The 4 Words That Will Decide The Presidency In 2024: Election Protection, Grassroots Organizing

by Harvey Wasserman

Despite the euphoric nomination of Kamala Harris, the four words that will really decide this campaign are being missed: ELECTION PROTECTION and GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING.

They mean an election conducted primarily with hand marked and digitally scanned paper ballots, many millions of which will be by mail… and with a massive grassroots campaign whose progressive money will fund thousands of grassroots organizers working at the local level, with community democracy centers and door-to-door relational campaigning meant to transcend the hundreds of millions of dollars the major parties will otherwise squander on media advertising.

At least since the 2000 Florida debacle that put George W. Bush in the White House, the 2004 Ohio debacle that kept him there, and the 2016 debacles in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that made Trump President, the modern outlines of public disenfranchisement have evolved toward the critical mass we now face in 2024.

That disenfranchisement is meant to empower a future defined by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” and Donald Trump’s “Agenda 47.”  Taken jointly, these two evil plans articulate a clear threat to the future of American democracy, freedom and ecological survival.

In 2020, our national election was saved by hand-marked, hand-counted, digitally scanned paper ballots… by a fierce nationwide battle to save voter registration rolls… and by a massive grassroots organizing campaign that inspired citizens to vote in record numbers, with those votes reliably protected once cast. Amidst the Covid Pandemic, that movement ultimately rode an unprecedented wave of tens of millions of paper ballots that were mailed out and mailed back in through the US Postal Service.

Without the successes of these nascent national election protection and grassroots organizing campaigns, Donald Trump would be in the White House… and there would most likely be no election happening this year… or ever again in the US.

But since VOTE 2024 is upon us, the two most critical elements to making it safe, fair and reliable will be the same elements that have been with us at least since 2000. Their core elements include:

PROTECTING THE VOTER ROLLS:

In the lead-up to the 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush purged at least 90,000 suspected black and Hispanic voters from Florida’s registration rolls. The outcome hung on 537 ballots as the US Supreme Court certified a violent assault on the south Florida vote count, and then installed Jeb’s brother George as president. Three current US Supreme Court Justices— John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett— were directly associated with the “Brooks Brothers Mob” that violently assaulted vote counters and swung the final tally to Bush.

As reported at the time by Greg Palast, Jeb’s partisan computing stripped tens of thousands of  likely Democrats of their franchise. As reported by Bob Fitrakis and I, the process was repeated in Ohio 2004.

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In 2024, the Trump sequel again has swing state Republicans stripping anti-Trump voters, almost identified by race. Georgia, for example, lets any single individual in the state to challenge the legitimacy of literally thousands of registered voters with no evidence required to justify the disenfranchisement.  

Thus individual MAGA activists are officially filing bogus lists with tens of thousands of names their corrupted local election boards then routinely erase from the rolls. The victims do usually have the right to re-register.  But this and other attacks on the voter rolls could well swing any state the MAGA movement attacks in a systematic way.

SAVING THE PRECINCTS:

Plotted most actively by MAGA mastermind Steve Bannon (currently in prison), a war is being waged on the thousands of local precincts where the American electorate will cast its ballots.

The Bannon plan is to fill those precincts with Trump operatives trained to drive away and de-register anti-Trump votersand deny them ballots. That also means terrorizing election boards and precinct staff, guaranteeing that countless ballots that do get through remain uncounted.

Thus the battle over local election boards and precinct staffing determine this election’s outcome.

Many thousands of young people are now volunteering to work this election.  Hopefully they’ll work the polls while protecting the voter rolls and guaranteeing the precincts will deliver the ballots that a rightfully authorized and accurately count them once cast.

GUARANTEEING HAND-MARKED, DIGITALLY-SCANNED, RELIABLY AUDITED PAPER BALLOTS

In Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2016,  massive “irregularities” plagued the computerized vote counts in a wide range of electronic balloting devices.

As reported by Bev Harris, wild fluctuations on computerized machines in Volusia County and elsewhere threw around more than enough votes to swing the 2000 vote count. As documented by Robert Fitrakis, similar malfunctions in scores of machines repeated the problem in Ohio 2004. The 2016 irregularities in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania may again have been enough to decide the election.

