Dying To Vote: Our Elections Are Not Free, Fair, Or Safe

In Wisconsin on Tuesday voters were forced to stand in line while donning any protective gear they may have and wait in long, arduous lines to cast their votes. It was the type of utter madness that makes people stand around and shrug asking, how in the hell did we get here? How did we manage to slip into this brutal reality where no one is happy, no one is safe, and everything is tinged with equal parts frustration and outrage.

Like most things these days, the answer is the Republican Party. Having sacrificed the future for profit, the GOP has embraced step-by-step trench warfare, a maddening agenda of murderous game theory in which everyone, including Republicans themselves, will lose, but only after winning in the present. Tuesday’s insanity occurred because a State Supreme Court was up for grabs and Republican control of that body means control over the state’s elections and, because of gerrymandering and judicial politicking, the state’s power.

The strategy was clear: force poorer Wisconsinites, particularly those who live in areas ravaged by coronavirus, particularly those who might not have masks or items shielding them from the disease, to risk their lives by showing up at the polls. By outlawing mail-in ballots, the Republican Party avoided, as it almost always does, allowing free and fair and safe elections, which never work out in their favor.

With the disgusting Wisconsin election now in our rear view mirror, President Donald Trump has begun to weigh in. Of course, this subject was put on his radar by Fox News and his main adviser, the infantile television show Fox and Friends. But the Republican Party is on the same page, regardless, and that is to fight ballot by mail with everything they have because widespread voter participation will be lost by the Republican Party every single time.

What you need to hear isn’t pleasant.

What you need to hear doesn’t feel good.

But you need to hear it regardless: it is not a foregone, put-it-in-the-bank conclusion that we will have an election in November. We cannot simply count on there being a presidential election or a vote at all. Donald Trump is an authoritarian and there is a cycle with authoritarians. Once in power, authoritarians are almost impossible to get rid of. If he loses his reelection fair and square, he’ll claim it was because of voter fraud. If he can steal the election, he will steal it. And if it seems like there’s no opportunity to win, he’ll see that it’s never held.

This happens all the time, and just saying there are laws and customs that will keep it from happening doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Our laws and customs and democratic tradition are only as strong as our ability to reinforce them and fight for them. And recent years have shown that strength and that ability are endangered like never before.

But even if we do have the elections in November, the Republican Party will never allow them to be fully safe or fully fair. Even if it means sentencing millions of people to death by forcing them to the polls, Wisconsin has shown us they are more than willing to see that out. They will fight vote-by-mail every step of the way, tooth and nail, and you will see the United States Supreme Court rule along strictly partisan lines. That’s our new reality. Living with a pandemic and living with a party that is willing to kill its own voters for momentary power.

We are losing time in this battle. It has to start, and it has to start now. If we want free and fair and safe elections in November, and believe me, the fate of this country and possibly the free world depend on it, we need a concentrated, organized effort. It cannot wait. It cannot be put off. We cannot trust that our institutions will hold as we have seen them crumble one by one into clouds of acrid dust.

We have to do this, and we have to do it now.