 |
| In my personal news bubble it felt last week as though the tide had turned. That sense was well communicated (with multiple links) in the October 16, 2020 email. from Heather Cox Richardson. I read the comforting note that Nielson reported a higher viewership for the Biden townhall than the Trump circus. I smiled at the comment on twitter, “So it’s Mister Rogers vs Crazy Uncle Moron oh my god how the ___ will I ever decide which one to choose?” I breathed a short sigh of relief. But then… I did what I often do, I checked the headlines at FoxNews.com. A screenshot of the middle of the Fox webpage the morning after the town halls (Friday, October 16) is posted above. It is just a sample of a slew of articles of the same type that have appeared on Fox since then. Check out the local Inland Northwest “news” outlets, RedoubtNews.com and RadioFreeRedoubt.com, as a thorough cure for complacency. Note that none of these “news” outlets has a paywall or membership fee, while the ones that do have a fee are the outlets that do actual investigative reporting, Ponder how many people have their “news” shaped by free fonts of opinion like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity. My message today is a simple one: Do not relax. This is not over, and, regardless of what happens on November 3 and the weeks that follow, it still won’t be over. Even if voted down, these people and their propaganda won’t just slink away into the night. They didn’t disappear after FDR fought them to establish Social Security in the 1930s. They didn’t go away after LBJ fought them to push through the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid in the 1960s. They didn’t go away after Barrack Obama fought to enact the Affordable Care Act in 2009, and they won’t go away even if Trump is roundly beaten in the upcoming election and Democrats retake the U.S. Senate, governorships, and state houses. VOTE!! And take this opportunity to pay attention to our voting systems. The national media beat us each day this or that legislative or judicial outrage around the details of voting. It’s a confusing and overwhelming mess from a national perspective for the casual reader because each state (thanks to the U.S. Constitution) sets its own fussy and confusing rules around requirements for absentee ballots, drop boxes, ballot harvesting, and ballot handling–rules sometimes meant to enhance security and sometimes set for electoral advantage. Never before in my lifetime has the spotlight shown so brightly on the variation in the varied voting systems of our country. Fortunately, Washington State’s voting system is among the very best. By now most of my readers should have received their ballot in the mail. Your contact as a voter with the voting system in Washington State is MyVote.wa.gov or VoteWA.gov (entering either in your browser window will take you to the same place). Commit one of those web addresses to memory. There you can check 1) what address your ballot is/was mailed to, 2) when your ballot was mailed, 3) whether and when it was received by the county auditor and 4) much more. Check it out. A lot of candidate information and voting recommendations are available at your fingertips. My favorites: The ProgressiveVotersGuide.com has expanded to cover eight states. Beware: I just figured out that if you want recommendations down to local candidates (at least for WA) you need to enter your voting address instead of simply clicking on your state symbol. The Guide offers commentary and links. The League of Women Voters is a great source of videoed candidate forums. The League of Women Voters Spokane Area candidate forums for many local races and links to forums for statewide candidates. Over the last four years I have commented on many issues and candidates that appear on the November ballot. Visit jxindivisible.org and enter key word or names in the Search box to retrieve them. I hope you find them helpful. As well as seeing what’s on Fox and Redoubt News, I occasionally visit WeBelieveWeVote.org. I’ve written of the origins of this group that melds the articles of faith of Fundamentalist Christianity with Republican politics. They have quietly moved away from presenting the Second Amendment as an article of Christian faith, but their yes/no evaluation criteria (now characterized as “agreement”–or not) remain otherwise much the same. For my part, I am uncomfortable with any candidate who submits to this Yes/No questionnaire with no opportunity to express nuance. Hence, I use a high rating by WeBelieveWeVote as relative negative indicator. Finally, an article in the Spokesman on Sunday, October 18th, did a nice job of orienting Washington State voters to the controversies they hear about in the national media: As nation sees flood of voting-related lawsuits, here’s how Washington has handled the issues being litigated. Keep to the high ground, Jerry |