Category Archives: voting

How a Possum Stopped Radicalization 

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We’ve seen something such as this before:

A political party seized by a charismatic leader with radicalized followers at a time of national division sees voter suppression as one of the keys to maintaining its power and threatens to drive the other party into oblivion.  But the party develops an internal fracture between the radical wing and the more traditional element and there are fears that IT will be the party going into oblivion.

From this contentious time there emerges a possum and over time, it rescues both parties.

This was the political situation in Missouri fifteen decades ago.

During the Civil War, the interim government—Governor Price and several members of the legislature had fled to Arkansas to set up a government in exile that finished the war headquartered in Texas—Radical Republicans left in control in Missouri adopted a loyalty oath to make sure Missouri would have only Union-loyal officials in charge.  The Radical movement had begun about the time the Republican Party began in the mid-1850s, their name coming from their demand for immediate end to slavery. During the war, they were opposed by the moderate wing of the party led by Abraham Lincoln, who had run fourth in the 1860 election in this state, as well as by Democrats, who were more oriented toward southern sympathies.

The Radicals confirmed their control of Missouri government with the election of Governor Thomas Fletcher in 1864, thanks in part to the organizational skills of St. Louis lawyer Charles D. Drake who in 1863 argued for a new state constitution and disenfranchisement of all Confederate sympathizers. Carl Schurz, a future U.S. Senator and a leader of Missouri’s German citizens, called him “inexorable” and said Republicans “especially in the country districts, stood much in awe of him,” which might sound familiar today.

Radical Republicans pushed through The Drake Constitution, named because of his influence, in 1865. It contained a harsh loyalty oath that basically denied citizenship rights to anyone who would not pledge that they had given no support to the rebellion. Regardless of loyalty during the war, even if a person were a Union General, citizens could not vote, practice a profession, or serve in positions of public trust unless they swore to that oath. Drake and his Radical Republicans produced a list of 81 actions that defined disloyalty. For six years the Drake-led Radicals controlled politics in Missouri and Drake became a United States Senator.

Missouri’s moderate Republicans were reeling during those years and Democrats feared for their own party’s existence.  And this is when the possum was born that saved both political groups.

Drake’s Radicals began to see rising opposition from those who called themselves Liberal Republicans—remember this was 1870 and the two words, “liberal” and “Republican” were not an oxymoron.

The Liberals had had enough of Drake and his Radicals by the time the State Republican Convention was held in Jefferson City on August 31, 1870.  The Committee on Platforms filed two reports, a majority report from the Liberals favored immediate re-enfranchisement of former Confederates.  The Radical, minority, report favored a statewide vote on the question. With former Confederate supporters banned from voting, the outcome of the election pretty clearly would have maintained Radical Control.  When the convention adopted the Radical position, about 250 Liberals walked out and nominated their own ticket with Benjamin Gratz Brown its candidate for Governor.  The Radicals nominated Joseph McClurg for a second two-year term.

Democrats, still weak shortly after the U. S. Supreme Court threw out part of the loyalty oath, decided not to put up a statewide ticket.  William Hyde, the editor of The St. Louis Republican, a Democratic newspaper despite its name, is credited with creating what became known as “The Possum Policy.”  Instead of running its own slate, the Democrats threw their support behind the Liberal Republican candidate, Brown.

Walter B. Stevens, in Missouri, the Center State, 1821-1915, records an exchange of telegrams after the State Democratic Convention decided to support Liberal Republicans in which former U. S. Senator John Brooks Henderson—who did not run for re-election after voting against convicting President Johnson of impeachment charges—told Brown, “The negroes of this state are free. White men only are now enslaved. The people look to you and your friends to deliver them from this great wrong. Shall they look in vain?”

Brown wired back, “The confidence of the people of this State shall not be disappointed. I will carry out this canvass to its ultimate consequence so that no freeman not convicted of crime shall   henceforth be deprived on an equal voice in our government.”

