militarized state. One of the main ways they plan on making this a reality is through Trump getting a second term as president.

If this comes to pass, this will ruin and even end the lives of many, and to make it worse, the changes caused by Project 2025 will still be in effect even long after Trump's second term ends.

We cannot let Trump when this election, and as much as I hate this, Biden is really our only choice since voting on a 3rd party will most likely won't work. I know Biden has a lot of problems, but we don't have a choice.

Here is some more links with some additional info (including the actual Project 2025 website), please look more into this and spread this around (even if you're not in America)

Website

Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project

Videos

The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this) (youtube.com)

Project 2025: The Fascist Plan For America (youtube.com)

Tweets

Project 2025 (@Prjct2025) / X (twitter.com)

STOP THE COUP 2025 #StopProject2025 (@stopthecoup2025) / X (twitter.com)

https://x.com/oogamretsim/status/1769776085221220774?s=20

BMB Empower Network on X: "A guide to #Project2025, the extreme #rightwing agenda for the next #Republican administration, aims to roll back #civilrights and destroy the #federalgovernment. https://t.co/TVhHMRjjTD" / X (twitter.com)

NowThis Impact on X: "When conservatives tell you what their plan is, believe them. Here’s how Project 2025 aims to break down the U.S. government, dismantle the education system, institute a national abortion ban... and that’s just the beginning. https://t.co/htZORS5whU" / X (twitter.com)

https://x.com/cardon_brian/status/1772756740016099494?s=20

David Pepper on X: "🚨 🚨 NEW WHITEBOARD 2024 is being framed as Trump vs. Biden. But Trump’s unhinged Ohio speech the other day, his past actions, the ominous Project 2025, and more, make clear that the election really is about: Trump vs YOU… and your FREEDOM. WATCH, RT and then… https://t.co/qG0Nr5SYOj" / X (twitter.com)

https://x.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1770499903640264865?s=20

Kanis The Arctic Wolf 🔜 Florida on X: "WE CANNOT STAY SILENT ABOUT THIS! Project 2025 and KOSA are DANGEROUS, it’s a threat to all of our rights and democracy as a whole. If we don’t stand up for our rights now, we won’t have them to fight for later on. SPREAD THE WORD, DEFEND OUR RIGHTS, IT TAKES ALL OF US!" / X (twitter.com)

https://x.com/batzless/status/1770583846540509549?s=20

Tumblr Posts

[odinsblog]

I just found out about Jasmine Sherman and they look really cool. Like, the policies that they say they’re going to do? The fact that they have an audiobook option for people to listen to what the policies say on their platform? (If people don’t have JAWS or screen readers on their devices, JAWS for computers.) I really hope they get far enough in the presidential race. Although Cornel West is my next choice should he get far.

Yeah, sorry but Hell NO.

I’m all for audiobooks and JAWS readers, but I’ve never heard of Jasmine Sherman before and as far as I’m concerned, Ms. Sherman is just another throwaway vote. She has the same chance of winning the next election as a randomly picked name from a hat. Same goes for Cornel West and for 🤡 RFK Jr., and same for Marianne Williamson, and in fact, same for anyone who isn’t named (I honestly cannot believe that EYE am saying this, but here we are) Joe Biden.

Look, in 2020 I went through the same journey that I think a lot of voters are going through right now: I swore up and down that I wasn’t going to vote for Biden because he had (and still has, tbqh) a lot of conservative policies that I vehemently disagree with—LOL, don’t even get me started on Title 42, okay? But at the end of the day, I carried my Black ass into that voting booth and I begrudgingly did what I had to do.

All I know is, I do not want Donald fucking Trump in the White House. That’s it. Not “lesser evilism” not “he’s the next LBJ” not anything else, except for I’m voting for the person who has the best chance of beating Trump and keeping his racist ass out of the White House. THAT’S just about my only motivation here. Dassit. Periodt. I can deal with everything else later.

And I can live with myself with that vote.

But yeah, I’m Black and I gotta live not only with myself, but I also gotta live in this world and look other people in the eye. People who don’t even have my extremely limited level of privilege.

I’m not gonna go into detail about how a Trump presidency would make literally everything worse than it already is—and yes, sadly that includes Palestine, Ukraine, transphobia, homophobia, immigration, and whatever else is allegedly important to disproportionately ☭ white, online “leftists” 🙄 who keep telling people not to vote, or keep telling people to vote for candidates who cannot win.

As far as I’m concerned, Trump getting back into the White House is an existential threat to everything I hold dear. So no, anon, I will fucking not be throwing my vote away on some random ass person I’ve never heard of before, who has no mf chance of ever winning.

And yes, I still have problems with Biden. Like, a lot of problems. Like, a LOT, lot. But he’s the best chance we got at stopping Trump, and Trump needs to be stopped. That, plus I desperately want to see Trump pay for everything he’s gotten away with so far. Voting for Biden is the best way for me to give that a chance.

So yeah, I am deathly afraid of a second Trump term. And a big part of what is driving that fear is the fact that Joe Biden is vulnerable and super beatable. Like, his winning the next election is not a guarantee—did Hillary Clinton’s completely preventable loss teach you nothing at all??

Anyway, I’m not tryna write a book here. I think I’ve made my thoughts clear on Jasmine Sherman and whoever else is the flavor-of-the-day that can’t and won’t beat Trump. Biden is really fucking up and making himself even more beatable by unconditionally supporting Israel, and if he wins he might continue to fuck up, but I promise you that Trump will do unimaginably worse to Palestinians—and that’s not hyperbole.

