The biggest worry many of us have us Trump stealing the election.
The shenanigans with the post office, the voter suppression, and the paperless voting machines.
These are all real concerns.
The good news is that there are plenty of people working on solutions AND there are plenty of things that we can do to help the situation!
Here is a list of eight easy and important things you can do to protect the vote:
First, find out ways to vote in your state
Everything voters need to know. this website has you enter in your state and tells you everything you need to know for voting in your state. Don’t just use this information for yourself — become an expert! Read up on what needs to be done to vote in your state (and when) and share, share, share if with everyone you know! Become this person:
Second, use this link to contact your reps to let them know that the post office MUST be funded and working at full capacity by November. Is your rep a Democrat? Call them. Do you have a Republican rep? Call them. You called last week? Call again. How often should you call? Every. Damn. Day.
Third, learn about ways to cast your ballot that don’t rely on the USPS and plan to use one. Share this info with EVERYONE you know.
Four Ways to Safely Cast Your Ballot Without USPS
1. Vote early in person. Early voting allows voters to vote in person without waiting in crowded or long lines. Forty-one states have some form of early voting in place and may start as early as 45 days before Election Day. Many states also have weekend early voting options. Make sure to check with your local election office to see if they extended early voting due to the pandemic.
2. Use a ballot drop box. Many states and counties provide ballot drop boxes as a secure and convenient option for voters to return their sealed and signed mail ballot. Drop boxes skip the mail process entirely, allowing voters to drop off their mail ballots and have them be taken directly to county offices. Boxes are placed in many convenient locations such as outside community centers, near public transit routes or on college campuses. Check with your local election office to see if there are ballot drop boxes in your community.
3. Drop off your ballot at an election office or polling location. Almost all states permit voters to return a delivered ballot in person at their local election office, but not everyone lives close to their election office. That is why many states allow voters to drop off their signed and sealed ballots at any in-person voting location in the county. Check with your local election office to see if you can drop off your ballot at a polling location closer to your home.
4. Organize community ballot collection. Many states allow designated organizations, election officials or family members to collect a voter’s signed and sealed ballot and submit the ballot on behalf of the voter. This option is vital for high-risk voters who are unable to leave their home to cast a ballot. Check who can collect your ballot in your state.
Fourth, if you are not high risk for COVID, find out how to be a poll worker on election day. Use this link
You won’t be alone — Young people are stepping up to address the poll worker shortage
Youth are stepping up to work the polls on Election Day, addressing the poll worker shortage that has plagued the primary election cycle. Often overlooked, poll workers are an essential component to election administration. They set up and close polling places, and are responsible for protecting ballots and voting equipment.
The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic saw many poll workers declining their tour of service due to the potential for exposure. Poll worker shortages during the primaries led to closures and consolidations of a critical mass of polling locations causing long lines and wait times for those voting in-person. In the 2018 election, nearly 60% of all poll workers were over 60.
Nationwide organizations are investing in, encouraging, and recruiting younger people to step up and become poll workers. As previously reported by The Fulcrum, young people engaging in the electoral process as poll workers could lead to increases in civic engagement. A collaborative effort of several national nonprofits and corporate partners, Power the Polls seeks to recruit 250,000 people to sign up to be poll workers
Fifth, sign up to be a voter protection volunteer with the Biden Harris campaign
Sixth, donate or join one of the great organizations dedicated to fighting voter suppression
Fair Fight built and engages a robust network of grassroots activists that works to strengthen democracy at all levels.
And I still Vote call to action will work to stop efforts to silence our voices and empower our communities to act. It’s up to us to create a democracy where every eligible voter can cast a ballot and have it counted.
Black Votes Matter goal is to increase power in our communities. Effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny.
Let America Vote no one should have to choose between their safety and their rights
ACLU — Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve filed 20 lawsuits and counting to ensure every eligible voter can vote by mail. With your support, we’ll keep fighting to protect the safety and rights of all voters.
Seventh, remind yourself that although you need to act, you are not acting alone:
Coalition of Black civic groups intends to mobilize voters, tackle suppression
A coalition of Black civic groups intends to mobilize voters and tackle potential voter suppression issues ahead of the November election, with plans to ensure that Black voters have the information they need to vote by mail, vote early or navigate physical polling sites.