The Democrats’ “Possum Policy” helped Brown defeated McClurg by about 40,000 votes, effectively ending the Radical Republican reign in Missouri.

The Liberal Republicans, created for the sole purpose of ending radicalism within the party, could not survive on their own. Governor Brown’s Secretary, Frederick N. Judson, reflected, “A party based upon a single issue, called into being to meet a single emergency, could not in the nature of things become permanent…and though its party life was short, it is entitled to the imperishable glory of having destroyed the last vestige of the Civil War in Missouri. A nobler record no party could have.”

National Democrats failed to follow the Missouri party’s “Possum Policy” and in 1872 nominated a presidential ticket of Horace Greeley, the New York newspaper publisher then in failing physical and mental health, and Benjamin Brown of Missouri—-a move that antagonized the national Liberal Republican movement and led to a crushing defeat for Democrats as Liberal Republicans opposed to the Grant administration had no place to go and so supported it anyway. With that, Liberal Republican movement died nationally.

In Missouri, the re-enfranchised Democrats elected Silas Woodson to succeed Brown as Governor, beginning Democratic control of the governorship until Republican Herbert Hadley was elected in 1908.

Missourians adopted a new constitution in 1875, throwing out the punitive Drake Constitution.  It lasted until our present State Constitution was adopted in 1945, the longest-standing constitution in state history.

Republicans paid a price to overcome the radicalization of their party 150 years ago but paying that price made sure that the rights of thousands of people were no longer endangered or no longer remained limited.

Being out of power did not and does not mean being without influence. History tells us we became a better nation because political courage manifested itself at the right time within the Republican Party.  In the long term both parties saved themselves.

We are not advocating that the Republican National Committee adopt a “possum policy” in 2022 or in 2024 to stamp out radicalization within the party nor are we saying splitting the party will be the solution now that it was then. But history reminds us of the dangers of radical politics and the sacrifices that have to be made, sometimes on both sides of the aisle, to make sure it does not overwhelm us.

If I Were a Lawyer–

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—in the District of Columbia, I would have been at work for a more than a month signing up as clients Capitol and District police officers and their families for a gigantic personal injury lawsuit against Donald J. Trump. I imagine there have been some pretty busy attorneys already.

I also might be signing up the families of the men and women now in custody and facing prison time because they believed Trump summoned them to Washington to do his bidding and upend the 2020 election results by stopping the certification of the Electoral College votes.  These families are facing economic damage caused by the loss of a wage-earner and might face a certain level of social ostracism because a family member took part in January 6th (there is no need to say “the January 6th insurrection” or “riot,” because this is a specific date that will mean something, as 9-11 means something without further definition). A massive class action civil lawsuit featuring dozens of hours of powerful witness-stand testimony will be difficult to counter by defense counsel saying, “He didn’t really mean it to turn out that way” or calling the damage lawsuits violations of his First Amendment free speech rights.

One might be able to say many things and escape penalty for saying them. But there is a penalty for the damage those words produce.

The creativity of the legal profession is likely to produce other clients with other claims of other kinds.  It would not be surprising that Mr. Trump’s financial empire, such as it is, to be placed in incredible jeopardy.  It will take legal representation of epic brilliance to defend him from devastating financial liability.

In every lawsuit, in every argument, Trump’s involvement in the worst assault on our system of government since the secession of southern states if not in all national history will be recalled. Every case will batter him personally as well as financially and likely will undermine his political credibility further.

But civil court proceedings are not the only difficulty facing the former president. Criminal investigations of the financial dealings of Trump and his family as well as investigations into his efforts to change election results—and who knows what other possibilities exist—appear to be lurking in the offices of federal and state prosecutors.

The chutzpah displayed in his post-trial claim that he will be a significant influence in the 2022 elections or a viable presidential candidate for 2024 will become more questionable as each of these possible civil and criminal cases moves forward.

The aftermath of his second impeachment trial could be worse for him than the week just past.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s post-trial speech scathingly rejecting Trump’s presidency can be seen, might be seen, by many as the first significant step by the Republican Party to be a party it used to be—a party greater than Donald Trump.