Lastly, I really debated long and hard about whether or not to make this post rebloggable. PLEASE don’t make me regret that decision, OKAY??

Like, I know that a lot of people who unconditionally LOVE Joe Biden (that’s not me, btw) and the Democratic Party will be tempted to add, “VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!” to this post, but I am begging you to please resist that urge, okay? I don’t know how to precisely put it into words, but unless you’re already convinced and have decided to vote for Biden, there’s just something about adding that braindead slogan that is incredibly off putting. It’s like an annoying ad that you want to skip and ignore on YouTube; it’s vapid; it’s old + tired; it’s lowkey offensive, and it tells people that you haven’t really given a lot of thought to anything and you’re just another insipid Blue MAGA sycophant blindly hopping on the bandwagon. Please find a better more intelligent way to express your support of Biden, okay?

ALSO, if you just search for Jasmine Sherman on Tumblr, you get a lot of anonymous asks like this

And sorry, but having lived through the 2016 and 2020 interface elections, yeah, it just smells fishy af. Chipping away at Biden votes is another way to help get Trump re-elected. And Trump supports Putin and Netanyahu

[hareofhrair]

Would it still be useful voting if I choose/write in Claudia/Karina or any other independent candidate? I just want someone better than both of them…

I completely understand this impulse and I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately the answer is no. Unless sometime before November someone manages to amass a genuinely huge grassroots movement behind a third candidate which unifies a block of people large enough to compete with both democrats and republicans (which is, I should clarify, EXTREMELY unlikely if not totally impossible at this point), voting third party/write in is essentially useless. It’s an empty gesture, because no third candidate can compete with the sheer numbers of the primary two parties.

Even if you managed to mobilize an entire state for a third party candidate, the electoral college means your state’s votes can still end up going towards one of the main party candidates (which is just one of the reasons the electoral college should be abolished)

Either Trump or Biden will be president and there’s no avoiding that. Voting for anyone else is essentially the same as not voting.

However! Presidential elections aren’t everything! Local and state elections are a GREAT place to vote third party. Especially if you can mobilize your social circle to join you! For local elections (which tend to have very low turnout) that can make an ENORMOUS difference. And who gets elected locally affects who gets elected at a state level, which affects viable candidates for federal elections, which is the pool from which our presidential candidates are chosen! So when you vote third party locally, it can really make a difference down the line! Even if there’s no third party candidate running, voting as far left as possible helps prove the viability of running on a far left platform, which means more people will do it. Even if there’s no democrats running at all (which happens a lot where I’m from) you can still vote for harm reduction. For candidates who won’t make things better but probably won’t make them worse.

What people forget is that voting is not about you or your personal beliefs. It’s about unified political action. It’s you and people who are aligned with politically, working together to compromise on and support a candidate that furthers all your goals as much as possible.

It’s a union.

You may not agree with everything your coworkers want out of a union negotiation. Maybe some of them want higher pay, but you think that’s unrealistic and you’d rather focus your efforts on getting better health benefits, and somebody else thinks healthcare is great but less important than demanding set schedules instead of week to week unreliable shifts. And then there’s this one asshole who thinks you hire too many immigrants and wants to get rid of affirmative action policies and also he’s sick of contributing part of his paycheck to the pension fund and we should just get rid of that.

If that asshole is the only one who shows up to the union meetings? He’s the one who’s going to get what he wants.

But if you and the other three guys who all want to actually make things better get together and agree, fine, more stable work hours is a good first step, we’ll all support that for now. Then asshole over there gets drowned out.

Voting is not a statement of your personal political beliefs. Voting is not an endorsement of everything that politician has ever done. Voting is you and everyone you know who wants the world to be better agreeing “this guy isn’t my first choice, but he wants SOME of the things all of us want. And he’s better than that trumpeting asshole over there who thinks lighting his farts on fire is a natural gas policy.”

At least until we can convince them to switch to goddamn ranked voting anyway.

[aplacetosharemyfics]

The Downfall of Susan St. Clair: Locker Notes

Monday

Sorry I couldn’t spend any time with you today. Buddy waylaid me and I couldn’t get away. I’ll make time tomorrow, okay?

Susan

Tuesday

Buddy won the debate! I mean, there aren’t really winners and losers to a debate. It is just an opportunity to explain your views as a presidential nominee. But Buddy totally won! And he was on TV! Jane completely froze up. Ironic really, considering how much she goes on at school. I guess she wasn’t ready for the big leagues.

I’m going to be busy for a while, helping Buddy with his campaign.

Susan

Wednesday

I hate Jane Facciano. There I said it. Her whole campaign was to make school fun for everyone, but it seems like she’s just trying to hurt everyone. After all, it was all her fault Buddy even got on that counter. And now he can’t play in the next match! I wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital with him. But Mum helped me pick out a nice flower arrangement to send to his room. I just hope the pity votes make up for the embarrassment.

Sorry about what Rosemary said to you. She didn’t really mean it.

Susan

Thursday

Well, well, well. It seems that everyone had finally realized what a danger Jane is to the school. They show her some support and the whole school gets their jackets taken away. Rosemary is furious that she can’t wear her boyfriend’s letterman jacket. And Buddy looks like a wounded soldier. Everyone hates the Pink Ladies again.

