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Election Day Countdown: Zero Day (Or Is It ‘0-day’?) [UPDATE-2]

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Polls will be closing soon, which means it’s time to start looking at the day’s problem spots.

This will be a rolling post with updates at the bottom of the post as the end of the voting day approaches.

I am making a pointed effort to follow different voices about the project outcome — by which I mean I am following mostly women and not mostly men who are struggling to break the horse race format of reporting elections.

You can check my coverage list here: Link to Rayne’s Election 2020 Coverage List

Some of these folks aren’t usually on the White House or the political beat; some are polling experts; others are voting rights attorneys or activists. I may add a couple experts on disinformation and influence operations depending on what pops up in my regular Twitter feed.

I’m also watching a scorecard prepared by Daniel Nichanian, a.k.a. @Taniel on Twitter. He’s tracking key down ballot races to see if they turn blue as well as critical ballot initiatives.

Do feel free to share your experience at the polls in comments.

~ ~ ~

6:10 PM ET — Updates will accumulate below this point. More to come.

In the meantime, this seems like a serious problem:

Contempt of court-type problem?

UPDATE-1 — 9:25 PM ET —

Took my kid and went to the polls to cast our vote minutes before the polls closed in downstate Michigan. Polling location racked up about 60% of the vote volume cast in 2008, which I suspect means that mail-in early voting was used heavily in my precinct. Polls have just now closed in western Upper Peninsula which is on Central Time; very annoying to see outlets making any claims about Michigan when polls were still open. We were only two of three people in the polling location, which is very different from 2008 when it was still very busy at the end of the day.

Some bad news so far: Mitch McConnell (KY), Liz Cheney (WY-at-large) and fucking morons Jim Jordan (OH-4) and Matt Gaetz (FL-1) have won re-election. Trump’s former doctor, goofy Ronny Jackson won TX-13, and Qanon nutter Marjorie Taylor Greene won GA-14. Trump has won Indiana (thank you, stupid internally oppressed white women), Tennessee, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Wyoming (not much of a surprise for these fairly red states).

Some good news: Mark Warner won re-election as did Cory Booker; Biden has won New Mexico, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, and New York.

I am far behind now trying to sort out the bigger stuff from the smaller stuff. There are some squirrelly polling outfits I don’t recall every seeing which are projecting wins/losses — can’t trust them as they may be part of “perception hacking.”

The big story right now is Florida. Something looks really hinky there, and it may have a lot to do with the mail which has yet to be processed. We won’t see hanging chads this time but undelivered mail-in ballots.

UPDATE-2 — 5:10 AM ET 04-NOV-2020 —

I made the mistake of shutting my eyes after 10:00 pm only to wonder if I woke up in the wrong timeline again.

Where we’re at as of 3:34 am:

Biden 238 electoral votes to Trump’s 213, with

The really grim fact: more Americans voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016, even after his murder of more than 230,000 Americans. We haven’t even finished counting all the votes yet this is true.

Kudos to the Washington Post for this headline which accurately describes Trump’s speech: Presidential election hangs in balance as Trump falsely asserts fraud and makes a claim of victory

Counting of votes has yet to be completed, in no small thanks to all the impediments placed on democratic process by the GOP at state level. But vote counting typically isn’t finished by dawn the morning after a presidential election; what’s different this time is the perceived narrow margin before the vote counting is completed.

The incomplete status of counting is NOT fraud. The incomplete status of counting also means a claim of victory is fallacious, a lie.

Fortunately there are Republicans who have rejected Trump’s fascistic claim, noted GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg the most important among them.

Biden’s campaign issued a rebuttal statement:

Status of the Senate is still open since some races have yet to be called. Susan Collins (R-ME) fell below 50% of the vote last I looked, which means the race may move to a runoff since Maine uses ranked-choice voting.

Counting is still underway in Wisconsin and yet to resume in Michigan.

Expect more fireworks at noon ET when Judge Emmett Sullivan addresses U.S. Postal Service’s failure to comply with his court’s order regarding a sweep of post offices including Miami for mailed-in ballots.

As for the moaning that our Constitution is a failure: it’s not the Constitution, it’s Americans, it’s states.

Like Mississippi which continues to suppress Black voters, refusing to allow mail-in or early voting especially during a pandemic, causing hours-long waits to vote.

Keep your pitchforks and torches on standby — we’re not yet western Belarus, though close. I’m going back to bed for a couple hours, hoping when I wake I’m back in a better timeline.

Election Day Countdown: 2 Days, 2 Much 2 Go

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Guess who was coughing all day yesterday, to the point I had a sore throat?

However I’m not coughing today, didn’t run a temperature, so no idea if this is allergies, my autoimmune disorder, or an extremely light case of COVID.

The men in my household aren’t showing any symptoms so far, knock on wood.

Can’t rule out symptoms may show up at any time or get worse, though. Another one of my kid’s co-workers tested positive as did two customers who had close proximity to them.

It’s a small cluster. A tiny clusterfuck all thanks to that tangerine asshat in the White House.

