Counting Votes!

 Conundrums present themselves when you least want them. The unexpected ones are the worst. Even worse are those whose answers are an enigma. It is frustrating to hear arguments against something when there shouldn’t be arguments against it.

Last week we saw Exhibit One of this thinking when the U.S. Senate voted against a bill to halt the destruction of voting rights that is sweeping the country. Free and fair elections are no longer the hallmark of the “greatest democracy on Earth.” Senators actually debated the idea and decided that we don’t need them anymore.

In States across the country, state legislatures are enacting laws to dampen the ability of citizens to cast their votes in an easy and orderly fashion. The argument goes something like this: the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the rightful winner for reasons unsupported by facts. In many states the “powers that be” adjusted voting practices to accommodate the vagaries of the COVID pandemic. Voting by mail was encouraged, early voting was encouraged, and ballot drop boxes were added to make voting easier. Even before voting began there was a drumbeat from the White House that voting by mail was a way to steal the election and that the only way the President could lose was if the voting system was rigged.

Some states counted their ballots as many as three times. State legislatures appointed partisan investigators (Cyber Ninja was one) to recount the ballots, to ensure that the voting machines were operating properly and that no foreign government was interfering with the voting process.

No voter fraud was identified, the ballot counting had been accurate, the machines operated properly, and foreign governments didn’t interfere with the elections. So, state legislatures are passing bills to ensure that what never happened never happens again. In addition, some states are enacting laws that let the legislature change the election results if they have the slightest inkling that there was a “steal.”

The belief in a stolen election ignited the fuse that rocketed people up the stairs of our temple of democracy on January 6, 2021. The percentage of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen is higher today than a year ago, 70%. The “Big Lie” has traction.

“That in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility: because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie … It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have  the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”[i]

There was some fraud after the election, however. In five states people posing as Electors signed nearly identical certificates of election, naming Trump and Pence as the winners in their states and sent them to the national archives, insisting that they be counted by the Congress. Some senators even objected to counting the real certificates. The Vice President had to change the usual words of acceptance to ensure that the real certificates were counted.

Democracy, unlike other forms of government, relies on people believing in the concept and supporting the institutions that bind us. The concept of fair elections was a given, we took it for granted that it would always be there, that it is in our DNA. Maybe not so much anymore.

A wide divide between political parties is a risk to our way of life. When average citizens express a strong belief that the voting system is corrupt, we are on the verge of serious disunity and even breakup. There are a number of actions in the political arena that we can disagree about, some serious and some, well, just political. The one thing that bound us for more than two centuries was our belief that we could vote and that our vote would be counted and that would determine the winners and losers.

The idea of rigged elections is now a major strategy for creating doubt about the election process. In a mid-January special election in the Palm Beach, FL district, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, won 78% of the votes. The Republican candidate refused to concede because the vote may have been tainted.

Voting should be an easy four-step process: registration, voting, counting the votes and declaring a winner. Each of those steps should be easy steps. In our state, when a teenager applies for a driver's license they are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 years old. When there is an election, each registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. When they have voted, they mail it back or drop it off at secure locations. On Election Day the votes are counted, the winners jubilate and the losers congratulate. Done.

Anything more complicated than that is an infringement on the democratic process.

 

 

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[i] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

So I Write!

Joan Didion died last week. The literary world mourned. Print media poured gallons of ink into obituaries. New critiques of her work sprouted in all the usual places and some not so usual. This will go on for a few more weeks. There was praise for the quality of her writing, for her sentence structure, and for her ability to capture a moment with words, without even one on-the-other-hand. What she saw formed a prescient vision of what would follow. A Sacramento native is among the pantheon of literary giants who saw the nation’s movement from one period to the next and then to another. She recorded it in brilliant essays and deep-thought novels.

Didion published River Run in 1963. I was well out of college by then and on to other things. I’ve read several of her essays. Her skill with the English language is notable; it isn’t an easy one to master. Hemingway told us in A Movable Feast that if he could write one good sentence, the rest would follow. He did it well. Didion said that she liked Hemingway’s writing, his sentence structure. She was as good.

In Why I Write she said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She noted that writing was, “Imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind … there is no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully.”

Sometimes, writing something out is the only way to explain what you are seeing. Oral is easy; just say whatever comes out of your head. But that seldom has the power of a well-constructed sentence, written and rewritten. Churchill could do it but generally didn’t. He said he could talk for an hour with no preparation, but if he was limited to only a few minutes he might need a week to prepare.

Toni Morrison once told her neighbor, according to the neighbor, “If there is a book you want to read and it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I find that that’s true of not only stories but of daily goings-on. I started writing, commenting, about what I witnessed every day: a country seemingly in turmoil, perhaps unprepared for the throes of an extreme makeover. The only way to understand it was to write about it. I didn’t think that was being a bully, but then I’m not the reader of what I write. Then I put the thoughts into a blog, Comments, opinions about the current state of affairs.

Admittedly, Comments can edge toward strong opinions from time to time, a reflection of devilish things rippling across the land. But why not? I noted early on that it takes a certain amount of audaciousness to think that people might read my comments, and more importantly perhaps, come back a second time, and a third. I’ve been accused of enjoying a good argument. Not really, but there are times when you just have to keep talking until you convince people that you are right. The bit of the Francophile in my upbringing, sifted by way of Quebec, instills a natural penchant toward l’audace, toujours l’audace!”

At this point 138 blogs are on the site; this is number 139. The readers are mostly friends, acquaintances, and those forced to be either because they are on a mailing list. Other readers from across Europe, Canada, Australia, and Asia join a U.S. majority. Many of them send me their comments when they agree or disagree with my comments. They range from jovial “I wish I had said that” to volumes of curated articles designed to keep me reading until I change my mind. I seldom do.

The feedback mirrors the diversity of the country. Folks who went to grade school together sit at either end of the political spectrum. The young express different ambitions for the country than their elders. People who live in different regions see immigration through different lenses, depending on their experiences. It would be a boring world if we all thought the same about every issue, wouldn’t it?

There is no doubt that the nation and its people are in a serious age of disruption. What it means to be an American is morphing. In the name of democracy, state legislatures are limiting people’s right to vote, a unique oxymoron. Millions of people are ready to take up arms against …What exactly?                                            

I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing, and what it means.

So, I write.