Are you coming to the game tomorrow?

Susan

Friday

…

Maisie kicked at a pebble, watching it bounce away. She had brought her book with her but couldn’t bring herself to read. The school had closed early for the Football match, though it was highly encouraged that students should use their free time to attend the game. If they couldn’t win the game – and honestly, even with their star quarterback in top condition, they never won anything – they could at least pack the stands. Solidarity for their losing men. Or something. Thus, Maisie was hiding underneath the stands. Occasionally, when the cheerleaders tried to warm up the crowd, or the brass band played, she’d be deafened by the resulting roar. But for the most part, it was a fairly good hiding spot. If she looked through people’s legs, she could just about spot Susan. But she didn’t feel like looking.

It had been completely unexpected. One second, she was waiting in line for the cafeteria, looking forwards to getting some lunch and potentially seeing Susan, the next she was on the floor, someone else’s lunch staining her skirt, looking up at Rosemary. She supposed, later, that she had been in Rosemary’s way in some form, that it was her fault for not paying attention to everything that was happening around her. But that didn’t warrant Rosemary’s response. Hurt and humiliated, Maisie had glanced towards Susan only to find her blatantly looking in the other direction. From all the books she’d read, Maisie was fairly sure one of the most important rules to being friends was to have each other’s back. That didn’t mean letting them be bullied, particularly when the bully was also your friend. Maybe she’d been mistaken on Susan’s definition of ‘friend’.

The notes had continued through the week, carefully slid through the grating in Maisie’s locker, each penned in careful, precise, handwriting. They had quickly become, rather than cute messages passed between friends, an outlet for Susan to write about Buddy and Jane. And yet, Maisie had attended the Football game and chose a location to hide where she could see Susan, all because the stupid hopes still filling her head.

As the game started, Maisie retrieved her notebook from her bag, found a clean spot to sit, and started writing her own note back.

Friday

I understand that things are busy right now, particularly since the elections are coming up. I understand that Rosemary was just angry she could no longer wear her boyfriend’s jacket.

I want to be your friend. But not if it means you won’t be a friend back.

Maisie

The notebook was filled with similar iterations of the letter. They ranged from cursing Susan out for not helping, large portions scribbled out with enough force to tear the paper, to self-deprecating lines that became smudged with tears. Taking a breath, she ripped the page out, stuffed her notebook back into her bag, and headed back to the school. If she thought for much longer about it, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to go through with it. Susan’s locker was tauntingly close to a rubbish bin. But she closed her eyes and thrust the note into Susan’s locker and ran.

Dot trotted down the corridor beside Susan, complaining loudly about the nerve of the Pink Ladies. How dare they pin the blame on Ms. McGee when it was their antics that caused the jacket ban in the first place? She knew the cheerleader wasn’t listening to her rambling, but it cut through the silence. So, she kept talking, and the topic quickly spun round to Jane’s promise to get Johnny Vavoom to DJ for the school dance. She kept talking as they arrived at Susan’s locker, pausing for her to pick up a textbook she’d forgotten.

“Do you think he’ll play …”

Dot trailed off as she saw the expression on Susan’s face.

“Susan?”

Susan crumpled the note that had been left in her locker, quickly shaking off the expression of horror and guilt that had startled Dot. The note was slipped into her bag.

“It’s nothing.”

Dot nodded. It wasn’t nothing. Dot had been friends with Susan to know how strong her mask was. There was no way something that could draw such emotion onto her face, that could break down her mask, was just nothing. But if Susan didn’t want to talk about it, if it hurt Susan to even think about it, she wasn’t going to press the issue. She didn’t like to see her friend hurting.

[dhaaruni]

If the majority of white voters agree with Amy Wax that Asian immigration must be restricted because Asian-Anericans vote for the Democrats and the Democrats are bad for America because they "mindlessly valorize Black people", then what should the Demicratic Party do to increase their share of white vote? What are the messaging and policy prescriptions that will attract these white voters to vote D?

This is definitely bad faith but I’ll give you an answer.

For the hundredth time, Democrats don’t need to win a majority of white voters, we just need to siphon away enough of them to win statewide and federal elections. If we lost white, non-college voters by 25 and not 35, we’d have 55 Senate seats. Biden doesn’t have to Sister Souljah anybody in particular because literally nobody, not even Mariame Kaba and co., is saying that we should commit white genocide like Sister Souljah did back in 1992 but Biden should loudly repeatedly say things about like, loving America and supporting our troops and the dignity of work, and people need to not pearl clutch about it.

Here are some other recommendations.

Tone down the academic 1619 Project banning calculus speak about racism. Talk about all Americans deserving the opportunity to build a good life and systemic racism impacts POC's ability to build a good life and don’t like, make dumb videos explaining the difference between equality and equity the week before a presidential election since everybody who's not DEI-pilled thinks it’s bizarre. Keep it very simple and not up for debate. When Derek Chauvin was convicted of killing George Floyd, even JOSH HAWLEY only said that the jury made the correct choice and it should be abided by because it was a very cut and dry example!

Advertise in Spanish a LOT. The Biden campaign dropped the ball on campaigning in Spanish and it showed in the election results. Run Latino candidates who loudly disavow socialism and are devout Catholics and we’d improve by at least 5% nationwide, especially in Texas and Florida.

