Donald Trumpās campaign strategist for his 2016 election win says: āI believe we will have a national emergency declared by late August,ā ahead of the Congressional midterm elections due on November 3. āYou will have enough evidence by mid-August to show that we have a massive problemā of election fraud, he tells me in an interview. Trumpās televised address to the nation on Thursday last week was the beginning of the process, he says.
The president declassified documents, which he claimed show āshocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructureā revealed by the 2020 election.
These had been hidden, even from him, by a ādeep stateā conspiracy of US intelligence services, he posited.
Trump demanded that the Congress pass a bill called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act. The bill stipulates that all voters produce a passport or birth certificate to be eligible to vote. Democrats denounce it as an effort at mass disenfranchisement. The Brennan Centre for Justice at New York University estimates that it could block 21 million Americans from the ballot box.
Under the US Constitution, itās the states, not the federal government, that run elections. The SAVE Act would force state governments to hand voter roll information to Washington.
Trump sent his Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, out the following morning to issue a threat to state officials: they could face prison time unless they followed the administrationās orders to remove non-citizens from rolls.
Thatās remarkably disingenuous when some elections are literally won and lost by less than a few votes.
Every vote matters. Just because you vote for someone or a party that doesnāt win doesnāt mean your vote is wasted. More people who might want to vote for that party donāt because āWell, they only got 5% of the vote, so why botherā might see the next election that same party get 9% of the vote. Then 14%. Suddenly thereās more people voting for that party that will draw in more people to vote.
Every vote might not make a huge difference today, but it might be a part of a huge difference in 10 years.
So shut the fuck up and vote.
I meant that there are swing states where votes really count, and safe states (for either party) where a protest vote is easier to justify.