Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Need the Grassroots
Despite all the excitement and momentum surrounding the Harris-Walz ticket, their path to win the White House must run through four weighty words: grassroots organizing & election protection.
As hot as they might seem right now, they cannot win if they squander their campaign funds on ceaseless media hype…or if they ignore the massive Trump/Bannon push to take the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote.
REMEMBER: Amidst a prevailing aura of “certain victory,” Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election by 3 million POPULAR votes…but Donald Trump wound up in the White House.
And if that history repeats itself, we will never, as Trump promises, “need to vote again.”
GRASSROOTS RELATIONAL ORGANIZING
The Democratic Party regularly squanders countless millions on electronic advertising, from which top campaign insiders scam kickbacks.
But grassroots, “relational” organizing in 2020–2 produced a “Georgia Miracle” that, against all odds, filled two key US Senate seats with a black man and a Jew, shifting the Congressional power balance.
Using what Atlanta-based organizer Ray McClendon calls “targeted messaging from targeted messengers,” on-the-ground organizers focused on the neighborhoods where they live and the issues that made a tangible difference to voters.
The glib belief that this year’s election can be won by clever advertising and standardized anti-Trump messaging blared repeatedly through the media and social networks is a suicidal illusion.
A Harris/Walz win can’t happen without a massive grassroots campaign whose progressive donations will fund tens of thousands of dedicated organizers working at the local level, focused on community democracy centers and door-to-door relational campaigning.
PROTECTING THE VOTER ROLLS:
In the lead-up to the 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush purged at least 90,000 suspected black and Hispanic voters from Florida’s registration rolls, feeding an official Bush victory of 537 ballots. Getting there required a violent “Brooks Brothers Mob” assault on the vote count run in part by three current US Supreme Court Justices—John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett.
As reported at the time by Greg Palast, Jeb’s computerized cross burning put his brother in the White House. As reported by Bob Fitrakis and I, the process was repeated in Ohio 2004.
In 2024, the Trump Crusade again has MAGA Republicans stripping suspected anti-Trump voters, usually identified by race. Swing state Georgia lets any single citizen disenfranchise thousands of registered voters with no justifying evidence required. (See “Vigilantes” by Greg Palast.).
Victims may have the right to re-register. But such state-sanctioned attacks could swing any state. In his recent swing through Georgia, Trump heralded three MAGA election flunkies who could single-handedly flip that state.
SAVING THE PRECINCTS:
MAGA mobster Steve Bannon (currently in prison) wants a war on local election boards and staff in the 3,000+ local precincts where presidency will be decided.
Bannon wants those precincts filled with Trump cultists who’ll terrorize and disenfranchise non-MAGA voters while seizing the vote count.
The current Harris boom has inspired some 200,000 citizens to volunteer to work this election. Hopefully, in opposition to the thousands Bannon already has in place, they’ll work the polls while protecting the voter rolls and making sure the precincts rightfully deliver all authorized ballots while accurately counting, carefully auditing them when they return by mail, and protecting the citizens who turn up in person at the polls.
GUARANTEEING HAND-MARKED, DIGITALLY-SCANNED, RELIABLY AUDITED PAPER BALLOTS
In Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2016, massive “irregularities” tainted the computerized vote counts in many electronic balloting devices.
As reported by Bev Harris, wild electronic fluctuations in Volusia and other Florida counties corrupted more than enough votes to swing the 2000 outcome. Robert Fitrakis documented similar malfunctions in scores of machines in Ohio 2004, and again in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016.
In the wake of Florida/Ohio 2000-4, a national grassroots demand erupted for hand-marked paper ballots that would be digitally scanned. Amidst the 2020 Covid epidemic, more than 80% of the nation’s ballots were cast on paper.
In 2020 those digitally scanned hand-marked paper ballots produced a vote count that survived more than sixty Trump lawsuits. In swing state Arizona, transparent accounting from AUDIT USA helped certify an accurate state-wide tally despite extremely aggressive MAGA attacks.
In 2024, a national grassroots movement will again be required to work precinct-by-precinct to protect the voter rolls and produce a reliably audited tally based on digitally scanned hand-marked paper ballots. Without all that, Harris/Walz can’t win.
SAVING THE US POSTAL SERVICE
According to the US Election Assistance Agency, a majority of the 2020 ballots cast came through the USPS, which is STILL being run by Trump appointee Louis DeJoy. To say his conduct this year demands thorough scrutiny is to vastly understate the dangers to democracy DeJoy poses.
ELECTORAL DECERTIFICATION
Topping the Trump/Bannon election theft playbook may be the choreographed refusal of MAGA election officials to certify the outcomes in the states they control. It’s widely reported that Bannon may have recruited at least seventy MAGA infiltrators at high-level official administrative positions who are poised to withhold certification of their state’s duly elected Electoral College delegations. In a recent speech in Georgia, Trump loudly praised three state officials who could block certification of that state’s electoral results.
Such a refusal could easily wreck havoc with the final Electoral College vote count. There are a wide range of scenarios by which Trump could claim victory under these circumstances. Forewarned is forearmed.
PRESERVING A NON-VIOLENT CONSTITUTIONAL TRANSITION
Bannon and the MAGA core have proclaimed a 2024 Trump victory to be a divine certainty. Winning a “Christian Nationalist” state by any means necessary will most certainly feed multiple re-runs of the kinds of bloodshed that poisoned January 6, 2021.
Violence at the polls, manipulated vote counts, refusal to certify returns, anointing fake electors, denying a full Electoral College vote count, defaulting the final vote to a Congress in which Trump could win—all the above would certainly be upheld by the Trump-run Supreme Court. The one 2024 certainty is that Bannon and his MAGA minions will “fill the commons with sh*t,” and nothing will be “normal.”
Whether you like it or not, democracy means you ARE involved, now more than ever.
So prepare to be intensely active at least through January 20, 2025.
Please see the PEOPLE’S HUB for Grassroots Election Organizing (www.usgrassroots.org ) and join our Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms most Mondays 2-4pm PT / 5-7 ET . (www.grassrootsep.org ).
Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman’s radio show are Green Power & Wellness podcast 2-3pm Eastern time Thursdays, and California Solartopia broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica 90.7FM Los Angeles, Thursdays 6:30-7pm Pacific time. His 20 books include SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US, A Glimpse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit and The Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to the Trumpocalypse to Rebirth, all at www.solartopia.org. With Bob Fitrakis he’s co-authored six books on election protection including The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections. He’s also about solarizing LA, and would be glad to hear about your roof.
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