By Patricia Godoy-Kain

If you are hard pressed to believe that the 2020 elections cannot be stolen, keep in mind that Trump wants to stay in power to avoid criminal charges for many of his transgressions for which there is ample public evidence. For that purpose, I would like to invite you to think about the following:

Since the impeachment, Trump and the Republicans have been working to find all kinds of ways to swing the population’s feelings to get behind Trump, painting him as a ‘victim of false accusations’ by the Democrats and the media. Trump himself has constantly used the term ‘witch hunt’ when evidence of his multidimensional violation of laws, ethics, facts, etc. surface and it is made public.  The Republican Senate violated every element of honesty, decency, and their elected responsibilities by their actions when the articles of impeachment reached them widely demonstrated by Republican House and Senate elected officials. Trump knows he has to stay in office for another 4 years to avoid criminal charges.

So, significant effort has gone onto creating/setting the stage for reelection (legal or not). The first effort was to create a national crisis by using the refugee wave on the US southern border in 2019 and bill it as a national emergency, just as the impeachment process in the House was getting to the end.  Trump and the Republican apparatus tried to represent the refugee wave at the Southern border as a national security threat and national emergency, which would allow Trump to exercise (abuse) the Office Emergency Powers.

That did not work, so new efforts were needed to be made and thus enter the effort to look for a war.

Trump and his team came up with multiple ways to bait Iran into a war (starting a war worked for GW Bush reelection), it may work for him and get the people to refocus on it instead of the impeachment and the surrounding investigations and findings.  One of the most dangerous and egregious actions to try to draw Iran into war was conducted on January 3, 2020, when a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport targeted and killed Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani. It is not necessary to point out that this was in violation of US and International Law, but Iran did not take the bait.

Upon this failure, his next move was to find all the different ways to reduce the number of ballots reaching voters and the number being returned to be counted for state and local elections as well as for the presidential elections. At the same time, Trump and the Republican party mounted a national effort to increase the number of Republicans in elected positions in several key/swing states at the state, city and local level to facilitate voter suppression and ballot rejection.

Why do state and local elections matter? Because ensuring Republicans at state, city and other local levels facilitates Trump and the Republican apparatus to have easy reach for voter suppression and ballot elimination during the presidential elections.

So, what are some of the actions taken towards voter suppression and ballot rejection? There have been many, but the following are some examples:

1) Sabotage/undermine the USPS by cutting their operational budget and eliminating USPS mailboxes around the cities, and in particular in key/swing states.  The goal is to delay delivery of ballots to voters and delay/make it harder, if not impossible, to get the ballots back in time to be counted.  Trump appointed one of his fundraisers with no relevant experience to ensure the demise of the USPS.  Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-08-21/dejoy-appointment-postmaster-dishonest

2) Coordinate efforts with Republican Governors in Florida, Georgia, and other states to limit access to the polls and purge the voter registration lists, in particular in predominantly Democratic counties.  Remember the elections in Georgia in particular. Source: https://theconversation.com/georgias-election-disaster-shows-how-bad-voting-in-2020-can-be-141678

3) Parallel to the sabotage of the USPS, Trump and the Republican party, Republican Governors, and other state and local elected officials have mounted an effort to create a cloud of suspicion around ‘mailed ballots,’ pretending it is something new and open for easy corruption and falsification, and that the system cannot handle it.  This, of course, could not be further from the truth. There are several states where voting by mail has been the norm for many decades.  Additionally, the US Armed forces stationed around the world, diplomats, and US citizens working overseas have been voting by mail for many decades with no evidence of irregularities.

4) Trump has consistently and falsely stated that voting by mail cannot be trusted – never mind that he votes by mail – in order to delegitimize voting by mail, and set the stage to further reduce the ballots to be counted and increase the number of ballots to be rejected with support from the Republican governors in many states (like Jeb Bush did for GW Bush first term).

5) Trump and the Republican Party/Republican Congress/Republican governors, and other state officials have been working around the clock since the impeachment to find all the different ways to overturn a popular vote that gives electoral college votes to Biden instead of Trump.  This was well articulated in the following article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-election/608989/

6) Trump and the Republican Party are reaching into State Legislatures to change the electoral college votes if the count does not go in his favor. https://theconversation.com/could-a-few-state-legislatures-choose-the-next-president-146950

Just 3 examples of the effort as we get closer to election day to steal the election by eliminating voting and ballots at the local level are as follows:

On September 23 during a press conference Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost the election. His answer was as follows:

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens...You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster." He went on to say, "Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation."  Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-peaceful-transition-if-he-loses-get-rid-ballots-there-n1240896

Every US citizen should really believe what he said: “GET RID OF THE BALLOTS”.  Because that is what Trump and Republican Party officials, the Republicans in Congress, the Republican governors and all Republicans on the state and local level have been working on since the impeachment.  All of these efforts have manifested themselves across the country in local elections as instances of voter list purging, polling locations limitations, voting hours limitation, etc. This has been accompanied by the Trump campaign to eliminate voting by mail in as many states/counties as possible by trying to push through the courts the false narrative that they are wrought with fraud.

On September 28, in Houston, TX the activist Steve Hotze as well as Wendell Champion, a Republican candidate for Congress; Sharon Hemphill, a Republican candidate for judge; and the local GOP chair, sued to stop early voting.  They argue that Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins is overreaching the bounds of state election law. They’re asking the state’s highest civil court to order Harris County to not begin early voting until Oct. 19 – the date set by state law that Abbott extended by executive order, citing safety concerns – and not accept absentee ballots delivered in person until Nov. 3. Source:

On September 30, a judge in Montana denied Trump campaign efforts to suppress vote by mail claiming that it would be great voter fraud. Source: https://campaignlegal.org/update/federal-judge-rebukes-trump-campaign-trying-suppress-mail-voting

And last but not least, the unfortunate death of RBG, which is unfortunate for the nation, but fortuitous for Trump and the Republicans to facilitate stealing the elections. Trump and the Republicans in Congress will add another dimension to stealing the elections by ensuring that the highest court in the nation will have a new member to ensure the election is handed to him by the court when he challenges the votes come Election Day and in the final count.  

SO, VOTE and VOTE EARLY and IN –PERSON IF POSSIBLE!!! 

IF YOU ARE VOTING BY MAIL, MAKE SURE IT IS CORRECTLY MARKED WITH THE RIGHT COLOR INK. READ AND FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS TO THE LETTER OR IT RUNS THE RISK OF BEING ‘REJECTED.”