In a virtual conference Monday, Unity ‘20 partners, including the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the National Urban League, the National Action Network, the National African American Clergy Network, the NAACP and other national and state-based groups, discussed the importance of voting and being counted fairly in the 2020 Census, as well as the disproportional dangers that the novel coronavirus has presented to Black communities.
The groups have begun a campaign to ensure that Black voters are armed with information. It will include the New Era Foot Soldiers for Democracy — a national Black poll worker and poll monitor recruitment drive — and #RuVoteReady, a public awareness initiative using social media and field outreach to prepare Black voters with voter assistance and protection information to vote by mail, early vote or vote at the polls.
and Biden campaign readying hundreds of lawyers in expansive vote protection effort
Joe Biden's campaign is assembling hundreds of lawyers nationwide to monitor potential voting issues as part of its extensive voter protection efforts heading into the general election.
Speaking at a virtual fundraiser Wednesday, the presumptive Democratic nominee said his team has organized 600 lawyers and others across the country to "try to figure out why the chicanery is likely to take place." He also said they have recruited 10,000 people as volunteers.
Eighth, remind yourself that enough states HAVE paper trails for Biden to win even if they manage to hack into the system
I limited my selection to those states that, as a practical matter, have statewide or nearly statewide voting procedures that provide a paper trail that can be used for an audit, as of June 2019. By that criterion, I found:
40 states with 412 electoral votes
Of those, 23 states, with 272 electoral votes, are solid or leaning toward Joe Biden.
Got your To Do list for the week? Great! Now let’s enjoy some good news! ❤️
Good News For 11/3
Biden expands lead
The Marist Poll shows Joe Biden has a 53% to 42% national lead over Trump, the largest lead ever for this poll. Marist is rated as an A+ poll by 538.
In the Marist late June poll Biden’s lead was 52% to 44%. In February it was 50% to 44%.
Approval of Trump is at 39%, the lowest it has been since January 2019, according to the survey. The generic poll was Democrats 49% to 43% for Republicans.
Things are still shifting in our direction
Cook Report Shifts 15 US House Races, 11 in the Direction of the Democratic Candidates
An economic crisis in Kentucky has workers, businesses furious with McConnell
The labor protest marked only the latest in a series of exasperated complaints from Kentuckians directed at McConnell (R), as some locals find themselves frustrated by the absence of their powerful political representative on Capitol Hill. In more than two dozen interviews, out-of-work residents, struggling restaurant owners and other business leaders, as well as a cadre of annoyed food, housing and labor rights groups, all said they are in dire need of more support from Congress — the likes of which McConnell has not been able to provide.
A new poll reinforces a potentially fatal flaw in Trump’s reelection strategy
the focus has instead been on Trump’s likely opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. Biden, Trump would have you believe, is both unfit to serve and potentially dangerous to the republic. Voters don’t seem to be buying it.
Trump’s efforts to dirty up Biden haven’t really gotten anywhere
Trump’s current net favorability, in fact, is about where Clinton’s was in 2016 — which, for obvious reasons, isn’t really good news for his reelection bid.
It’s also not good news when considering why Trump’s net favorability is higher now. It’s almost entirely a function of how members of his own party view him.
Biden, facing a contested primary of his own, is on the same trajectory Trump saw in 2016, gaining ground with Democrats. His net favorability with his own party has already matched Trump’s; if the same pattern holds, he will soon pass the president.
Trump is about where he was with Democrats four years ago at this point; Biden is doing about 10 points better than Clinton was with Republicans.
A new poll spotlights a key reason Biden is the 2020 favorite
An effort involving several Republicans is afoot to get rapper Kanye West on the presidential ballot in key states. The idea is apparently that he might siphon some young and African American support from Joe Biden and help President Trump.
But a new poll provides a rare window into the limited appetite for third-party candidates in the 2020 election — and it appears to be a significant reason for Biden’s sustained advantage.
The Monmouth University poll is one of very few thus far this cycle that have included third-party candidates.
