The War on Voting

by Thom Hartmann

Today is an election day here in Missouri, a primary and a chance to have your voice heard. While everything that I will summarize in this newsletter is far from optimistic, keep voting. As Timothy Snyder said, “Don’t obey in advance.”

Also, I had one of my original subscribers ask about the history of political ads. Have they always been so negative, and now so blatant and horrifying? Is it legal. To her point, this year’s ads have been the worst, at least here in Missouri. We have an open senate seat because Roy Blunt is retiring. We have seen guns, blow torches and threats. I am still doing more research to understand how we got here. But here are a few rules that I found.

• The rules for political advertising require that stations must accept ads from candidates for Federal offices.  Stations do not have to accept state or local candidates’ advertising.

• However, if the station decides to accept advertising from a local candidate or a statewide candidate they should be prepared to accept it from that candidate’s opponent (whether from the same party in a primary or a different party in a general election).

Here in St. Louis city, we have five elections in the next seven months. While turnout will be low and voting only takes minutes (unless you are out of town and need to vote absentee), it still takes real dedication to research the candidates and issues and then show up for five elections.

The author of the book I am featuring today is Thom Hartmann a progressive talk-show host and environmentalist who also wrote the “Hidden History of the Supreme Court” and the “Hidden History of Guns.” He says that the right sees their war on voting as the only way to maintain control with climate change and technology threatening the future. They know exactly what is happening and this is their strategy to control the masses. An earlier review of the book, Democracy in Chains covered the assertion that there is a calculated plan to stay in power. 

Things like  gerrymandering and the electoral college also serve to make you feel like your vote doesn’t matter. Ranked choice voting and the electoral college compact are two solutions that might help. Ranked choice voting has been implemented in my local elections and definitely changed the results of our aldermanic race.  

This book shed some light on a few things that were new to me. There was something called the Red Shift that had an interesting explanation. This is where polling indicates that Democrats are winning but once the votes are counted, Republicans win. This happened in red states and the reason was simple. Provisional ballots are never counted due to voter purges. People cast their provisional ballots, believing they are registered and their vote will count. They then tell pollsters who they voted for but they never realize that their provisional ballot is not counted. 

Voter purges are often done to remove voters who may have moved. Often people who have moved don't notify the old state, they merely register in the new state,  which is legal. When you purge duplicates, you purge mostly African American, Hispanic, Native Americans and Indians because they have a smaller pool of last names. This purges people who did not move but merely have the same name as someone who registered in another state. I found this interesting and would love to know more about how this has been used.

Republicans put their own twist to that in 2020. They knew that more Democrats would vote by mail and that those votes would be counted after the ballots cast in person. They tried to sell the idea that since they were ahead at first, the votes that came in later (which were all valid votes) were not real.

The book suggests that Eisenhower was the last republican elected without having to resort to treason or election fraud. In the spirit of the 71 Powell memo, the Supreme Court in a 76 decision, Buckley vs Valoe made it legal for wealthy people to own politicians. This was extended by the First National Bank of Boston s. Bellotti decision. 

By the end of Reagan, Americans were on to what was happening, and the only solution was the use of social issues to drive people to republicans. The 96 memo from GoPac said to avoid blunt language that libertarians had been using. When discussing tax cuts or deregulation, use words like common sense, crusade, duty, family, freedom, liberty, opportunity, prosperity, reform, truth, vision. When describing Democratic plans like unemployment insurance or expanding unions, use guns and gays and words like abuse, betray, bizarre, bosses, bureaucracy, corrupt, decay, disgrace, greed, hypocrisy, pathetic, permissive, radical, red tape, self-serving, shame, sick, taxes, traitors, waste. 

This all came from Gingrich and has been used quite effectively over the years by Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Trump expanded this concept and even suggested that the Republicans were corrupt and planted those seeds that there has been massive voter fraud. It seems that the idea has taken hold in such a way now that is bigger than manipulating votes, it has really stood to completely discredit democracy. 

I will add one final note about political ads. After seeing a Republican candidate for the senate race produce an ad where he carried a blowtorch and seemed to threaten “Biden Democrats” in St. Louis city, I sent a note to the local TV station that aired the ad complaining about the threatening nature. I never heard from them but I will say that I have never seen that particular ad since. It might be worth noting that the candidate is the current Missouri Attorney General so the threat seemed all the more ominous.