On today’s BradCast: Following Friday’s shameful vote in the U.S. Senate, where just two Republican Senators were able to muster up the courage to vote against completely blocking all witnesses and documents in the Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, we now have just one firewall left against our slide into full authoritarianism: This November’s election. [Audio link to show follows below.]
If a President can’t be indicted, as the Dept. of Justice falsely claims, and a Republican Senate is more than happy to blatantly rig an impeachment “trial” against a Republican President, the only American firewall left against the collapse of representative democracy as we’ve known it in this nation is your vote — and those of every eligible citizen you know — cast this year and counted as intended. That, as we have warned for many years, is now more difficult than ever in many jurisdictions. Nonetheless, that fight begins tonight in Iowa. (We’ll have full coverage of Iowa results on Tuesday’s BradCast.)
On today’s program, related to all of the above, and before we open up the phones to callers on all of it…
- We are “flying blind” as we head into the Iowa Caucuses after the weekend cancellation of the final “gold standard” Des Moines Register poll, due to a procedural error. Though Bernie Sanders, according to other last-minute polling, is believed to be the front-runner on the Democratic side as caucusing begins. That said, the Iowa Caucuses are complicated and notoriously difficult to predict, for some of the reasons we explain on today’s program;
- Millions of Vote-by-Mail ballots are, as of today, according to a media statement from the California Sec. of State, now on their way to Golden State voters for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, when more than a dozen states will be voting in their 2020 primaries all at once. We, again today, endeavor to explain the complicated procedures that are (sadly) necessary in the Golden State to make sure you are able to vote in the party primary of your choosing, as well as the steps you need to take to make sure you do so on a hand-marked paper ballot in order to maximize the odds of your vote actually being counted as cast.
To avoid having to cast a 100% unverifiable touchscreen vote if you live in Los Angeles County (where that will be forced upon you at our new “voting centers”) or anywhere else where touchscreens are your only choice at the polling place, PLEASE contact your County and ask for a hand-marked paper Vote-by-Mail ballot. Then, PLEASE deliver it IN PERSON to your polling place or County headquarters on Election Day or as close to it as possible. (Check your local jurisdiction to make certain they will accept hand-delivered vote-by-mail ballots!) To check your voter status — how and if you are registered, and whether you are signed up for Vote-by-Mail — please see the CA Sec. of State website’s Voter Status page here. To request a Vote-by-Mail ballot in L.A. or request a specific party’s primary ballot, go to LAVote.net;
- Everyone must be on board and educated about all of this, this year. With the stakes we are now facing, there is ZERO room for error. Please share good information far and wide, and help your friends and neighbors to register, to vote, and to help spread the word to others about how to do the same thing;
- Yet another reason for voting on hand-marked paper: I am terrified, for good reason, about the possibility of a ransomware attack that could prevent voters in jurisdictions that now (foolishly and dangerously) rely on computers at the polls for voters to be able to vote at all. One of the latest such attacks/reminders is currently crippling services in Tillamook County, Oregon, where all County computer servers were shut down as of last week due to such an attack. Tillamook is just the latest of dozens of jurisdictions — states, counties, large and small metropolitan areas — to be hit by ransomware attacks over the past year. If one occurs on or before Election Day in a county (like L.A.) that now relies on computer pollbooks and voting systems, we will have a disaster on our hands in the upcoming elections;
- Of course, such a disaster is exactly what Donald Trump is hoping for, given his unpopularity and his repeated attempts to rig both the 2016 and now 2020 elections in his favor through any means necessary. He is now being aided in that effort not only by Republicans in the Senate, but by the Dept. of Justice itself, which is unlawfully withholding documents that prove, yet again, that Trump directed Administration officials to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine in a pressure campaign to force them to help him cheat in the 2020 election;
- All of this, as investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald warned in a chilling Twitter thread on Friday after the vote to block all witnesses and documents in Trump’s Impeachment Trial, is why “we are in an extremely terrifying moment in American history.” Eichenwald cautions that, because Presidential “emergency powers” have never been defined (“because no one ever imagined a situation like this”), Trump could even attempt to cancel this year’s election if he wanted and, like Hitler, could even imprison political opponents such as Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders “if he further advances his argument that he [has] absolute unquestionable control of government.”
Far fetched? Please tune in to today’s show and then let us know, as callers did in the second half of today’s program…
Hey, Brad. The Iowa City area definitely went for Sanders and Warren. However, at my own precinct, IC20, and at least one other, IC23, Buttigieg was awarded delegates that he should not have been, as a result of the caucus chairs failing to apply the rules for realignment. I’m still working out how to report/complain about it and would appreciate any leads you could give me.
Everyone should be aware of the advice Brad provides for CA voters to avoid the use of unverifiable touchscreen ballot marking device. I’d only add that if you do have to go to the polls, DEMAND a hand marked paper ballot. While that may mean having to fill out a write-in ballot, that is far preferable to casting your vote into an electronic black hole.
My immediate concern is how to we convey Brad’s advice to a wide swath of the electorate?
Hi Brad and Desi – If the clusterfuck in Iowa that called itself a caucus is any indication of how the 2020 elections are going to go, what with all the fancy apps and whiz-bang billion-dollar computer systems, the “Last Firewall” is doomed to come tumbling down. You and others have been warning officials for more than 10 years, but they were deaf…or perhaps deliberately ignoring the facts because they have ulterior motives. What else are we to think?
Are we sitting ducks for the other world powers? The vulnerability of the U.S. elections has been weaponized both inside and out and we, the people are the targets.
Re Susan Shaffer @3:
Actually, Brad and Desi have been sounding the alarm about the existential threat e-voting to democracy for more than 15-years. They have literally been the Paul Reveres of the election integrity movement.
CHECK YOUR CALIFORNIA VOTING STATUS
To check on your California voting status, get your driver’s license and go to this site for a very quick answer:
https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/
If you want a paper mail-in ballot (it can be dropped off at certain ballot collection sites as well), you can re-register for that also on that site.