Tim Stevenson is a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions from Athens (bereal@vermontel.net) and is the author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age (Green Writers Press) and Transformative Activism: A Values Revolution in Everyday Life in a Time of Societal Collapse (Apocryphile Press). He is working on a book about mutual care communities.
ATHENS-The certainty that Donald Trump will do anything he can to prevent the loss of the House of Representatives (hence, near-certain impeachment) and perhaps even the Senate (where upon conviction of the impeachment charge he could be removed from office and vulnerable to criminal prosecution) in this November’s midterm election renders him a most desperate man.
The insufferable blow to his fragile, malignant narcissistic ego, dissolution of his unsupportable fantasy of being the master of the universe, and sudden vulnerability to criminal prosecution would engender an intolerable existence for him. He will do anything to avoid what for him is a fate of existential proportions.
Hence, it’s not surprising that Trump has been busy trying to shape the midterm election in ways that would both disenfranchise millions of us while placing the determination of the election’s results in his hands.
Toward that end, he suggested that Republicans should take over running elections in at least 15 unspecified (hint: Democrat) states in order to control how ballots will be cast and counted, all while pushing the Republican majorities in Congress to “nationalize” the election, so as to usurp from the states their constitutionally designated power.
He’s even stated on more than one occasion that the United States should not hold the 2026 midterm elections.
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The tendency to dismiss such rhetoric as Trump is “just joking” is belied by the recent FBI raids upon election hubs in Atlanta and in Maricopa County, Arizona, to seize materials from the 2020 election in an effort to prove his disproven claims about fraud.
Or, most alarmingly, his promotion of the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act, which would disenfranchise millions of Americans in the name of preventing the voter fraud that doesn’t exist.
Mandating proof of citizenship to register to vote, SAVE would prohibit millions of otherwise-qualified citizens from exercising their franchise because they had changed their names upon marriage, lost their birth certificates, or don’t have a passport, as would requiring a valid photo ID to vote in federal elections.
SAVE would also eliminate the popular mail-in ballots relied upon by nearly 50 million Americans.
Trump has also insisted that his private law firm, the U.S. Department of Justice, mandate that states turn over their most sensitive voter data — ostensibly to purge ineligible voters, but in reality to eliminate large numbers of eligible Americans from voting.
There was also the recent summit at the White House in which election deniers who tried to overturn the 2020 election met with top administration election security officials to help Trump declare a national emergency as a pretext to cancel or take over the midterms.
This occurred at the same time FBI invited election officials from all 50 states to a conference with them and other federal security agencies to discuss “preparations” for this year’s election.
There is also a popular theory floating around that Trump will pressure his House speaker, Mike Johnson, to refuse to seat Democratic winners in close elections when the president claims there are disputes about the results.
All of which is not to overlook the crucial question as to what role Trump will order the military and ICE Gestapo to play as their commander-in-chief.
In addition to the MAGA operatives calling for ICE and customs agents to be deployed at polling locations that would intimidate voters and create fear at the ballot box, Trump proposed to an audience of military brass last September about using American cities as training grounds for the armed forces, and needing the military to combat the “invasion from within.”
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What can we do to stop Trump’s attempted theft?
1. Remind ourselves and others that Trump’s actions and inactions on Jan. 6, 2021 demonstrated that he’s totally capable of trying to overthrow this election.
2. Build a campaign over the months ahead that prepares us to prevent our election from being stolen. This campaign could include:
—Encouraging people to register and vote in November’s election to produce undeniable landslide victories.
—Volunteering to be a poll worker and/or poll watcher.
—Holding regular potluck community conversations, informing one another as to what is happening and discussing what we can do together.
—Calling upon our state and federal lawmakers to make public statements to our neighbors in uniform that they have a constitutional duty not to obey illegal orders.
—Confirming with our local police that they’ll remove any illegal federal presence from voting areas.
—Preparing to boycott multinational corporations to hurt the profits of Trump’s oligarchic buddies. (Remember Jimmy Kimmel and the successful Disney boycott?)
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Finally, we can prepare to participate in a national strike: no school, no work. We can do so by:
—Connecting with neighbors and friends to plan how to take care of each other in the event of such an action.
—Stocking up on essentials in advance, including non-perishable foods, prescriptions, and yes, rolls of bathroom tissue, etc. But shop from local businesses only.
—Filling vehicle gas tanks on election eve, and several gas cans beforehand.
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Prevailing in this election is not our final victory over fascism, but successfully preserving our universal suffrage is fundamental to any true democracy.
Several of us are building a campaign to defeat Trump’s attempted election suppression. Please join us. We welcome your participation, as well as ideas and suggestions. Contact me: bereal@vermontel.net
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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