April 13th 2020

By Bob Fitrakis, Joel Segal & Harvey Wasserman

Donald Trump’s “Perfect Plan” to become dictator in November now runs through 30 Republican-controlled state legislatures, with the pivot in 12-18 swing states.

Anyone hoping for any remnant shreds of human rights and personal freedom has just seven months to stop the terminal destruction of what’s left of American democracy.  Nothing is hidden or a surprise. There are no excuses. 

Trump’s path to dictatorship is simple…and no secret. 

Its primary foundation is the stripping from the voter rolls some 17 million American citizens.  Using a wide range of pretexts, the Republicans have made it clear that “voter fraud” means any ballot cast by anyone who is not rich, white, old or a member of the Republican Party.

There has been no effort to hide this.  Trump has worried in public that if all eligible voters get a ballot in a Vote by Mail system, the Republicans “will never win another election.” 

The Electoral College means, in effect, that we no longer have national elections.  The presidency this fall will essentially be decided in 12-18 states. In many of them, GOP legislators have proudly proclaimed that they’ll do everything they can to restrict the vote. 

We have already seen in Wisconsin (and now in Ohio) the definitive GOP model for November.  It’s based on stripped voter rolls, withheld ballots, dysfunctional polling stations and rigged vote counts. 

Thirty states have Republican legislatures.  A dozen of them could swing the Electoral College to Trump. Six more may be in play.

Despite its Democrat governor, Wisconsin’s gerrymandered state legislature (as certified by the US Supreme Court) trashed the April 6 primary.  It stripped voter rolls, sabotaged Wisconsin’s vote by mail system and forced countless non-millionaires of youth and color to stand in line for hours, exposing themselves to the rain and Coronavirus. .

In 2019 alone, Ohio's GOP Secretary of State stripped 485,000 citizens from the Ohio voter rolls.   This spring, Ohio’s primary was rightfully postponed until April 28 by its Republican Governor Mike DeWine.  But in the interim, the gerrymandered Legislature has duplicated Wisconsin’s age/race/class-based disenfranchisement by making it virtually impossible for non-millionaires to get vote-by-mail ballots.

Unless somehow stopped, Republican legislatures will do the same in November, guaranteeing Trump’s coronation.  The key states include Alabama (which has a critical US Senate race), Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin.  Minnesota has a split legislature, as does Alaska. 

The twelve most critical swing states are MN, WI, MI, OH, PA, NH, NC, FL, NM, AZ, NV, IA.  They are almost certain to decide the election.

Six states where the Democrats have an outside chance are Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky.  Georgia and Texas have strongly shifting demographics. Louisiana, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky are also generally considered blood red, but all four have Democrat governors.  Kentucky is especially key because its senior Senator Mitch McConnell is running for re-election. 

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Nevada also have Democrat governors.  In many, Democrat popular majorities in 2018 (55% in Wisconsin) were overridden by gerrymandering that gave the legislatures to the Republicans, sometimes with 2/3 margins or more.

And as in Wisconsin and Ohio, come November the GOP plan will be to shred the Vote by Mail systems, making it impossible for suspected Democrats to get ballots. 

The situation is complicated by the Trump assault on the US Postal Service.  The Republicans have long wanted to destroy the USPS, mostly because it is a largely functional, heavily unionized public institution that could be privatized for the immense personal profit of their corporate cronies.  The Trumpites now have the added incentive of destroying the most effective way to distribute ballots in a Vote by Mail scenario.

We can also expect Republican legislatures to guarantee that polling stations in areas of youth and color will be reduced in number, short-changed on ballots and supplied with hackable voting machines all set to flip the vote.  The polling stations will also be riddled with irregularities, making millions stand in line for hours…then trashing their mostly “provisional” ballots anyway.

Vote by Mail has many respected opponents for a wide range of very good reasons.  Establishing a functional, reliable VBM system will be a monumental task.

But it’s also important to remember how incredibly complex, thoroughly corrupted and easily hacked our traditional ways of voting have been, and would be again in 2020. 

As with Al Gore in Florida 2000, John Kerry in Ohio 2004 and Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2018, we can expect the Democratic Party to say and do little that’s effective about any of this. 

In all three of those elections, Green/election protection journalists and activists showed clearly how the deciding votes were stolen.  The Republicans generally don’t bother to deny it. 

But in all three, charges of “conspiracy theory” are still being spewed by corporate Democrats and “progressive” media.  They cannot be counted on to do the nitty-gritty work it will take to install, operate and monitor a reliable VBM system.  That will have to come from a powerful, focused grassroots movement. 

If Biden is the 2020 nominee, it’s likely he’ll win a legitimate popular majority, watch the Electoral vote stolen in the states with GOP legislatures, do and say nothing about it, give everyone a big smile and quietly concede.  Trump will then be dictator…for life.

So what are you going to do about it?

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-written seven books on Election Protection, including the Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections, at www.freepress.org, where Bob’s Fitrakis Files also reside.  Harvey’s The People’s Spiral of US History:  From Jigonsaseh to Solartopia to Life After Trump is at www.solartopia.org, along with Solartopia!  Our Green-Powered Earth. Joel Segal, former aide to US Rep. John Conyers, organized early Congressional hearings on election theft, and is the National Coordinator of the Covid-19 Emergency Response Group.