Who is still pissed off about hanging chads?
Yesterday somebody knocked on my front door. The person was campaigning for County Clerk, which I soon learned is responsible for the accuracy in the vote totals from Champaign County. This person pointed out that the current County Clerk is on the ballot for a different office and has endorsed somebody else for the County Clerk. You would think under the circumstances that would be grounds for recusal, but apparently not.
There has been much written about various attempts at voter suppression, invariably by the Republicans, plus the gerrymandering which gives the Republicans an unfair advantage, and of course the Citizen's United decision which means a huge amount of negative ads will be put into play by individuals, errr, corporations. Why do we take all that as a given and yet assume actual vote totals will be reported accurately? Let's note that now the Republicans control the vast majority of state governments. The process of voting itself is determined at that level.
This, of course, says nothing about the possibility of external hacking, nor of efforts to deter that. It seems that threat is real. How likely it is, I couldn't say. But should we be confident that it won't happen at all?
I'm writing this having just read Michelle Goldberg's latest column. She links to this prediction from FiveThityEight, that Democrats have a 5/7 chance of taking back the House. (Where have I heard predictions like that before?) Goldberg then does her analysis of what will likely happen in the House, should the Democrats retake control there - investigations, not impeachment. The investigations will include a real look into Trump's tax returns.
It's a nice thought, but certain people clearly don't want that outcome to happen. What steps will they go to so as to preserve the current Republican majority. And if there is cheating about reporting vote totals, but that is only uncovered after the new Congress has been seated, what then?
Earlier today, I read Paul Krugman's latest column, which argues that we could be turning into Hungary or Poland, and that will happen if the Republicans keep control of the House. What if we're already there?
Here is another piece, recently posted, that is "betting the house" (pun intended) on the election in November. Under the current circumstances, I really don't know why the election process itself is to be trusted.
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