Category Archives: Elections & Voting

Black people will get nothing from a Joe Biden administration except fiscal austerity and the precarity that comes with it. Continue reading →

November 3 is upon us. At the risk of overstating the obvious, if you haven’t already done so, and in the name of all that’s good and fair, please exercise your right to vote. It’s more crucial than ever. Truly. Continue reading →

In 2008, Americans voted for hope and change. In 2016, they voted for fire and fury—and change. In 2020, the vote for change comes from an entirely different quarter. Continue reading →

While Americans are reprogrammed every four years for the most important desperately crucial national emergency election since the last one, which will assure that Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel and billionaires maintain power and control over everything that matters, most eligible voters will choose neither of the ruling power’s candidates and in a sense exercise democratic values by refusing to act as majority puppets. Continue reading →

President Donald Trump on Wednesday once again openly voiced hope that U.S. courts—now packed with his right-wing judges—will intervene and stop states from counting legally submitted ballots after November 3, remarks that came just before the U.S. Supreme Court suggested it could invalidate late-arriving Pennsylvania votes after Election Day. Continue reading →

Biden always obliges Trump by denying that he will do anything that rank and file Democrats want and that would in fact increase his odds of winning. Continue reading →

The U.S. Supreme Court late Monday delivered a victory for the Republican Party by barring the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin from extending its Election Day deadline for the arrival of absentee ballots amid the pandemic, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh issuing an ominous concurring opinion that echoes President Donald Trump’s false narrative on mail-in voting. Continue reading →

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation as the ninth justice on the U.S. Supreme Court is a travesty of democracy. Continue reading →

Repeating his desire for a winner to be declared on the night of November 3, President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he doesn’t “believe” tallying votes for weeks after Election Day is lawful, a remark observers interpreted as yet another open signal of the president’s intention to challenge the counting of legally submitted ballots. Continue reading →

Political analysts of all stripes have concluded that President Trump has a base of supporters who are credulous, immovable, and unpersuadable. Allow us to briefly test that hypothesis, but to ignore the skins-shirts labels—Left-Right, Democrat-Republican—that often though not always determine how a person votes. Continue reading →

Trump’s Kampf (German for struggle) has been clear since before he got in the White House. Continue reading →

I live in a ghost town—at least Donald Trump seems to think so. It’s “a ghost town!” he exclaimed more than once at Thursday night’s second and last debate with Joe Biden. “Take a look at New York and what’s happened to my wonderful city. For so many years, I loved it. It was vibrant. It’s dying. Everyone’s leaving New York.” Continue reading →

This country has a long history of disenfranchising and suppressing the votes of people of color, particularly in the South. But in 2013 the voter suppression efforts of yesteryear came roaring back. That’s when the Supreme Court gutted key provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those provisions had stopped states with histories of voter suppression from changing their election laws without an okay from the federal government. Continue reading →

Trump is likely to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife with “fraud like you’ve never seen,” as he alleged during his debate with Joe Biden—although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. Continue reading →

In ordinary times, Ted Glick would hardly be someone you’d expect to hear urging fellow progressives to vote for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Continue reading →

Although the United States hails itself as a bastion of representative democracy, voting regulations suppress the vote even in a normal year—and even more so during the pandemic. Continue reading →

In response to vote suppression measures filed by the Trump re-election campaign, state Republican parties and the national GOP, an attorney who represented the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 Florida recount, delivered a candid and damning statement: “You’re seeing a broad-based, generalized strategy to suppress the vote by the Republican Party,” attorney Barry Richards declared. Continue reading →

Here’s what you need to know about Proposition 22 on the California ballot, and why I’m urging you to vote NO on this corporate power grab. Continue reading →

If you’re a rich Republican who’s done nothing in the House of Representatives for so long that you’re essentially seen as a piece of furniture, what do you do when faced with a popular, well-organized, grassroots opponent who’s about to overtake you? Continue reading →

On that day in July 2016 when Donald Trump chose him as his vice-presidential running mate, Mike Pence must have felt like the luckiest man alive, or at least the luckiest Republican—whatever species that is these days. Continue reading →

The only honest thing about Pence last Wednesday night was the fly on his head. Continue reading →

How nasty is the Republican Party’s massive campaign to thwart democracy? Ask the good people of Florida. Continue reading →

Without a shred of evidence, Trump claims that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud. Rubbish. Mail-in ballots, also called absentee ballots, have been used for years across America. They have proven safe and secure. Continue reading →

Perhaps more than anyone else, Jeb Bush organized the ‘electoral’ defeat of Donald Trump this year, and the installation of Joe Biden into the White House in 2021. Continue reading →

Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. Continue reading →

Years ago, when I was a high school sophomore, at the beginning of the academic year one of our teachers gave us an assignment to come up with ideas to reform the American political system. Continue reading →

The first presidential debate was as horrific as we feared it would be. We were barely able to hear a word from Joe Biden or moderator Chris Wallace thanks to Trump’s incessant interruptions and nonstop insults. Continue reading →

The other night, amidst all our upending national disasters, I was taken with an offhand comment—or rather, offhand tweet—made by presidential historian Michael Beschloss. On March 4, 1861, Beschloss wrote, “Defeated candidate Stephen Douglas held Abraham Lincoln’s hat while the new president gave his inaugural address.” Continue reading →

WASHINGTON—When the U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term on the first Monday in October, the symbol of its most important looming development will not be an individual case but an empty chair draped in black. Continue reading →

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump frankly stated his motive for rushing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: To help him dispute the legitimacy of mail-in ballots in the November election. Continue reading →