1- Pick a small town. Small town elections, by default, don’t need a lot of votes to win. So start small.
2- Exempt the biggest organization in town, which you control, from having to pay property or income taxes. That would be the church. Then start another church. And another. And another. And another…
3- Match your church’s desired policies to those of a political party. The church isn’t being political, because that would be illegal. The reason all church policies match a political party can easily be explained. Only your favored political party has any morals, and you are all about morality of course. So it’s not the church that is being political. Rather, it’s a political party that is following your morality, so naturally all their policies match your own. It’s just a happy coincidence.
4- Have your church build a couple dozen housing units (tax free, of course). Only offer those housing units for free to young people from other places who agree with your politics. Call it a “Bible College”. Cover their moving expenses to your town, and register them to vote.
5- Employ those new young voters with your friends in the business community, and help them build their own new house in town so you can free up that church housing for the next set of incoming people.
6- Deny the opposing political side economic opportunity at every chance. Never hire them. Do not visit their stores, do not hire them for contracts, and do not hire them as employees. Talk shit about them on community pages. Without a way to earn an income, eventually your opponents will pack up and leave. Conversely, champion the stores who plant large flags supporting your political party.
7- Whenever your opponents have a political rally in the local park, like a Women’s March, surround them with monster trucks waving obscene flags and revving engines. Intimidate them and make it an environment that is not safe for children. Deny your opponents their free speech rights by making it too loud to talk, and too frightening to gather. Plaster your truck, your shirt, and your boat with gun stickers to increase the intimidation factor.
8- Dominate the local community Facebook pages with vitriol and “just kidding” threats. Even if you are a minority of residents, make sure online community spaces appear to overwhelmingly support your side. Perception becomes reality.
9- Add a nice dose of racism. Make sure that prominent minority community members suffer highly visible attacks, like spray painting “go back to Africa” on the door of their business. Those folks may very well leave town, and certainly won’t recommend this town to their own friends or family.
10- Spread horrible lies about your opponent when election time rolls around, of course.
And that, folks, is how this small town turns beet red. I’ve watched every single one of these steps happen in front of my eyes in the last 2 years. I’ve had to see my brilliant and wonderful representative replaced by a Sarah Palin clone, minus the good looks and cleverness if that is possible. This little blue oasis is drying up fast under this coordinated assault.
Repeat that across all the small towns, and now you control rural America. If a state is small and more rural, now you control the state and 2 US Senators. Control all the small rural states, and with our back asswards rules you get to control the national agenda.
No laws were broken anywhere in this process (minus the racist hate crimes, where no suspect was ever found). And it’s winning. No need to be a national majority to rule. Ever.
Unless we decide to see this reality for what it is. “Increasing voter turnout” doesn’t work when your voters moved out of state due to poverty and intimidation. “Persuasion” is close to a lost cause at this point.
The only legal solution I can think of is to build our own support structure to place our allies in these states in bulk, and outvote them. How can we build that structure outside of the church? How can we move our voters back into these little red states, into a safe and economically viable life? Do we pick the biggest city in each red state and pay thousands upon thousands of people to live and work there? How could we pay for that effort, and convince people to make that effort? Does remote working make that possible? Am I mad, and howling at the moon here?
Oh yeah- can somebody please sue the living hell out of every church who is playing this game?
I don’t have the answer, but I sure see the problem clearly here in my little corner of vanishing paradise.