Almost nobody gets an abortion after the first trimester so don’t entertain questions about abortion beyond the first trimester because after that point, support plummets and it becomes a higher salience issue for anti-abortion voters. The average Republican senator doesn't want to outrightly ban abortion in the first trimester, even if they'll never say it out loud to appeal to their base. We should emphasize the importance of ensuring abortion is safe and legal and accessible but also emphasize that no woman (do not say person or worse "body" because 99.9999% of the people who get pregnant are cis women and it’s a needless culture war trigger with no real benefit) wants to undergo an unnecessary medical procedure.

When talking about immigration, Dems should talk about legal immigration and just not talk about illegal immigration as much as humanly possible. Republicans will always bring it up at which point Dems should just go “I support making it easier for asylum seekers to do so legally” and change the subject. Immigration is going to kill Dems no matter what, and if they can’t get elected, Dems won’t be able to enact any immigration reform at all. Illegal immigrants are going to benefit a lot more from a Dem president who doesn’t support them at all on the candidate trail and makes efforts to help them achieve citizenship when in office (without publicizing it obviously) than a Dem candidate who yells about pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants during the election and loses to a Republican.

My mutual pointed out that this woman is the median voter in the entire Midwest, a bored, fretful, unhappy, conventionally unattractive woman who is overworked, overlooked, and slightly crazy in a way that's totally different than the kind of crazy you find on politics Twitter. She thinks chronic Lyme disease is real and that crime is rising in her Cincinnati suburb, but if Democrats appeal to her and people like her, Democrats will win. Sherrod Brown knows this; Connie Schultz talked about how many of the white union men they talked to on the campaign trail would never vote for her husband on principle but their wives, their daughters, even their mothers sometimes came out in droves for Sherrod, and it made the difference.

I know that this kind of rhetoric won't make liberals/progressives happy but look at it like this: Obama was publicly against gay marriage in 2008 and declared marriage was between a man and a woman but he won in 2008, and in his first term, nominated Kagan and Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, who McCain wouldn't have nominated, and they voted to legalize gay marriage. It’s not as good a story as sticking to your convictions but it’s the only way to win elections as a liberal in a center-right country.

[robertreich]

Profiles in Cowardice

Financial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns.

Now America is being subject to a stress test to see if it has enough strength to withstand Trump’s treacherous campaign to discredit the 2020 presidential election.

Trump will lose because there’s no evidence of fraud. But the integrity of thousands of people responsible for maintaining American democracy is being tested as never before.  

Tragically, most elected Republicans in Washington are failing the test by refusing to stand up to Trump. Their cowardice is one of the worst betrayals of public trust in the history of our republic.

The only dissenting notes are coming from Republicans who are retiring at the end of the year or don’t have to face voters for several years, such as Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

Silent Republicans worry that speaking out could invite a primary challenge. But democracy depends on moral courage. These Republicans are profiles in cowardice.

But I've got some good news. The vast majority of lower-level Republican office-holders are passing the stress test, many with distinction.

Take for example Chris Krebs, who led the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency and last Tuesday refuted Trump’s claims of election fraud – saying the claims “have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”

Trump fired Krebs that afternoon. Krebs’s response: “Honored to serve. We did it right.”

Or Brad Raffensperger -- Georgia’s Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election there and describes himself as “a Republican through and through and never voted for a Democrat.” Raffensperger is defending Georgia’s vote for Biden, rejecting Trump’s accusations of fraud. On Friday he certified that Biden won the state’s presidential vote.

Raffensperger spurned overtures from Trump quisling Lindsey Graham, who asked if Raffensperger could toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. And Raffensperger dismissed demands from Georgia’s two incumbent Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (both facing tougher-than-anticipated runoffs) that he resign.

“This office runs on integrity,” Raffensperger says, “and that’s what voters want to know, that this person’s going to do his job.”

Raffensperger has received death threats from Republican voters inflamed by Trump’s allegations. He’s not the only one. Election officials in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are also reporting threats. But they're not giving in to them.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget all the other public officials in the Trump administration who have been stress-tested and passed honorably.

I’m referring to public health officials unwilling to lie about Covid-19, military leaders unwilling to back Trump’s attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, inspectors general unwilling to cover up Trump corruption, U.S. foreign service officers unwilling to lie about Trump’s overtures to Ukraine, intelligence officials unwilling to bend their reports to suit Trump, and Justice Department attorneys refusing to participate in Trump’s obstructions of justice.

If you think it easy to do what they did, think again. Some of them lost their jobs. Many were demoted. A few have been threatened with violence. They’ve risked all this to do what’s morally right in an America poisoned by Trump, who has no idea what it means to do what’s morally right.

That’s ultimately what the Trump stress test is all about. It's a test of moral integrity.

Even though House and Senate Republicans are failing that test, American democracy will survive because enough public officials are passing it.

But the fact that Trump’s attempted coup won’t succeed doesn’t make it any less damaging and dangerous.  A new poll from Monmouth University finds 77 percent of Trump supporters believe Biden’s win was due to fraud – a claim, I should emphasize again, backed by zero evidence.

Which means the stress test won’t be over when Joe Biden is sworn in as president January 20. In the years ahead we’ll continue to depend on the integrity of thousands of unsung heroes to do their duty in the face of threats to their livelihoods and perhaps their lives.

Meanwhile, American democracy will continue to be endangered by House and Senate Republicans who lack the moral courage to do what's right.