~ 3 ~

MAGAtroids are ramping up their terror attacks. Today they shut down the Garden State Parkway:

They also swamped the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge in New York City:

Trump supporters basically shut down two of the busiest highways in the New Jersey-New York area, and without advance notice or any permit. Thankfully no other terror attacks took place which might have required the intervention of state and federal law enforcement’s use of these roadways.

They also shut down Colorado state highway C-470 and northbound I-25, a federal highway:

And the media has once again failed to characterize this for what it is — terrorism designed to disrupt infrastructure with intent to interfere with normal operations including the conduct of the election.

This tweet nails it:

If the flags were black and white and covered with slogans in Arabic, Dari, or Pashto, perhaps the media would have a different perception of these events. But because the media is wired to see these as wholly political events and therefore expressions of free speech, they don’t call this terrorism.

No police showed up in either of these two states to force these “parades” to yield part of the roadway to regular traffic.

What exactly are police doing for public safety when, as in North Carolina, they spray teargas at and arrest participants of a march to get out the vote — including children and at least one journalist — because the police claim they were “blocking the roadway”? Yet New Jersey, New York, and Colorado didn’t use teargas or other irritants on participants intent on obstructing traffic.

One clue: note the race of the participants in these events.

~ 2 ~

Axios reported earlier that Trump will declare himself the winner if it looks like he’s leading in the polls before the end of the evening on Election Day. Trump has since denied this but he then whined about ballots coming in later (as they always have) and about governors of Democratic persuasion overseeing the conduct of the vote.

Which of course is total bullshit and another means to interfere with the vote. Polls won’t be closed in California, Alaska, Hawaii for at least 3-5 hours after polls in Easter Time Zone, and in Alaska in particular Trump is polling behind Biden.

NPR’s Dominic Montanaro tweeted a thread (click on the link) explaining the vote won’t be final before midnight Eastern:

Historian Michael Beschloss puts it more simply:

Anything Donald Trump says on November 3 before midnight Eastern should be seen as electioneering at best and interference with/suppression of voting at worst. Any media outlet reporting what Trump says without caveats is aiding and abetting him in a “perception hack” meant to undermine our faith in the democratic process.

It’s bad enough that the major broadcast television networks carried this Trumpian scumbucket who propelled this same “perception hack.” What a bloody shame we have to reply on The Lincoln Project to call out this ethics-free chump:

~ 1 ~

There are other signs Trump already knows this isn’t going to turn out well for him.

When we fire you, Trump, you’d best believe the eviction notice will be served and executed. We owe to the 231,000 Americans who died of COVID and the 3,000 Puerto Rican Americans who died from your deliberate neglect after Hurricane Maria to remove you, let alone the Americans who will die between now and your exit from the White House.

~ 0 ~

Thank you for voting if you’ve voted. Please help others over the next 48 hours to get out the vote. Make sure you touch base with friends and family to ensure they are prepared to vote if they haven’t already.

Election Day Countdown: 3 Days, 3 Things

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*cough-cough*

More on that later. It’s very late on Day 3, need to get through these pronto.

~ 3 ~

The tangerine hellbeast will have a total of four rallies in Michigan between Saturday morning and Election Day. I wish I had sufficient lack of self-preservation to go to one of these events and shout at him, “Get out of my state, you diseased cretin!!!” but no.

A pity the Trump campaign hasn’t taken the conservative Detroit News’ hint — both its endorsement of Biden and its front page today:


A key reason Trump may be in Michigan so often — since his polling has been consistently behind Biden between 5-7% for a couple months — is that Trumpist senate candidate John James is within MOE of incumbent Democrat Gary Peters.

DeVos family and Mitch McConnell’s PAC have dumped more than $10 million combined into this race because it’s closer than some of the incumbent Republicans’ races.

Trump doesn’t sound like he’s convinced he can win. He’s tired; he cut down his Friday night rally in Minnesota to 21 minutes, blaming the governor’s COVID crowd limitations.

He was phoning it in. Have to wonder how that will affect James’ chances if Trump can’t produce higher energy for his base in Michigan.

~ 2 ~

Another key reason Trump is making four trips to Michigan sure looks like attempted mass murder by COVID.

You know Team Trump knows about this trend of increased confirmed cases and deaths. You know they’re aware Michigan has had record case numbers since his 9/11 rally here.

Sure looks like malice aforethought. Add that to the damage to high volume sorting in Detroit’s U.S. Postal office and it’s a deliberate and deadly combination of voter suppression in this swing state he won by a mere ten thousand votes in 2016.

~ 1 ~

And one more key reason for showing up so often in Michigan is his incitement to violence. It’s already spawned at least one seditious conspiracy against Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer, a.k.a. “that woman in Michigan.” He trash talked about her during the last visits he’s made to this state.

Today he tweeted implicit support for an attack by Trump supporters on a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas. The attack showed up on a number of videos posted on Twitter:

This attack was encouraged by Donnie Jr. with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge, according to the Daily Beast:

“Hey Laredo, Don Jr. here. I heard you had an awesome turnout for the Trump Train,” Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, said in a video tweeted by Daily Caller contributor Kambree Kawahine Koa. “It would be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome… let’s show them how strong Texas still is as Trump country.”

The FBI is looking into this. Not holding my breath that they’ll get right on this.

