If you are Brad Pascale, Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime cash cow. I know he uses the term “Death Star”, which emitted an impossible green combo ray, to describe the reelect Trump operation, but that just sounds better than “My Offshore Bank Accounts”.
It’s unclear whether money will play as pivotal a role in this election as compared to years past. The pandemic, the economic collapse and the civil unrest have delivered an unprecedented series of shocks that have diminished Trump’s standing in public opinion polls.
If you need to help people overcome the GOP-led Voter run-around help them do that. The GOP fears a level playing ground and they brag about voter suppression. To see your state’s voter registration requirements look here: https://www.vote.org/voter-registration-deadlines/
If you’re registered but haven’t voted for awhile some states are purging you from the rolls. Check with your County Auditor. Actually, if your state is purging names at all be sure yours wasn’t one of them!
Download and print copies of this Federal Voter Registration form, valid in all 50 states and all US Territories. If you’re a US Citizen you can help any other US Citizen register to vote. Instructions are on the form: https://vote.gov/files/federal-voter-registration_1-25-16_english.pdf
Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin allow absentee balloting with no explanation required. Be sure YOU can vote absebtee or mail-in if you have to.
Folks are getting it. My daughter is working with a group that formed spontaneously about a week and a half ago. Their main driver is a woman who lives in Long Beach, CA who had the idea of a “caravan4justice” to promote BLM. She enlisted a friend of my daughter, who enlisted her. By Thursday they had a team and their theme - promote voter registration!
Both my daughter and her friend went to a post office and talked them out of a stack of paper voter registration forms and the next day I was pulled in to help arrange a sound system and a few other techie things.
They had originally planned a caravan drive-through along a designated route, with about 20 cars honking, playing music, etc but were amazed to see that after just five days of word of mouth, they’d fill a parking lot with over 200 cars. The first two hours was working the crowd, helping folks fill out their forms and sharing the mic, they then decided that it was too many people for a single parade, so they decided instead to “flood the zone” and fan out across the town for a couple of hours of drive-through and “consciousness raising”.
It was a big hit. Huge numbers of people coming out into the street to give the salute, lots of positive feedback and cheers, they even had cops flashing their lights and giving the BLM salute! When they got to their final rallying point (the entrance to the Trump LA golf course) the cop in charge was incredibly supportive, telling them “they had a right to be there and it was his job to keep them safe”.
They’ve now decided to make this an on-going movement, with bi-weekly gatherings, a mailing list, promoting the idea to folks in other cities and more. Everyone agrees that turnout will be key in November, so that’s now their mission.
They are still working on infrastructure, so the website still needs an update from the weekend event, but for those looking to arrange something similar, their site be found here:
There’s also a gofundme, which I won’t post but can be found with a search at the gofundme.com site.
Again, the lesson they’re pushing is that it’s not enough to be mad, or even to show up at a protest. If change is to happen, folks need to focus on outcomes, and that means more of us have to show up at the polls and the votes have to be counted. Spread the word…
I’m cynical enough to believe that there might me Republicans who believe this might work, but in Reality World, they’re killing off their own supporters faster than they’re killing off those of us who, you know, stay home, wear masks, social distance and otherwise try to stay alive.
I still think it’s a case of “Never Ascribe to Malice, that Which Can be Explained by Stupidity” - and Dog are these people stupid…
Provisional ballots mean nothing. I’m sure Trump will curtail any money encouraging GOTV. The vote count is (a)pathetic over decades of American elections. Thus, Americans deserve what they get.
