From Reader Supported News

re you ready to be a poll worker?

To stop Trump’s dictatorial rise, a real opposition party would be mobilizing Americans to vote AND to protect the right to cast verifiable ballots while making sure they’re actually counted.

That means becoming poll workers, registration protectors, vote count monitors and much more.

A real opposition party would now be organizing massive nationwide grassroots trainings for a reliable election. Are the Dems doing that?

Trump’s Republicans enter 2018 with a 5-10% structural advantage. They’ve stripped voter registration rolls and flipped electronic vote counts since at least 2000.

This year just voting will again not be enough.

Progressives MUST become poll workers, bring voters to the polls, monitor vote counts after the balloting, and refuse to concede close elections.

Strip/flip tactics gave Republicans the presidency in 2000, 2004 and 2016. In 2014 and 2016, they took six US Senate seats when their candidate trailed in the exit polls and/or “won” by less than five points.

Those six seats gave Trump control of US Supreme Court, his mega-tax cut for the super-rich, and much more.

To win one or both houses of Congress this year, far more than just voting will be required. Some reasons:

• • The GOP is everywhere waging war on the right to vote, targeting (as always) primarily people of color, ethnicity, youth, and low income.

• • Suspected Democrats now face impossible demands involving photo ID, proof of citizenship, movable/disappearing precincts, massive voter roll purges, elimination of early and weekend voting, elimination of same-day registration, outright intimidation, and more.

• • Key swing states have been targeted, but procedures vary from state to state, as reported in Arizona by Steve Rosenfeld at Alternet.

• • The core assault on voting rights comes primarily from US-based corporate Republicans, but Russian operatives did access registration rolls in Illinois in 2016, and rolls nationwide are as vulnerable as ever.

• • White Supremacist Trump crony Kris Kobach (now running for Governor of Kansas) has deployed Crosscheck to strip voter rolls, as Choicepoint was used by then-governor Jeb Bush to steal Florida 2000. As reported by Greg Palast, Crosscheck will strip voter rolls in many states in 2018.

• • Palast now reports as much as ten percent of the Georgia electorate is being stripped from the voter rolls, more than enough to flip the governor’s race to an extreme right-wing Trumpist.

• • The US Supreme Court has let Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted strip more than a million voters (of about 5.4 million) in mostly Democratic urban areas.

• • Photo ID requirements and other Jim Crow methods to deny voting rights are still in use throughout the US.

• • Indigenous citizens who have post boxes rather than street addresses are being stripped from voter rolls, a move (unless it’s stopped) likely to give North Dakota’s US Senate seat to Trump.

• • Based on corrupted registration rolls, millions will be given provisional ballots that will go straight into the trash.

• • Electronic voting machines all over the US have source codes hidden from independent watchdogs.

• • Many of them are 15 or more years old and are obsolete, unreliable and easily hacked.

• • Hacking can be done by state and local officials, Russian operatives, and anyone else with wifi capabilities and/or insider access.

• • Algorithms still in use “beheaded” 70,000 ballots in Detroit, Flint and other Democratic areas in 2016, producing “no votes for president” that gave Michigan to Trump.

• • Activists led by the Green Party’s Jill Stein won a 2016 court decision forcing a recount in Michigan, but Democrats led by Hillary Clinton refused to join, guaranteeing Trump’s victory there.

• • Digital ballot images can enhance vote count security, but are being resisted by Trumpists in Alabama, Georgia and elsewhere.

• • Gerrymandering gives the GOP control of the US House and many state legislatures.

• • Evenly divided between GOP/Dem voters, Ohio has 12 GOP US Reps versus 4 Dems, plus GOP super-majorities in the state legislature; similar scams rule North Carolina and elsewhere.

• In 2020, US electoral maps will be redrawn, as heavily impacted by this year’s outcome.

The message is clear: to stop a Trump dictatorship, voting is not enough.

Voter rolls must be protected, poll access promoted, precincts preserved, vote counts verified.

Progressives must become poll workers. The right to vote must be actively protected. Candidates must not concede close elections until they’re thoroughly investigated.

The Democrats have utterly failed to effectively oppose Trump’s blitzkrieg toward absolute power.

To stop him, somebody must hold massive, nationwide, grassroots trainings needed to promote and protect the vote. This is the key moment.

A tsunami of cash from the Koch Brothers and others is about to inundate this election.

Without an effective opposition party, fascism will happen here.

If it’s to be stopped at the ballot box, just voting will not be enough.

Will the Democratic Party finally do what’s needed to keep yet another election from being stripped and flipped?

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections is at www.freepress.org, along with Bob’s Fitrakis Files. Harvey’s Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to the Trumpocalypse to Rebirth will soon be at www.solartopia.org, where Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth now resides.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.