[fuckyeahtx]

By Mimi Swartz

Ms. Swartz is an executive editor of Texas Monthly

HOUSTON — A law school classmate of our governor once insisted to me that Greg Abbott was more dangerous than his predecessor Rick Perry because he was smart. I would say that the events of the past few months lend considerable support to the first part of the sentence.

Maybe you heard that Mr. Abbott tested positive for the coronavirus? One day before the news broke, he appeared at a crowded campaign event, maskless, shaking hands and posing for pictures. It was nice of him to let us know that he was feeling fine after getting the kind of care President Donald Trump received when he tested positive — those nifty monoclonal antibodies and all. Yet for years, Mr. Abbott has denied federal funds toward a state expansion of Medicaid, which could help many Texans get access to health care (and, polls show, has the support of a majority of residents).

Mr. Abbott’s announcement also took place against a battle over mask mandates for school districts in several Texas cities — my own, Houston, among them, as well as Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. The governor and his attorney general, Ken Paxton, banned mask mandates, but local leaders were defiant, and on Thursday night, the Texas State Supreme Court came down on the side of school districts trying to fight a spike in cases involving children.

Simultaneously, new census data shows how population shifts over the past decade in Texas, like other Sun Belt states, will strengthen big cities and their suburbs.

This fascinating coincidence made me wonder how far we are from open rebellion among many Texans. Mr. Abbott is reportedly setting the stage for a potential presidential run in 2024, but first, next year, he has to win election to a third term.

In his statement on the mask-mandate ban, he said the state should rely on “personal responsibility.” I agree with him. In the past few weeks, the dangers to Texans — most acutely from the Delta variant of the coronavirus — have increased exponentially under his leadership. He has made it abundantly clear, in his mishandling of recent calamities, that voters should exercise “personal responsibility” and find a better person to run their state.

I’m reminded of an old sign outside the Austin restaurant and local institution El Arroyo. A photo of the message made the rounds again on Twitter in response to the outrage many citizens felt with news of the governor’s illness. “Well, well, well,” it read, “if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.”

Mr. Abbott and his Republicans won’t go away without a fight — or tilting voting laws in their favor as much as possible. (Democrats and Republicans are evenly split in the state on approval of the governor, but Democrats have grown increasingly unhappy with the governor’s handling of the pandemic, with now over 80 percent expressing disapproval, up from 59 percent in April 2020.) Republicans can and probably will also stymie future efforts to make for a fair fight, thus keeping themselves in office unless a moderate Republican or any kind of Democrat can pull off a miracle.

With the return of some Democratic state lawmakers from their quorum-denying self-exile, Republicans in the Texas House will surely pass a sweeping voting bill that would undo last year’s expansion of ballot access during the pandemic in places like Houston, as well as empower partisan poll watchers.

Even so, the refusal of Democratic House members to roll over and play dead was performative in the best sense. Their protest made international news, which means that some people here might also realize that Republicans are bound and determined to take certain rights away.

There is also residual anger over the big freeze of February 2021, a reminder of which comes in the form of a monthly gas bill. Recent investigations — by The Texas Observer and The Texas Tribune — show just how many of the energy companies profited from soaring gas prices while ordinary Texans were shivering in their boots. The reports also raise the question of whether a gusher of campaign contributions (so far Mr. Abbott’s campaign alone received around $4.6 million) was a form of gratitude for what was seen as favorable treatment by the governor and some lawmakers.

And then, yes, there is the pandemic.

At about 46 percent, Texas — the nation’s second-largest state by population — has a relatively low vaccination rate. Some hospital I.C.U.s are overflowing with new Covid cases just as public schools are opening. Huzzahs to the elected officials in the state’s most populous cities and counties for fighting back in defiance of the governor.

These fights reflect the one that has been going on since Mr. Abbott took office: the war between the conservatives in the statehouse, supported by rural voters and some wealthy Republican donors, and the more liberal leaders in the cities and metro areas who reflect the will of much of their more diverse voters.

The new census figures show that the growth in Texas since 2010 is in the cities — fully 87 percent of new residents have opted for life in our biggest metropolitan areas, while rural communities remain stagnant, according to Steven Pedigo, the director of the Urban Lab at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, in a CNN report. Our four biggest cities now account for 68 percent of the state’s population, up from 64 percent in 2010.

It is possible to hope — because it always springs eternal — that what we are seeing is not just a series of isolated battles but the beginning of a sustained backlash, at least among energized Democrats, against the Republican bullies. That includes but is not limited to Mr. Abbott, who seems to have focused on his own political fortunes while telling a majority of Texans that they can just go hang.

[pidoop]

I kind of hate this framing. Even though I get it. And respect the people around me who feel that way. There’s so much anger and hopelessness created almost single-handedly by the Democratic party’s refusal to actually listen to their voter base in most key aspects. Even the few areas where they do make some progress, they move so slowly.

But I think this kind of messaging just creates more non-voters or people voting for a third party, which currently wouldn’t have the numbers to win a Presidential election, so we get a Republican president.

Democrats don’t care if Republicans win. That’s the whole problem we’re complaining about. The system is designed for Reps to move things toward the right, people get scared, vote for Dems, Dems make little if no movement back toward center, people get hopeless, don’t vote, Reps gain power, and the cycle continues.

They’re all funded by the same corporations and have pretty much the same goals, just dressed up in different clothes. Not voting for them rarely teaches them anything or sends a message. It just continues the cycle.

