by Kathie MM & Pat Daniel
Get the message? If you haven’t done it yet: vote now! In person. or by ballot box. No later than Tuesday. You count! We all count!
Tag: voting rights
Cartoon: What Trump wants
by Joe Kandra, Pat Daniel, Kathie Malley-Morrison
Voting in 2020 is at risk. If you value freedom and democracy, act now, while you still can.
Starting gate question: Are you registered to vote?
Even if you think you’re registered, double check–things may not be what you assume. For example,
1. Voter rolls have been and are still being purged in many states; see here or here .
2. If you moved recently, your polling place is likely to have changed and you may need to register again in your current community. See here and here .
3. If you are not registered yet, get a move on. Deadlines are rapidly approaching for voter registration. Check them out in your state here and now and do it.
Followup question: Do you know how to outfox voter suppression efforts by the power mongers?
As you may have heard, in order to suppress voting by people who aren’t part of the current power structure–particularly poor people and people of color–illegal politically-based efforts are being made to interfere with the popular vote.
Solution: Fight back by voting early. Mail-in voting (and depositing ballots in official drop boxes) has already begun in some states. Take advantage of these opportunities and vote early—but, please, please, please, not often. Disregard any evil advice to vote twice. (That’s a violation of federal law and another effort at destroying our democratic system.) For more about early voting, see here and here .
The biggest question: Do you want what Trump wants? You know what that is–the death of democracy. If you’re not in the market for authoritarianism and facism, exercise your Constitutional rights.
DEMOCRACY WANTS YOU to do everything you need to do to vote–and have it count!
Take action? Why? What good will it do?!
By Rev. Dr. Doe West
I am working daily to encourage all those around me to be sure they:
register to vote!
double check that they are on the voting rolls!
get to the polls on November 6th and victoriously vote!
Does my faith in this process mean I am somehow ignorant of or immune to the malevolent undercurrent seeping up around us, imparting a sense of hopelessness regarding our efforts, imposing a sinking feeling that our votes won’t count, and enshrouding us in fears that ruthless threats to our human rights, our futures, our planet, can never be overcome?
Absolutely not. In fact, it is my acute awareness and painful personal emotions each day that compel me to continue fighting the good fight every day at every opportunity.
Why? What good will it do?
The hard truth is that any individual’s personal struggle for peace and social justice may not be enough to turn the tide tomorrow or bring hopes and dreams to full fruition this year, or next, but it is also true that every single action taken by every single person does matter. And when people join hands and work together, they can make history and create better futures.
How do I know that?
It is October 2018 and …
- We are fighting against voter suppression. That means that we WON voting rights!
- We can connect with protestors we meet at marches across the nation.
- We have specific names and locations of candidates who stood with us and on whom we can rely again to carry the fight from the inside out.
- We have more diversity in our ranks in regard to gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other group identifiers in the candidates who take action for the causes in which we believe!
- The alt right and radical right are coming out in daylight in public arenas where they show their colors and spew their hatred, making the need to take action against their self-serving agendas obvious to more and more people.
- We have blogs such as engaging peace to which we can turn for affirmation and for connection with a community of people who are unified at the head/heart/spirit level and who will offer support when any of us stumble or lag or are hit by the fear that it is NOT worth it. Be part of this community. Write to engaging peace about your efforts on behalf of a fairer government, a safer future, a better world.
I know myself well enough to understand that like Maya Angelou, who spoke for us all when she said, “I RISE,” and like Michelle Obama who spoke for us all when she said “As they go low, we go high,” and as I tell you right now… it matters. More than you may see or feel or understand. But every single success we have had and gain that we have achieved has been created by every woman, man, and child before us who took action – even when, at times, they also asked “Why? What good will it do?”
The answer is clear. Persevering is the only way to go, the only way forward. So rise to higher ground with me today …and take action!
Bait and Switch: Psychology and Trump’s Voter Fraud Tantrums
by Roy J. Eidelson, PhD
In recent days President Trump has, yet again, ludicrously asserted that millions of people illegally voted against him last November. Lies of such magnitude and consequence from the White House certainly deserve the attention and scorn they’ve received. After all, once we move beyond the realm of “alternative facts,” the real evidence shows that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate someone else at the polls.
But to fully understand Trump’s complaints about “illegal voters,” we need to recognize that voter fraud and voter suppression are opposite sides of the same coin. By promoting beliefs about the former, the groundwork is laid for pursuing the latter. In this way, tales of unlawful voting have long been a pretext for obstructing the voting rights of U.S. citizens.
The mass manipulation at the heart of this strategy relies on what I call the “combating-injustice mind game.” With two steps, this psychological ploy preys upon the public’s acute and compassionate sensitivity to issues of right and wrong. First we’re bombarded with dire warnings that something terribly unjust is happening. These overwrought claims aim to spur broad outrage and demands for reform.
Then the propagandists step forward with carefully crafted proposals for how to address the purported injustice. But there’s a catch. Their recommended changes are designed with a very different goal in mind: to advance a narrow self-aggrandizing agenda, one that leaves those who were already disadvantaged even worse off than before. So, behind the seductive façade of combating injustice, wealth is extracted, power is entrenched, and the common good is trampled.
In short, complaints of rampant voter fraud are really just an elaborate cover story, constructed to hide repugnant attempts to gain electoral advantage by disenfranchising Americans. Paul Weyrich, for decades a leading voice of the conservative movement, indirectly acknowledged as much almost fifty years ago. In a speech in Texas back in 1980, he explained, “I don’t want everybody to vote. …Our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.” That master plan hasn’t changed in the intervening years.
That’s why the Republican Party’s 2012 platform emphasized, “Every time that a fraudulent vote is cast, it effectively cancels out a vote of a legitimate voter”; why Reince Priebus, now Trump’s chief of staff, has argued that requiring a photo ID at the voting booth is “fair, reasonable, and just”; why other right-wing mouthpieces insist we must “keep fraudsters away from polling places” and “vote fraud pervades our election process”; why True the Vote, the Koch-funded Tea Party outfit, cunningly describes itself as “regular citizens standing up for fair elections”; and why the GOP’s 2016 platform endorsed legislation calling for both “proof of citizenship when registering to vote and secure photo ID when voting.”
It’s no surprise that the favorite targets of voter suppression efforts include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, students, and low-income workers. That’s because most members of these groups are traditionally unlikely to vote Republican. They’re also less likely than most Americans to have a driver’s license or other valid photo ID.
But ID laws aren’t the only suppression tactics employed. For example, requiring physical proof of citizenship when registering to vote undercuts the effectiveness of low-income voter registration drives. Closing polling places on or near college campuses makes it tougher for students to vote. And eliminating early voting periods and same-day registration options particularly disadvantage voters of lesser means. These assaults are likely to shift into even higher gear if Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is confirmed as the country’s next Attorney General. Sessions has described the Voting Rights Act as a “piece of intrusive legislation” and the NAACP and ACLU as “un-American.”
So the President and his allies are actually right when they warn of a dangerous plot to cripple and corrupt our democratic institutions. But the mischief doesn’t take the form of impersonators at the voting booth. Rather, electoral justice and the integrity of the ballot box are endangered by well-organized conservative efforts aimed at preventing some Americans from voting at all. Indeed, it’s the unjustly disenfranchised in the United States who truly number in the millions today.
Roy J. Eidelson, Ph.D. President, Eidelson Consulting,Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility www.eidelsonconsulting.com
This post was originally published by Psychology Today at https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dangerous-ideas/201701/bait-and-switch-psychology-and-trump-s-voter-fraud-tantrums