Archive: Opinions

This observer would rather move his thoughts to more pleasant summer-like climes, but the conjunction of several headlines this past week barges in upon my August reveries.

As I write, New York's 12th Congressional district still has no winner of the Democratic primary held on June 23rd. It's not that it was disputed or too close to call. It's the incredible fact that there were forty-thousand voting machine votes and sixty-five thousand absentee ballots, and each must be individually certified. There is speculation that the ballot rejection rate for this district's election will be nineteen percent in Queens and Manhattan, and twenty-eight percent in Brooklyn. The Progressive challenger to incumbent Carolyn Maloney is Suraj Patel, and he stated his belief that "an election law snafu may disenfranchise a massive number of voters". Even the incumbent fired back that those words were a "cynical abuse of voter confidence… right out of Donald Trump's playbook".

She's right about that – voter confidence, even in a primary, is now in the crosshairs.

Our next exhibit you are probably well aware of. Trump stated in an interview that he wondered whether he would honor the results of the November election, citing the potential for mail-in fraud. He then followed it up with a tweet: "With universal mail-in voting, 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history… Delay the election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote???" Note the question marks. He not only injected the outrageous claim that we would be the victims of fraud, he then raised the possibility of attempting to stop the election, or even dismiss results not to his liking.

There are those who would say he isn't trying to stop an election, only delay it. May I point out that the totalitarian leaders of Hong Kong have 'delayed' their municipal elections until next year. The authorities then promptly declared several candidates ineligible to compete, because they disagreed with new restrictive laws on Hong Kong freedoms.

True, the president cannot unilaterally decide to postpone the date of a federal election. That day is set into a law passed by Congress in 1845 and would need a veto-proof vote by both houses to change. Even Lindsay Graham, a strong supporter of Trump, said the president's suggestion was not "a particularly good idea". Well, that certainly is soft pedaling it, isn't it? Seems more like throwing a marshmallow at the presidential flame thrower.

Using words like 'fraudulent' or 'rigged' to describe any vote sounds like a third world country or a totalitarian state window dressing one-party voting. Our traditional American cynicism about voting has always contained the internal belief that we were given a choice. Even if we held our nose while voting, at least we convinced ourselves we weren't being bulldozed with BS by a ruling clique or mumbling to ourselves that it was all a smelly farce.

If you must, go ahead with the legitimate cry of the cynic, but remember that Churchill stated that democracy is far better than the alternative. The hopes of billions throughout history have pined for what we have, even today, in the United States: a system worthy of pride and expressing human accomplishment, though certainly imperfect. We are now feeling threatened, not by Vladimir Putin or Xi Xing Ping, or even a third world tin horn dictator, but by our own chief executive. He has questioned the legitimacy of our vote months before the counting begins. Even third world countries wait for the voting to cry foul.

Are his claims or speculations valid? Maybe, maybe not. But the smirks of the men who desire to upstage us and dominate us are becoming more fang-like, more hungry to watch us devour our own liberty and allow our leader to sow doubt about our most trusted tradition.

Yes, we need some quick solutions to mail-in voting and absentee ballots. Did you know that New York now requires a "postage-paid return envelope" for absentee ballots? Sounds good, right? Except that the Postal Service does not normally postmark prepaid envelopes, which means that unless USPS can guarantee that they can always postmark those particular envelopes that are ballots, there will be no date on them. As you may know, that date is required to determine that ballots were mailed by election day. If no postmark is evident, they are declared invalid. And how long after election day can they be allowed to arrive? They're still being counted in New York's 12th district following the June 23rd election.

We may howl at Trump's bombast and baloney, but our election procedures, pandemic or no, need to be addressed now. The one thing to be concerned with is always that the incumbents, whether in Albany or Sacramento, Tucson or Tallahassee, are entrenched in the status quo. The prospect of hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots being counted under the auspices of fifty individual states' laws is daunting, worrisome, and contributing to an inner fear that the Chest Thumper in Chief is aware of and stoking to his benefit.

We question a vote in countries with little or no experience with openness and legitimacy. I have a sinking feeling that I am a witness to the doubt sown by the leader of the country that may be the last great hope for human society.

We need positive words from our leaders. We need leaders who still believe. We need hope, not gnawing worry. Calm, not anger. We may not be seeing much of that from many (or any) leading candidates, but what's emanating from the White House is not what America expects or needs in troubled times. We need hope, not suspicion and fear.

Take care of each other. Thanks for listening.