~ 0 ~

One last adder to the above three things given today’s terroristic attack on the Biden-Harris bus and Biden: this country is on the verge of systemic violence. This tweet thread notes how coverage of the violence we’ve been seeing incited by Trump and his supporters is not accurately described to the public:

The media is playing it safe using the same techniques it used when describing torture by the Bush administration — as “enhanced interrogation” — and not attributing it to the inciter or perpetrators.

Even when it’s state-sanctioned violence against the media, it’s not described as bluntly as it should be. This tweet about police in Graham, NC launching an unprovoked attack with pepper spray on a GOTV march which had a permit is as blunt as it gets and it still doesn’t quite convey the level of threat:

We should expect U.S. media to report both incitement and attacks using the same terms they employ when this kind of violence happens in other countries.

If you’ve already voted, thank you. Please help others get to the polls.

And prepare for anything over the next four to five days.

Election Day Countdown: 6 Days

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Six days. Less than a week to Election Day.

If you haven’t yet voted and were planning on voting early/absentee, please make a plan which doesn’t rely on U.S. Mail especially if you live in a large city. There are too many reports of First Class mail taking longer than five days to arrive.

Judge Emmett Sullivan — same judge handling the Flynn case — seems a bit tetchy about the U.S. Postal Service handling of ballots:


Worth your time to read the highly-detailed order linked in the Politico article, particularly this bit about the U.S. Mail:

FURTHER ORDERED that by no later than 9:00 AM on October 29, 2020, Defendants shall distribute, in the same form and to the same individuals who were previously advised about the need to “ensure that completed ballots reach the appropriate election official by the state’s designated deadline,” a list of state-specific statutory ballot receipt deadlines, so that the USPS managers and employees can implement the Election Mail guidance that Defendants have recently issued. The parties shall confer and agree and substance of the list. …

You can bet there’s squealing and scrambling going on right now even as I type this at 4:00 a.m.

Will these suits against the USPS be the first cases the new Barrett-added SCOTUS hears if current Postmaster Louis DeJoy refuses to comply and contests Sullivan’s directive?

~ ~ ~

There’s another problem with the SCOTUS already, though this is the pre-Barrett/post-RBG version. Seems Justice Kavanaugh has demonstrated what a hack he is making absurd errors in an opinion on voter suppression:

One of his errors goes right to the problem with the U.S. Mail:

Mistake No. 5: No one thinks they can return their ballot by Election Day if they request it by Oct. 29.

Kavanaugh wrote: “No one thinks that voters who request absentee ballots as late as October 29 can both receive the ballots and mail them back in time to be received by election day.” He cites no support for this assumption, probably because it’s wrong. Many states explicitly allow voters to request absentee ballots even closer to Election Day and instruct them to mail their ballots back. A large number of voters do wait until the last minute to ask for a ballot, which is why a strict deadline disenfranchises so many people. In August, the Postal Service encouraged 46 states to change their deadlines, warning them that ballots requested and returned in accordance with state law might not make it back in time. The Postal Service would not have sent out this warning if “no one” thought the states’ existing deadlines were unrealistic. …

I know there’s been a lot of talk about rejiggering the formulation of the SCOTUS including expansion of the number of justices to ensure improved representation reflecting a center-left country.

But I think we need to have a chat about reformulation including corrections of the existing justices. This opinion by Kavanaugh is so shoddy Congress should consider impeaching and removing him under a Biden presidency. Because it’s ridiculous that Chief Justice John Roberts let this out of his court, Roberts needs to feel a little sting for this as well.

~ ~ ~

Trump’s super spreader campaign rally in Omaha, Nebraska was a disaster Tuesday night. A number of elderly attendees had to be taken by ambulance for treatment of hypothermia due to temperatures in the 20s and the distance from the rally site to the parking lot.

It’s bad enough Trump is making campaign stops in places which Trump won by double digits in 2016 — 25 points, to be more specific. But to do so at physical risk to voters who may not yet have cast a vote?

Utterly stupid.

The capper: the campaign is desperate not only for votes but money.

That’s one way to clean up that $421 million dollars of personal debt.

~ ~ ~

If you’ve already voted, thank you. Please help get other voters to the polls and make this election a massive blue tsunami — a wave so big they can’t steal this election.

The Strongbad Bite, Ack!: Kagan’s Neocon Hypocrisy

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[NB: Note the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Neoconservative Robert Kagan’s recent op-ed in the Washington Post — The Strongmen Strike Back — made me think of a classic episode of MST3K:

Pick one of Dave Ryder’s many names — Big McLargeHuge is my personal favorite — and then imagine Kagan’s op-ed as a cheesy, sweeping space opera. A production which the screenwriter and director took far too seriously, expecting the audience to treat it as if it were Oscar worthy.

Yes, authoritarians abound around the world. The U.S. has unfortunately called some of them allies though it shouldn’t cater to authoritarian leaders given its values based upon liberal democracy.

While fretting about the emergence of autocrats, Kagan is blind to his own role in the promulgation of authoritarianism. Has he forgotten neoconservatives’ insistence the U.S. launch the Iraq War, relying on increased nationalism and authoritarianism in response to 9/11? What blindness; what hypocrisy.