The poll shows Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen pulling 2 percent nationally, while Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins takes 1 percent. Previous polls from CNBC have also shown them in the low single digits.
That’s a marked contrast to where we were at this point four years ago. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls back then, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson was getting nearly 9 percent of the vote, while Green nominee Jill Stein was pulling about 4 percent.
That said, there’s a large difference between 2016 and today: Despite a similar number of voters not liking each candidate, this time they’re breaking strongly for the Democrat, and significantly fewer are threatening to defect to third parties.
The GOP’s Kanye West gambit is doomed
Yet all this might be no more than a not-so-beautiful dark twisted fantasy. Certainly, the concept of standing up a third-party alternative to subtract support from a rival in a close election isn’t new. But the assumption that Black votes Black isn’t backed up by the evidence, and the assumption that Black votes Kanye isn’t backed up by common sense. Though Black voters do pull the lever for Black candidates at disproportionate rates, they also tend to put substance above skin color, prioritizing perceived electability, or credibility within the community, or party affiliation. These voters’ preference for Biden in the primaries was a reminder of precisely this.
Donald Trump’s Woman Problem Just Got a Whole Lot Worse
No one was shocked by Joe Biden’s pick of California Senator Kamala Harris. For months people had guessed and assumed she would be Biden’s veep. The other names on the list didn’t seem to make much sense. Many of the women on it lacked the kind of visibility and excitement that Kamala innately possessed, not to mention Kamala’s digital army and heaps of charisma. But Kamala had been impressive, commanding, and serious in the debates. Some sexist pundits worried that she had been too commanding and impressive.
So that was all expected. What happened next, though, was something that few of us saw coming. Even I, who am completely dead inside, was all of a sudden incredibly moved by the idea of Kamala Harris as vice president. And I was not alone. The sentiment and the excitement, the pride that women around the country felt, almost no one, perhaps not even Harris, could have predicted.
And while Instagram was a sea of Kamala photos and non-Fox cable news was an ocean of gushing pundits, some of whom had at one point been skeptical of the senator from California, it became really clear who were the biggest losers of the Kamala Harris veep pick: Donald J. Trump, and especially the boring mediocre white guy he calls his Veep, Mike Pence.
Discontent with McCarthy rises as GOP considers a possible post-Trump world
Discontent with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is on the rise in the House, as Republicans increasingly fearful of a loss by President Trump on Election Day gear up for an intraparty war over the future of the GOP.
A cluster of GOP lawmakers is starting to privately question whether the California Republican is putting loyalty to the president over the good of the conference. And there is a small group of members discussing whether someone should challenge him for minority leader if Trump is defeated Nov. 3.
However, the frustration with McCarthy had already been brewing for weeks as Trump’s polling has sagged behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. According to interviews with more than 10 House Republicans — all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank — some GOP lawmakers are worried that McCarthy has tied the conference too much to Trump, refusing to stand up to the president or act as a buffer to distinguish the conference from him.
Other Good News
Facebook bans blackface and certain anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
Facebook will start banning posts that contain blackface or that promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jewish people are running the world.
The social media giant announced the expansion of its hate speech policies in a press call on Tuesday morning. Under the new policy, Facebook will no longer allow visual or written posts that depict “caricatures of black people in the form of blackface” or “Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government.”
Dolly Parton Backs Black Lives Matter: “Do We Think Our Little White Asses Are the Only Ones That Matter?”
On the topic of BLM, the 74-year-old proved that she’s definitely aligned with the times and fully onboard with the protests that have carried on since George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” said Parton. “And of course, Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” The Queen of Nashville has officially spoken.
Parton also engaged in a discussion about how racist monuments and other antiquated Confederacy statues have been taken down in the last few months. The iconic artist actually did something similar in 2018, when she renamed her “Dixie Stampede” Civil War-themed attraction to “Dolly Parton’s Stampede”. Although she was clearly ahead of her time — The Dixie Chicks only changed their name this past June — Parton admitted that she was guilty of “innocent ignorance” back then.
On the lighter side
That is it for today!
I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you ❤️ ✊ ❤️