If losing taught them anything, they would’ve learned from Hilary’s loss in 2016 and put up Bernie in 2020, considering he was a very popular candidate. But THEY DON’T CARE.

What I like to ask people who strongly advocate against voting Democrat in presidential elections is, what do you think we can / should do outside of voting to move forward left wing / progressive policy / politics at any scale, large or small? Are you doing / advocating for any of those things now under Biden? If not, why not?

The way I see it, American presidential elections are like being told you have a car heading your direction to run you over. And the only thing you get to choose is the car’s speed. Of course we would all rather have the car stop, but some asshole fucked with the brakes. So we only get to choose if the car is doing 40mph or 80mph.

Both of these speeds would at least break your bones and most likely kill you. However, the car going 80 would get to you twice as fast, giving you less reaction time, less time to think about and try other ways to stop or slow down the car from the outside. Even if you found a good solution fast, you’d have half as long to build / carry it out.

Also, a lot of things that might stop or protect you from the car going 40 won’t work on a car doing 80. And if you manage to build a strong enough barrier in front of yourself for the car going 80 to crash into, the faster a car is going, the faster the debris that flies off, hurting passers by that would’ve been fine if the car was going 40. With twice as much time, you might even have time to help those other people find safety too. Or have been able to fix the fucking brakes somehow.

No self respecting leftist will tell you voting for Biden will fix anything. But it buys us more time and opportunities to work outside the system and bring about real change. And maybe even for real leftists to change the system from the inside, so that we’re not stuck minimizing damage forever.

Vote for leftists in primaries and local elections. Do everything you can to get leftists in the presidential ballots. And until you see one of them as a candidate in your presidential ballot, vote for the car to go at 40 instead of 80, IF THAT’S THE ONLY OPTION. And regardless of who wins, act like it’s the worst case scenario. Demonstrate, protest, riot, write letters to your elected officials, volunteer, get involved in local policy, go to town councils. There’s still a fucking car hurtling at us.

[tanadrin]

Honest question: how do you expect anyone to build a life that will be just fine irrespective of politics?Everything in my life which I’ve used to try and deal with shit has been destroyed by this pandemic, and the country is about to reelect the demagogue whose policy has been making that worse. This isn’t catastrophizing - the situation is a catastrophe. Is the solution just “move to a different country lol?” Because I imagine you know that’s actually rather hard.

if you’re American, and by “reelect the demagogue whose policy has been making that worse” you mean Trump

(if you’re not, and are referring to some other demagogue-led country, ignore this bit)

then I have to point out that 538 is giving Trump about a 12% chance right now, and he’s behind in both national and swing-state polls, and while 12% is not nothing, it is also only a 12% chance. multiply all pessimism contingent on a Trump victory by 12%, and all potential optimism contingent on a Biden victory by 88%. Remember that even a 2016-sized polling error does not give Trump a greater than 50% probability of winning; a Trump victory would require a Dewey-beats-Truman sized polling error, and while that’s happened before (when Truman beat Dewey, natch), it’s happened once before in the era of modern Presidential election polling. The odds right now of Democrats winning the Presidency, holding the House, and having a slim majority in the Senate are at about 70% (again, per recent 538 reporting), so catastrophism about the outcome of the American election is... well, catastrophism! Because the situation the US is facing is not actually catastrophe.

I know dirtbag left doomerism is popular on Twitter these days, but it’s, pardon my uncharitability, fucking stupid and just as divorced from reality as Fox News-poisoned right-wing conspiracism. On balance the likely outcome of this election is Democratic control of the legislative and executive branches, and--though this would be contingent on a strong Dem majority in the Senate, and popular appetite for it--there’s a nonzero chance of Dems packing SCOTUS and having control of all three branches of government. Small chance, to be sure, but far, far larger than it’s ever been in my lifetime.

(and if you think ACB being confirmed means a 99% chance that SCOTUS will steal the election... that is also stupid. the supreme court is only relevant in a handful of very specific circumstances where the election is nearly a tie, and those are not very likely circumstances! it would be very bad if we got Bush v Gore 2.0, yes; and being concerned about SCOTUS picks to avoid that kind of thing is reasonable; but letting fear of that scenario dominate your predictions for how the election will turn out would be extremely fucking stupid. I would put more money on the Dems packing the court in 2021 than I would on the court deciding the 2020 election. Not a lot, you understand; but I’d much sooner bet 50 euro on the former than the latter.)

(again, if you’re not American, ignore all the above; but AFAIK other likely demagogue led-countries you might be from, like Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Russia, the Philippines, and the UK, do not have upcoming elections.)

You build a life with meaning outside of politics the same way you build a life with meaning in general. Dan Savage (yeah yeah I know) talks about this w/r/t people who are lonely and have no short-term, or even long-term, prospects of a romantic relationship. You read, you have hobbies, you make friends, you refuse to let bitterness and rage consume you--and in this day and age, you get off social media, if that’s where your bitterness and rage is coming from--and you develop yourself as a well-rounded person so that if you do stumble into a scenario where a romantic relationship seems possible, you are an interesting and fun person to be in a relationship with, because you have a full and complete life outside that relationship.

