With all of the artificial controversy over mail-in ballots created by Trump, millions of Americans have to worry that their votes may not be counted in the election now only six weeks away.
I'm one of them.
Th facts: There has never been any evidence of systematic fraud involving ballots mailed in by voters. What there are, naturally, are occasional cases of human error, which is what happened to me.
My current address is the third I've had this year, and it is one of those four-digit street numbers that can easily be transposed when somebody is in a hurry. That's exactly what occurred on the way from the county clerk's office to me. The letter "9" became a "7" while an actual "7" became a "9." I got the confirmation of my registration courtesy of a neighbor who figured out the error.
In my case, when it comes to the presidential election, it really doesn't matter, because the electoral votes from the state I reside in will be cast for Joe Biden -- that is a foregone conclusion. But I will be disappointed if my ballot does not show up in what will undoubtably be a massive popular majority rejecting Trump across this nation.
That's right. Trump will lose the popular vote -- that is another foregone conclusion. Ultimately, from all of the polling I can locate so far, the Electoral College appears to be going Biden's way too, but by the time that all gets sorted out, and the mailed ballots counted, all sorts of damage is likely to have been done to American democracy.
Do I exaggerate? Hardly. Trump has made it clear he intends to do everything within his power -- legal or illegal, ethical or unethical -- to secure his re-election. His current obsession is to appoint to the Supreme Court a justice who will help him steal the election.
Americans of all persuasions have two stark choices and only two: We can sit by passively and let this criminal undermine our constitutional freedoms, or we can speak out, rise up, and rebel if it comes to that.
We can speak, we can write, we can sing, we can walk, we can march and we can organize a rebellion against the tyrant if need be. We can even go beyond that when the time comes. Perhaps for some this is a difficult decision, but not for me.
I already know which side I'm on. Do you?
* Under a lawless Trump, our system of checks and balances is being destroyed (WashPo)
* House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday left open the possibility of using the impeachment process to prevent the Senate from confirming a new Supreme Court associate justice in the next few months. [HuffPost]
* In Colorado, six protesters, including organizers of demonstrations over the killing of Black 23-year-old Elijah McClain in Aurora, could face years in prison over what critics say are trumped-up charges representing an attack on the Black Lives Matter movement. McClain died in 2019 when police used a stranglehold to arrest him and paramedics injected him with an excessive dose of a powerful sedative. [AP]
* Trump's Ohio suburb slide signals peril in industrial north (AP)
* New York City is one of three places that "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities," leading to its designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction," the Justice Department said Monday. (Portland, OR and Seattle are the other two. (NBC)
* House, Senate on collision course over government funding as shutdown looms in nine days (WashPo)
* Denial and Defiance: Trump and His Base Downplay the Virus Ahead of the Election -- With resistance to face masks and scorn for science, President Trump and a sizable number of his supporters are pushing an alternate reality minimizing a tragedy that has killed almost 200,000 Americans. (NYT)
***
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
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