Far worse though, is Kagan’s difficulty facing mounting autocracy here at home. To say the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are responses to problems here while ignoring the white nationalist impulse behind them is shallow and uninformed.

— Sanders had the benefit of 20-plus years of anti-Clinton propaganda and eight years of anti-Obama racism greasing the way for him to carpetbag into the Democratic Party.
— Trump had more than 13 years of glitzy production effort by former General Electric property NBC to construct his BigBlond McStrongboss persona on top of his appeal to the racist element pervasive in white American culture.

Ignoring these factors combined with a feckless GOP field of also-rans is just plain stupid.

Not to mention the role of the GOP-majority Congress’ strategy of stifling all rational legislation after they took the reins in 2010.

What’s particularly galling in Kagan’s overlong and droning piece whining about the rise of authoritarian strongmen is that he doesn’t mention Putin by name at all with regard to free and open elections and voting whether in Russia or in the U.S. Not once. Zero. Nada.

Not as a killer of Russian journalists. Not as an assassin of Russian dissidents and political opponents. Not even as the propagandistic image created we might call Punch BigSixPack.

He makes rather thin observations about Putin’s autocratic regime, but makes no mention of how this particular strongman interfered with the very thing Kagan wants us to be believe he is defending — our liberal democracy.

No acknowledgment at all that this particular strongman made a concerted effort not only to interfere with our democratic processes but to seat a kleptoautocrat as our nation’s leader.

Further, Kagan fails to mention the steady attack by the Republican Party at state and national level on our voting rights and infrastructure. The GOP has systematically attacked the foundation of the United States’ liberal democracy in which every citizen possesses the right to vote, by way of suppressive voter identification laws to implementation of hackable and inauditable electronic voting machines, to failure to renew the Voting Rights Act and denying voters at the polls by way of fake software check systems.

Yes, fake — when a system does exactly the opposite of what it is allegedly designed to do as in the case of Crosscheck, it’s fake. And the GOP pushed its use across the country, especially where minority citizens lived in greater concentrations.

And none of this was Robert Kagan’s concern when bemoaning the alleged decline of liberal democracy.

But he’s a historian and he wrote looking at world history, one might say. As if history hasn’t also informed us about blind spots in ideology or the possibility historians have their own hidden agendas.

This bit is egregious:

…The world’s autocracies, even the “friendly” ones, are acquiring the new methods and technologies pioneered by Russia and China. And, as they do, they become part of the global surveillance-state network. They are also enhancing the power and reach of China and Russia, who by providing the technology and expertise to operate the mechanisms of social control are gaining access to this ever-expanding pool of data on everyone on the planet. …

The only attribution he makes to the origin of the digital panopticon is a link in that paragraph to a January 17 article in WaPo, How U.S. surveillance technology is propping up authoritarian regimes. Yes, us, the U.S., we are the progenitor of the ubiquitous surveillance state — but not only because of intelligence and defense technology. Our internet platforms offering search tools and social media provide the base on which surveillance thrives.

Kagan never calls out these privately-owned companies, from Facebook to Google, though these companies also played a role in Russia’s interference with our elections. Their role is purely incidental, accidental, while Kagan holds China up as an example of social surveillance ubiquity:

Developments in China offer the clearest glimpse of the future. Through the domination of cyberspace, the control of social media, the collection and use of Big Data and artificial intelligence, the government in Beijing has created a more sophisticated, all-encompassing and efficient means of control over its people than Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler or even George Orwell could have imagined. What can be done through social media and through the employment of artificial intelligence transcends even the effective propaganda methods of the Nazis and the Soviet communists. At least with old-fashioned propaganda, you knew where the message was coming from and who was delivering it. Today, people’s minds are shaped by political forces harnessing information technologies and algorithms of which they are not aware and delivering messages through their Facebook pages, their Twitter accounts and their Google searches.

What a lack of insight and imagination. Kagan wants us to look abroad to condemn authoritarianism, gear up our foreign policy with defense against ‘strongmen’ in mind, while failing to live our values here at home on an individual, collective, society-wide basis. The U.S. can’t be a legitimate democratic leader when it not only blindly spawns surveillance-as-an-incidental-product, but when creating new forms of old suppressions.

For example:

— North Dakota’s GOP-led state legislature demanded the Sioux acquire physical street addresses before they could vote during the midterm election year;
— Florida’s Republican legislators submitted a proposal to deny voting rights to former convicts if they have not paid all their fines and fees, constituting a poll tax on former felons after voters chose to restore rights after imprisonment;
— Georgia’s secretary of state (now governor) refused to recuse himself while running for governor after having conducted racially-biased voter roll purges;
— Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to take up bill H.R. 1 after it passed the House. The bill bolstered voting rights and improved accountability by candidates and incumbents to voters.

If we truly wanted to promote liberal democracy abroad, we need to practice it here at home — put on our own oxygen mask before helping others.