But in the wake of Ohio 2004, a national grassroots movement erupted to demand hand-marked paper ballots that would be digitally scanned to facilitate a speedy, verifiable vote count. Amidst the 2020 Covid epidemic, more than 80% of the nation’s ballots were cast on paper, backed up with digitized scanning devices.

The high reliability of digitally scanned hand-marked paper ballots made the critical difference in 2020, as the verified vote count throughout the US proved impossible for Donald Trump to overturn. A highly sophisticated, well-coordinated counter-attack by AUDIT USA also saved the vote count in Arizona from being corrupted by a corrupt out of state “NINJA Audit” firm that sought to turn the state to Trump.

The reliability of the vote count in 2024 will once again turn on the use of hand-marked paper ballots that are digitally scanned and then reliably audited. It will be up to a national grassroots movement, working precinct by precinct, to make sure that happens.

SAVING THE US POSTAL SERVICE

According to the US Election Assistance Agency, a majority of the ballots cast in the 2020 election were mailed out using the US Postal Service, then mailed back in once they were marked. That should happen again this fall. 

But the reliability of the US mail was a cause for concern then, and remains so in 2024.  The USPS is still being run by Trump appointee Louis DeJoy. DeJoy won’t be gone by November. Any movement invested in a credible 2024 election had best keep a careful eye on the USPS.

GRASSROOTS RELATIONAL ORGANIZING

The Democratic Party’s entrenched corporatocracy usually wastes countless donated dollars on electronic advertising. The insider consultants often get kickbacks on the fees the campaigns plunk down for slick media campaigns whose payback in terms of actual votes can be marginal at best.

This year there’s no space for that kind of gamble. The grassroots “Georgia Miracle” that turned two US Senate seats in 2020-2 could be mirrored this year in narrow outcomes in dozens of races throughout the US. But to win them, the unavoidable imperative is to focus campaign dollars not on diffuse media buys, but on“relational” campaigns based on door-knocking, street canvassing, democracy centers, and what organizer Ray McClendon calls “target messaging from targeted messengers” who work the neighborhoods where they live. That means on-the-ground organizing led by local activists advocating for ocal issues with tangible impacts on local voters.

Given the life-and-death stakes in this election, the glib belief that we’re entitled to a safe, reliable election that can be won by clever advertising and standardized anti-Trump messaging blared repeatedly through the media and the social networks simply won’t cut it.

PRESERVING A NON-VIOLENT CONSTITUTIONAL TRANSITION

Race-based partisan violence has been ingrained to the American electoral process from the get-go. It dates in particular to the KKK Reconstruction Era nightmares following the Civil War.

Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and the MAGA core have made clear they consider Trump’s victory in 2024 to be a divinely sanctioned certainty. They explicitly consider it their religious duty to bring about a Christian Nationalist state by any means necessary, including the kinds of violence that erupted on January 6, 2021.

A wide range of procedural dodges through which MAGA fascism could subvert the will of a majority vote are possible this fall. They include massive manipulation of the vote count in a large number of swing state precincts by pre-installed MAGA flunkies; a refusal of MAGA state officials to certify electoral vote counts needed by a victor to get to 270 (thus defaulting the vote to Congress, where Trump would likely win); subbing in fake Electors as Trump tried to do in 2020; intimidation of electoral officials, which Trump tried in Georgia, and much more. All the above would likely be upheld by a Trump-dominated US Supreme Court.

Klan-style violence is also likely at precincts with long voting lines, and against election officials who refuse to toe the MAGA line.

We must further expect a mass 1/6-type armed assault on the Congress, aiming to kill ratification of an Electoral College majority.

Forewarned is forearmed. Any/all the above demand detailed preparation.  A road map as to what could happen and how it can be prevented is imperative.  

The one thing of which we can be certain in 2024 is that given the history of the Trump/MAGA movement— and its belief in its divine right to rule— nothing will be “normal.”

The stakes could not be higher.

Whether you like it or not, democracy means you ARE involved.  So...

To help save the 2024 election see the People’s HUB for Grassroots Election Organizing and join our Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms most Mondays 2-4pm PT / 5-7 ET.

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Harvey Wasserman wrote The People's Spiral Of US History and Solartopia! Our Green Powered Earth