So too with any other sphere of life. If thoughts of politics and anger against politicians is consuming your life, fucking stop consuming news about politics. It’s not doing you any good. By all means, vote in elections, even volunteer for political organizations, but also read, cultivate hobbies, make friends, get out of the house, get in shape, learn to bake--find out who you are in all areas of life besides the one making you miserable, in short. Yeah, coronavirus makes all this harder. It doesn’t make any of it impossible. I know it’s driving us all a little crazy--me included, and I’m a married Extremely Online homebody--but it won’t last forever. And you get to choose what to do with yourself in the meantime. You get to choose how consumed with resentment and frustration at the world you’re gonna be. You get to choose every day whether you’re going to let the fear that nothing is possible for you govern your behavior, or whether you’re going to try to accomplish something (however difficult, however small) despite the circumstances around you.

If you write 300 words a day--a short newspaper column--then in six or seven months you’ll have a novel. If you do 20 minutes of exercise a day, in six months you could be in the best shape of your life. If you spend an hour a day playing with Python, in six months you could be a fairly competent programmer. And so on and so forth. Mutatis mutandis, as far as the things you’re actually interested in, but the underlying point holds: just because the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket doesn’t mean you can’t build up your life in other areas. The ‘rona doesn’t stop you from having an online or socially-distanced book club, or from hanging out with friends outdoors, or from getting drunk on raid night with your WoW guild (A++ can recommend, btw).

And if you really can’t, if the anxiety or the anger or the worry or the sheer overwhelming weight of it all means you can’t even manage modest effort in the things you care about, you should assign a much greater likelihood to the possibility that your brain is broken, that your thoughts are lying to you (they do that sometimes!) and that your life might be greatly improved by some combination of anti-anxiety medication/antidepressants and talk therapy. Because God is dead, depressive realism is horseshit, and we have to make our own meaning in the world; and the human brain is, in fact, usually very good at that when it’s firing on all cylinders.

[foreverlogical]

Donald Trump’s descent into madness continues.

The latest manifestation of this is a report in The New York Times that the president is weighing appointing the conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who for a time worked on his legal team, to be special counsel to investigate imaginary claims of voter fraud.

As if that were not enough, we also learned that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by the president after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Friday meeting. Earlier in the week, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, floated the idea (which he had promoted before) that the president impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election in several closely contested states that voted against Trump. It appears that Flynn wants to turn them into literal battleground states.\

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is “just done with COVID,” a source identified as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable and he’s done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”

This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition—his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy—became lethal. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

“My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

In 30 days, Donald Trump will leave the presidency, with his efforts to mount a coup having failed. The encouraging news is that it never really had a chance of succeeding. Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.

But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.

”During the past four years, the right-wing ecosystem became more and more rabid. Many prominent evangelical supporters of the president are either obsequious, like Franklin Graham, or delusional, like Eric Metaxas, and they now peddle their delusions as being written by God. QAnon and the Proud Boys, Newsmax and One America News, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—all have been emboldened.

These worrisome trends began before Trump ran for office, and they won’t disappear after he leaves the presidency. Those who hope for a quick snapback will be disappointed. Still, having Trump out of office has to help. He’s going to find out that there’s no comparable bully pulpit. And the media, if they are wise, will cut off his oxygen, which is attention. They had no choice but to cover Trump’s provocations when he was president; when he’s an ex-president, that will change.

For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.Beyond that, and more fundamental than that, we have to remind ourselves that we are not powerless to shape the future; that much of what has been broken can be repaired; that though we are many, we can be one; and that fatalism and cynicism are unwarranted and corrosive.

There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.

”There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.

Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.

Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

[ausetkmt]

CNN: What could happen if an election denier is running elections

If you haven’t watched Dana Bash’s Sunday interview on CNN with Kari Lake, TV journalist turned Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, you should.

There’s only oneoutcome Lake said she would accept in November.

“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” she said.

That’s probably part campaign bravado, but also part the bizarre new reality in which we live, where candidates in the Donald Trump mold will never accept defeat.

Lake is one of many Republican candidates for key election-related positions who have pushed or embraced election denialism. CNN’s Daniel Dale has kept a list of candidates for secretary of state and governor. They espouse varying degrees of denialism, and some have even retreated to now accept President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

One of Dale’s reports includes this passage about Jim Marchant, the GOP candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, who has questioned an election he won:

Marchant unsuccessfully tried to get a court to order a re-vote of his unsuccessful 2020 congressional race, which he lost by more than 16,000 votes. He has been so consistent in questioning Nevada’s elections system, which his campaign has wrongly described as “fraudulent,” that he even raised doubts about his own victory in the Republican secretary of state primary this June – telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was “not really confident in the result” and that there “could have been anomalies.”

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten wrote recently about how election-denying secretary of state candidates are raising large amounts of money, raising the profile of these key election roles and bringing election skepticism to the mainstream.

There are also examples of GOP primary voters opting for the candidates who rejected Trump’s 2020 fantasy, including in Georgia.

But in Arizona, Lake is up for governor, and state Rep. Mark Finchem is the GOP nominee for secretary of state. Both still loudly question the 2020 results.

It’s worth considering what would happen if both won and then oversaw a tight presidential election in 2024.

In Arizona, the governor signs the certificate of ascertainment in presidential elections that verifies the appropriate electors represent the state at the counting of electoral votes.

In 2020, it was the Republican Doug Ducey who verified Biden’s victory in that certificate. The Arizona secretary of state who defended the 2020 results was a Democrat, Katie Hobbs, who is now Lake’s opponent for governor in November.