One person who advocated for an improved democracy here was John Dingell. In one of his last op-eds he called for

— the abolishment of the Senate, which dilutes the votes of individuals in populous states;
— automatic and comprehensive voter registration at age 18, to encourage full participation of citizens in voting;
— protection of the press because an electorate can’t make informed decisions without free and open access to information;
— elimination of money from campaigns as it has a corrupt influence on candidates and unduly shapes opinions of the electorate.

Do read Dingell’s op-ed because he expanded upon each of these points I have only summarized. He did far more to encourage liberal democracy here in the U.S. in that one instructive essay as BigJohn TwitterDean than Kagan did in his space opera-ish piece hyping the Autocrat McStrongbads abroad.

This is an open thread.

Mid-Terms: We’re All Out of Bubblegum

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Finally. The day for which we’ve been waiting nearly two long years has arrived. We’re put to the test: who among us can see the threat and face it head on instead of hiding from reality?
Thanks much to those of you who’ve already voted, whether in early voting, absentee ballots, or at the polls this morning. You’ve passed the basic test of democracy.

Thanks in advance to those of you who will vote later today. Make sure you leave ample time to get to the polls. Be prepared to wait unless you’re one of the fortunate people who live in white GOP neighborhoods where there never seem to be too few booths or difficulty with polling locations. Do your homework about your ballot before you arrive at the polls.

Be prepared for bullshit, too, like Trumpsters’ barking dogs or ominous Border Patrol hovering around the neighborhood in El Paso conducting an oddly-timed crowd control exercise. Just ignore them and carry on. Stay in line until you’ve voted — the polls don’t stop until the last voter already in line at the time the polls close.

Check ACLU Voter website and enter your address for when to vote, where to vote, how incumbents rank on civil rights issues, and what key races are on your local ballot.

Speaking of which, there have been reports of polling locations “moved” without adequate advance notice — like California House district CA-22, where Devin Nunes defends his seat against candidate Andrew Janz. In this particular case the problem was the CA secretary of state’s website and appears to be fixed. Do allow extra time for hiccups like this. Contact your state’s secretary of state’s office to confirm your poll location if you have any doubts.

Know in advance what to do if poll workers say your name does not appear on the voter rolls, your voter registration is incomplete or not updated, or you’d asked for an absentee ballot but appeared at the polls instead — ask for a provisional or affidavit ballot to cast a vote. Visit the Brennan Center at this link for more information about what to do if you have problems at the polls.

If you experience any difficulty at the polls, contact Election Protection at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) and ask for assistance. Take these numbers with you and help others who may experience problems but need help with language:

Spanish speakers: 888-VE-Y-VOTA
Asian languages: 888-API-VOTE
Arabic speakers: 844-YALLA-US
American Sign Language video call number: 301-818-8683

Or text OUR VOTE to 97779 for assistance.

If you’ve already voted but still feel up to helping GOTV, visit BuildTheWave.org and volunteer to text voters today. See Nate Lerner’s tweet for an overview.

If you want to help voters who are having problems at the polls, you can donate to the Lawyers’ Committee — they are the legal folks volunteering to answer phones, record complaints,  and assist voters today.

Thanks for kicking ass and voting today. Treat this as an open thread with emphasis on election day news.

Mid-Terms: Planning is Everything

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“I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

With Eisenhower’s sage words in mind, what are you planning for tomorrow’s mid-term elections? If you haven’t voted yet, what will you do to ensure you cast your vote? Don’t have just one plan — the car breaks down, the babysitter gets sick, the weather turns crappy, the dog runs away, pick whatever minor emergency you can imagine because shit happens. Have a Plan A and then a Plan B and a Plan C in place in order to vote.

I’m lucky because I can very nearly crawl to my polling place. I might have to dodge cars on a busy state highway but it’s so close I have no excuse not to vote even if there was a sudden and unexpected blizzard tomorrow.

Do you have kids? Can they manage if you take them to the polling place with you, or do you need a sitter or voting tag team? Can someone wait in the car and play games with the kids while you take turns voting? Do you have a “busy box” at the ready filled with smallish toys or crafts or books to keep youngsters occupied during a wait? I always had one of these in my car, used to put McDonald’s Happy Meal toys in it along with a small box of crayons and tiny boxes of LEGOs — they were perfect for waiting in restaurants let alone waiting in long lines.

What about school-age kids — will someone else pick them up or watch them after school, or can they go to the polls with you? I always took mine until they were old enough to stay at home; I wanted them to see that voting was a regular, ordinary thing people should do and that it was easy. It might be a different story for folks who live where lines are long and tedious, though.

Will your pets keep another hour or more if you need to wait in line that long? Can a neighbor walk/feed/water them for you? Can you offer to watch your neighbors’ kids or pets? That’s what I’ll be doing for a poll worker tomorrow, caring for an elderly pet which can’t be left alone. It’s a small price to ensure democracy works here in my backyard.

How about family in eldercare and any special needs folks? Will they be okay while you take the time to vote?

Yeah, yeah, you’ve got it all covered, you say. Great. Some people will have difficulty tomorrow; we’ve all heard and read myriad stories about voter suppression. If you’re all set, can you fight back against suppression and help someone else who needs a ride to the polls? Call your local political party office and ask if they need help providing rides. You could make a critical difference in places like Calvert County, Maryland, where GOP commissioners attempted to shut down public transportation for the day. Who knows what other “emergencies” might cause transportation problems for voters?

Can you offer water to people who have to stand in line in the heat to vote? What about calling in a pizza at Pizza to the Polls if you learn of a long line near you?

And what about your own voter information — your polling place, what time it opens and closes, what’s on the ballot? Have you confirmed those with your Secretary of State’s or county clerk’s office? Do NOT trust random phone calls or text messages to tell you where to vote. I’ve already gotten a bad phone call today claiming political party affiliation telling me my polling location is in another town and giving me the wrong candidates’ names. There will be a lot of these kind of monkeyshines and hoaxes over the next 24 hours. Be skeptical and make sure your family and friends are likewise savvy about their polling place and ballot.

AND TELL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS NOT TO BLINDLY TRUST FACEBOOK, TWITTER, OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ABOUT THE POLLS. Just like that bad phone call I got, there will be bad posts online, many with disinformation and misinformation about poll opening and closing times, many with information intended to suppress voter turnout.

Media reports about busy polling places and long lines worked to suppress Remain voters during the Brexit referendum. Ignore the horse race type election news and simply commit to voting and supporting other voters.

Still want election news but don’t want to feed personal information to suspect advertisers? Try Firefox’s Election Bundle if you haven’t already.

DailyKos Elections has a handy colored map showing poll closing times (all noted in Eastern time zone). Check their site for election news and resources, too.

Ballotpedia also has links to poll closing times — you can look yours up if you haven’t already checked with your Secretary of State’s or county clerk’s office.

Whatever you do, do NOT do this. We’ll regret it if you do.

No manicure will fix that planning failure.

Treat this as an open thread with emphasis on election-related content.

Three Things: Still Active Measures

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[Note the byline. This post contains some speculative content. / ~Rayne]

Whether counter-arguments or conspiracy theories, it’s interesting how certain narratives are pushed when tensions rise. But are they really theories or conditioning? And if conditioning, could other media infrastructure changes create more successful conditioning?

~ 3 ~

In an interview with Fox News post-Helsinki summit, Vladmir Putin made a point of blaming the Democratic Party for “manipulations of their party.”

…“The idea was about hacking an email account of a Democratic candidate. Was it some rigging of facts? Was it some forgery of facts? That’s the important thing that I am trying to — point that I’m trying to make. Was this — any false information planted? No. It wasn’t.”

The hackers, he said, entered “a certain email account and there was information about manipulations conducted within the Democratic Party to incline the process in favor of one candidate.” …

Have to give Putin props for sticking with a game plan — increase friction within the American left and fragment Democratic Party support to the benefit of Trump and the Republican Party at the polls and ultimately Putin himself if sanctions are lifted. Christopher Steele indicated in the Trump-Russia dossier that the Kremlin was using active measures to this effect in 2016 to widen the divide between Sanders and Clinton supporters; apparently left-splitting active measures continue.

But this is only part of an attack on the Democratic Party; another narrative undermines both the DNC and the FBI by questioning the investigation into the DNC’s hacking. Why didn’t the FBI take possession of the server itself rather than settle for an image of the system? A key technical reason is that any RAM-resident malware used by hackers will disappear into the ether if the machine is turned off; other digital footprints found only in RAM memory would likewise disappear. “The server” isn’t one machine with a single hard drive, either, but 140 devices — some of which were cloud-based. Not exactly something the FBI can power down and take back to a forensic lab with ease, especially during the hottest part of a campaign season.

But these points are never effectively made as a counter narrative, though some have tried with explainers, and certainly not featured in broadcast or cable news programs. The doubt is left to hang in the public’s consciousness, conditioning them to question FBI’s competence and the validity of their investigative work.

If Putin is still using active measures to divide Democratic Party voters, is it possible this narrative about the hacked DNC server is also an ongoing active measure? What if the active measure isn’t meant to undermine the FBI by questioning its actions? What if instead the lingering doubt is intended to shape future investigations into hacked materials which may also rely on server images rather than physical possession of the hardware? What if this active measure is pre-crime, intended to tamper with future evidence collection?

~ 2 ~

I’d begun drafting this post more than a week ago, but came to a halt when FCC chair Ajit Pai did something surprisingly uncorrupt by putting the brakes on the Sinclair-Tribune merger.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is a propaganda outlet masquerading as a broadcast media company. The mandatory airing of Boris Epsteyn’s program across all Sinclair stations offers evidence of Sinclair’s true raison d’etre; Epsteyn is a Russian-born former GOP political strategist who has been responsible for messaging in both the McCain-Palin campaign and the Trump administration, including the egregious 2017 Holocaust Remembrance Day statement which omitted any mention of Jews. The mandatory statement Sinclair management forced its TV stations to air earlier this year about “fake news” is yet another. The forced ubiquity and uniformity of messaging is a new element at Sinclair, which already had a history of right-wing messaging including the attempt to run a Kerry-bashing political movie to “swiftboat” the candidate just before the 2004 elections.