Elections have consequences, and the situation for future elections in Arizona will be very different depending on who wins next month.

I talked to Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice, about how an election-denying governor or secretary of state would or could disrupt an election.

Under the law, he said that couldn’t happen.

“Chief election officials aren’t allowed to ignore the will of the people and subvert the outcome of our elections, and we have laws in place to stop that from happening,” he told me over the phone. “But that doesn’t mean that they won’t try, and if they do, we’re in a place we’ve never really been before. I think it is troubling for our democracy that we even have to be having that conversation.”

There have been specific examples this year of local officials refusing to certify elections, most notably with rural Otero County in New Mexico, where the state Supreme Court ultimately stepped in and forced the issue. The local officials were skeptical of voting machines, and one of the officials, Couy Griffin, was removed from his position as a county commissioner in September by a state judge who cited Griffin’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Morales-Doyle argued that’s an example of the system working. The state’s secretary of state went to court and was able to get the county to certify the primary using a writ of mandamus, which is used to require officials to perform ministerial tasks.

“We do have a system of checks and balances and rule of law in the United States, and hopefully those systems will hold and ensure that election officials do carry out their duties,” he said.

And while the Brennan Center and other voting rights groups have raised the alarm about the Supreme Court’s recent decisions paring back federal voting rights protections, as well as state-level laws that make it more difficult to vote, the courts have so far been protectors of election outcomes.

“When it comes to simply failing to abide by the rule of law and fulfill our democratic values, the evidence so far is that we can count on the courts to play that role,” Morales-Doyle said.

John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted Trump’s 2020 effort to circumvent the Electoral College, even admitted the plan would lose at the Supreme Court. Read a CNN fact check of Eastman’s plan, including Eastman’s own admission it was illegal.

The Houseand the Senate are homing inon fixes to the law that dictates how Electoral College votes are counted and to make clear that governors are required to issue and transmit certificates of ascertainment according to state law.

If the governor fails to do so, bipartisan bills in the House and Senate lay out an expedited judicial track available only to presidential candidates. The idea is that courts would resolve anydisputes in advance of the counting of electoral votes.

They work differently in every state, and local jurisdictions are important along with state officials. Most poll workers are doing their best and want to see the system work.

But if the person at the top is a skeptic, “it’ll make it much harder for all those systems to operate and for the people who are acting in good faith within the system to do their jobs,” Morales-Doyle said.

Schouten has written multiple times this year about the new reality for poll workers, which includes security measures amidthreats and harassment and an exodus of experienced officials who did not seek reelection.

I’ll add one more thing Morales-Doyle said because he raised a valid point about the balance between being prepared for officials who might reject elections and allowing their insidious election denialism to fester and undermine the US system.

“The longer we have to deal with these threats, the larger they grow and the greater the threat becomes in the future,” he said. “But as of right now, it’s important to keep in mind that the few instances where we’ve seen people attempt this kind of thing, it has been shut down.”

[deathsmallcaps]

Please don’t let in person voting be your only option! Check out this website, and you should be able to find your mail in ballot options. If you know where you’ll be living in October and November, then you can fill out your form now and send it in!

If you’re unsure about your housing/address, you have 3 options

1. Have it sent to a trusted friend, who can then forward it to you. Pick a friend who will send it quickly/responds well to reminders. If possible, give them appropriate postage and an envelope in case they don’t have any.

2. Rent a PO Box. You can usually rent them for 6 month or one year stints. If you rented one as of writing this right now [April 2024], you would be covered into October if you chose the 6month option. If you remember to rent one in June, you’ll definitely be covered past the election date if you do the 6month option.

They do cost money but they aren’t anywhere as expensive as renting a house, etc. My local one is less than $90 a year. The post office can also forward your mail for a couple months, so if you do move/find permanent housing, you should be covered in that way. You should be able to go in and tell the clerk to forward the mail to your new address.

Post offices are often accessible and friendly, and I genuinely enjoy going to check my PO Box. To be fair, I live less than 2 blocks away from my post office, but I enjoyed it even when I lived further away.

3. Wait. If you, like many homeless people and/or students, won’t know your address until you’ve saved up your summer money/got student housing, it might not be until August/September that you find out your address. That’s fine! Do me a favor. Queue this post and @ yourself in your own reblog. That way, you’ll be reminded to apply! Just check your state or county’s deadline for application and set your reminder to before that date if possible.

Additionally,

you have to renew your mail-in ballot every year. Just because you applied last year doesn’t mean you’re covered this year. I was mistaken about that in 2021. But I did vote in my first ever presidential election via mail in ballot for 2020! I have also gotten my ballot via mail both 2022 and 2023, and will apply for it this year as well :).

You have the power! Use it!!! Love yall!

such a huge relief that hillary’s so ahead in the polls and trump has such a small chance of winning, right? WRONG. DO NOT GET APATHETIC OR COMFORTABLE. DO NOT DECIDE YOU DON’T NEED TO VOTE BECAUSE YOU’RE SURE HILLARY WILL WIN. the only way trump can win now is if so many people expected to vote for hillary don’t show up to the polls. because you BETTER believe ALL of his supporters will be at the polls.

brexit passed in the UK because young people grew apathetic because they were sure it wasn’t going to pass. and it did, because old racists and xenophobes showed up in DROVES to vote.

tl;dr: VOTE, PEOPLE. VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. IT MIGHT.