Sinclair and Tribune Media announced a proposed acquisition deal last May. If approved, the completed acquisition would give Sinclair access to 72% of U.S. homes — an insanely large percentage of the local broadcast TV market effectively creating a monopoly. There was bipartisan Congressional pushback about this deal because of this perceived potential monopoly.

FCC’s Ajit Pai wanted to relax regulations covering UHF stations — they would be counted as less than a full VHF station and therefore appear to reduce ownership of marketshare. Democrats protested this move as it offered Sinclair unfavorable advantage when evaluating stations it would acquire or be forced to sell during its Tribune acquisition.

Fortunately, Pai had “serious concerns” about the Sinclair-Tribune deal:

We have no idea to which administrative judge this deal may be handed, let alone their sentiments on media consolidation. We don’t know if this judge might be Trump-friendly and rule in favor of Sinclair, taking this horror off Ajit Pai’s back — which might be the real reason Pai punted after his egregious handling of net neutrality and the pummeling he’s received for it, including the hacking of the FCC’s comments leading up to his decision to end Obama-era net neutrality regulations and subsequent “misleading” statements to the media about the hack. New York State is currently investigating misuse of NY residents’ identities in the hack; one might wonder if Pai is worried about any personal exposure arising from this investigation.

BUT WAIT…the reason I started this post began not in New York but in the UK, after reading that Remain turnout may have been suppressed by news reports about “travel chaos,” bad weather, and long lines at the polls. Had the traditional media played a role in shaping turnout with its reporting?

I went looking for similar reports in the U.S. — and yes, news reports of long lines may have discouraged hundreds of thousands of voters in Florida in 2012. This wasn’t the only location with such reports in the U.S. during the last three general elections; minority voters are also far more likely to experience these waits than voters in majority white areas.

Probabilistic reports about a candidate’s win/loss may also suppress turnout, according to a Pew Research study.

Think about low-income voters who can’t afford cable TV or broadband internet, or live in a rural location where cable TV and broadband internet isn’t available. What news source are they likely to rely upon for news about candidates and voting, especially local polling places?

Hello, local broadcast network television station.

Imagine how voter turnout could be manipulated with reports of long lines and not-quite-accurate probabilistic reports about candidates and initiatives.

Imagine how a nationwide vote could be manipulated by a mandatory company-wide series of reports across a system of broadcast TV stations accessing 72% of U.S. homes.

How else might a media company with monopolistic access to American households condition the public’s response to issues?

~ 1 ~

There was all kinds of hullabaloo about the intersection of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, his son Justin, and Justin’s employment at Deutsche Bank at the same time DB extended financing to Donald Trump. It looks bad on the face of it.

And of course one prominent defense-cum-fact-check portrays Justin’s relationship to DB’s loans to Trump as merely administrative:

The extent to which Kennedy worked with Trump on this loan, or possibly on other Deutsche Bank matters, is unclear. “In that role, as the trader, he would have no contact with Trump … unless Eric [Schwartz] was trying to get Justin in front of Trump for schmoozing reasons,” Offit said, adding that he had recently spoken with former colleagues at the bank about Kennedy’s work.

Seems odd there has been little note made of Jared Kushner’s relationship with LNR Partners LLC — a company which Manta says has only 17 employees — and its subsidiary LNR Property which financed the Kushner 666 Fifth Avenue property in 2012. There was a report in Medium and another on DailyKos but little note made in mainstream news media.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that along with his business partner, Justin Kennedy was named 26th on the 50 Most Important People in Commercial Real Estate Finance in 2013 by the Commercial Observer — a publication of Observer Media, then owned by Jared Kushner.

I wonder what Justin’s rank was on this list while he worked at Deutsche Bank (also with current business partner Toby Cobb).

How odd this deal and the relationship wasn’t defended. I guess it’s just coincidence all the amphibians and reptiles know each other well in the swamp.

~ 0 ~

Let’s not forget:

587 Puerto Rican homes still don’t have electricity.

All asylum seeking families haven’t been reunited. Children may still be in danger due to poor care and lack of adequate tracking. As of yesterday only 364 children of more than 2500 torn from their families were reunited.

Treat this as an open thread.

It’s Not the Economy, Stupid

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Despite Bill Clinton’s famous catchphrase that he rode to two terms in the White House, and despite its echo in the 2016 campaign when Trump voters were described as acting out of “economic anxiety”, politics in the United States in my lifetime comes down, first and foremost, to racism. Yes, in Trump’s case and for most Republicans in office, there is a hefty dose of misogyny mixed in, but the animus against those who are not old, rich, white males unites their hatred.

Russia affected the 2016 contest. Clearly. But one of their primary tools was to stoke racial animus. Another huge impact on the actual outcome of the election was the outright suppression of minority votes by Republicans. It now appears that they may well have tipped the Wisconsin vote through suppression. And all those millions of votes for Trump, in the end, amount to nothing more than a huge endorsement of his outright racism. In the end, they came out on top with a little help from Republican policies expressly developed to prevent minorities from voting.

Trump is America’s racism unmasked and he would not be President if there weren’t a huge racist component to American culture today. The primary home for that racism is the Republican party.

The last few days have shown Trump revealing both his deep-seated racism and his cynical understanding that virtually his only support now is rooted in America’s racism. He tried his best to make his response to NFL protests be about the flag and patriotism. But that is most definitely NOT what Colin Kaepernick was protesting when he started this movement in August of 2016:

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has willingly immersed himself into controversy by refusing to stand for the playing of the national anthem in protest of what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States.

His latest refusal to stand for the anthem — he has done this in at least one other preseason game — came before the 49ers’ preseason loss to Green Bay at Levi’s Stadium on Friday night.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Making matters even worse, NFL teams and even billionaire NFL owners–the very parties responsible for Kaepernick still not being on a roster despite abysmal quarterback play on several teams–came out with what some folks saw as admirable statements and actions in response to Trump calling for owners to “fire the sons of bitches” who kneel during the national anthem. The best response to that development came from Shannon Sharpe. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the entire statement, it is a thing of beauty and something that every American needs to hear:

So what are we to do?

First, those of us who carry the advantage of being old, white males who are at least comfortable if not rich must speak up every time there is an instance of racial injustice. Especially at the local level, when the police treat minorities without respect, make it known that this will not stand. Support larger groups that are working to promote racial justice.

But perhaps it is also worth taking look at our own lives. What aspects of our own lives help to perpetuate racial injustice? Even simple actions can accumulate. The next time you reconcile a credit card statement, take a look at your choices. Do you only eat at faceless chain restaurants? When was the last time you had a meal at a locally owned restaurant with a minority owner? Those are likely some of the best eating establishments in your town if you take the time to look around and try some new cuisines.

How about schools? Do you send your kids to private schools, most of which have been established to get around integration? Worse yet, do you send them to charter schools, which are set up expressly to take money away from public schools?

How about your place of worship? Is it integrated? Does it have any activities or programs aimed at racial justice?

One small action that I’ve decided to take is that I won’t watch another down of NFL football until Colin Kaepernick has been signed by a team.

Trump is the poster child for American racism, but we could all benefit from spending a little time thinking about our own roles both in how he came to be President and what we can do to make sure his sort never gets there again.

Changing Voters to New Precincts With Poor Notification: New Vote Suppression Tactic in Florida?

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This is the mailer in which my new voter ID card arrived. Nowhere does it point out that I have been changed from one precinct to another so that I vote at a new site.

Today is primary day in Florida. It is being held on the earliest date in the past 40 years since Florida is hosting the Republican National Convention later this month. While there has been much attention paid to Rick Scott’s infamous voter purge that has prompted legal action from the Justice Department, today I encountered a much more insidious situation that could lead to many more people not voting in November.

I have resided at my current address since 2004 and have voted at a wonderful little country church whose building dates back to 1886 (there is music on autoplay at this link). But when my wife and I stopped by to vote on our way to lunch today, we got quite a surprise. The poll workers could not find either one of us on the voter list. After we joked a bit about being included in the purge because of my left wing blogging, the clerk picked up the phone to speak with the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office to seek an answer for us. While she was still on the phone seeking information, another voter who came in after us also found that he was not listed on the voter roll.

It turns out that we have been switched to another polling place that is only a few blocks away from where we have voted for the past eight years. In order to drive from our house to our new polling place, we must drive past the old one. The election workers insisted that voters who were moved from one precinct to another were informed, but neither my wife nor I could recall seeing any such notification.

We dutifully went to the new polling place and voted. When I got back from lunch, I went through the spots in our house where mail might have accumulated and found the “notification” that had been sent. From the photo above, it is very easy to see how these notifications (there was one for each of the three registered voters in our household) had been set aside for holding since on first glance it looks only like a standard form for ordering an absentee ballot. Our travel plans did not call for us to be away today, so these forms had been set aside in case our plans changed.

Opening my mailer today, I found that the “Voter Information Card” referenced on the outside of the mailer was actually a new version of what I call my voter registration card. Nowhere on this mailer, either on the outside or inside, does it mention for voters to look carefully to determine whether their precincts have changed. My wife and I inexplicably have been moved from precinct 18 to precinct 58 and the only way to know that is to look at the small entry on the Voter Information Card.

Because I have a car and I don’t work on a time clock, I was able to work my way through this mix-up with only a few minutes lost and minor aggravation. Well, I also did stop to fill out a satisfaction survey to let the Supervisor of Elections know that I felt they handled this transition very poorly. It also helped that I did this during the low-turnout primary rather than November’s general election.

How many people will be disenfranchised in Florida this November because their precincts have changed? How will people who rely on bus transportation to their polling places deal with such a change? Will they have time to go to a new site if they are working on Election Day? The early voting period was shortened from two weeks to eight days this year in another move by Florida Republicans to make it harder for working people to vote and is another factor in today’s expected low turnout.

Oh, and just in case you clicked on the link to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections, their link for “Information on Polling Place Changes” is not about people moving from one precinct to another. It is about changes to the voting sites themselves.

Update: Oh my. Look what I missed in the local paper while I was on vacation last week. The article bears the headline “Redrawn precincts could create confusion, groups say” and reads in part:

Leaders of the local NAACP and other organizations said Wednesday that new voting precincts could lead to confusion on election day and urged residents to learn their new polling place or to cast ballots early. Read more →