Some see McConnell’s speech as duplicitous, pointing to his former role as Majority Leader when he suggested the House impeachment charges should not be delivered to the Senate while Trump was still in office and then claiming the Senate could not convict Trump because the charges had not been filed before Trump left Washington.

Although McConnell’s statement is unlikely to lessen public cynicism toward government, his direct post-trial attack on Trump is something on which the party can build—if it will.

In his own post-trial statement, Trump never mentioned January 6.  He never mentioned the assault on the capitol.  He never mentioned any regrets that his mob imperiled the people who voted to acquit him. He never extended any sympathies to the people injured in the assault or who died that day and in succeeding days because of those events. He still has not admitted that he lost the election, continuing to emphasize his 75-million votes, still refusing to acknowledge that somebody else got seven-million more through the same processes that gave him 75-million. He promised to reveal a new “vision” soon for American greatness. Let us hope his new definition is better than his old one.

Having survived the latest political questions about his actions that day, perhaps he should spend some time developing a vision for dealing with the legal problems likely to come.  No beautiful wall around Mar-A-Lago will keep the lawyers out.

The New Civil War

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We are giving Doctor Crane the Monday off today because the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election continues to degenerate to the point that positive words from Dr. Crane seem out of place today.

The U. S. Supreme Court made quick work last Friday of the Texas lawsuit challenging the presidential votes in four key states. One does not have to have a law degree to understand how this latest collapse of national norms is self-contradictory in a large manner and is a violation of the American system of justice in another.  People who should know better are the instigators of two of these attacks.

Missouri’s attorney general is one of eighteen attorneys general who attacked the integrity of elections in those states.

But that’s not Missouri’s only involvement in the last-ditch efforts to overturn the results.

A resolution demanding that six key states prove to the Missouri legislature that their elections were run properly has been assigned to a committee of the Missouri House. It will be up to the outgoing speaker, who did not sign the resolution, to decide whether to spend state money and to recall the full House for a few hours to consider the resolution—-if it gets out of committee.

Many of those who think either of these actions is proper also are those who strongly support states rights.  Yet Missouri is sticking its nose into the elections processes of some of its sister sovereign states, impugning the rights of those states to conduct their elections under their laws and to resolve any questions within those states. These states are under no obligation to prove anything to the Missouri House, which probably would loudly reject any suggested by any of those states that it prove to them that our presidential results were not tainted.

Imagine what backlash these actions could have.

What is to keep Mississippi from challenging Missouri’s gambling laws?  What is to keep the attorney general of California from challenging a Missouri environmental law?  Why should not the attorney general of Minnesota challenge Missouri’s clean water statutes?   Why shouldn’t the attorney general in Arizona assert that suitcases full of pre-marked Trump ballots were spirited into local election officials’ offices and demand Missouri prove the assertion is untrue?

They can’t do that, you say. Yes, they can. The Golden Rule invites them to do so under precedents that now are being set. .

The results of the November 3 election have fueled a new Civil War that seems to say it is okay for one state to take another state to court because the first does not like a law in the second state.

The House resolution flies in the face of the cherished standard of innocent-until-proven-guilty.  It assumes six states are guilty of fraudulent election practices and demands that they prove their innocence.  Has this election so damaged the nation’s intellect that a foundational part of our justice system is invalid—or arbitrarily and selectively invalid, which is even worse?

Maybe we’re missing something here, but it appears this resolution signed by more than sixty members of the House of Representatives has extended their job descriptions to be a judge and a jury that already has passed judgement on other election returns in six other states. Would you, in the normal course of your daily life, think it’s a good idea that one of your neighbors can be a judge and jury pronouncing your guilty of improperly doing the family laundry and demand that you prove you did not?

Guilty, says the jury that is the Missouri House.  Without a trial.  Prove yourself NOT guilty.

Maybe there are reasons within the current political climate and the current administration that are driving these actions. A person who is even minimally aware of the current national political situation could construct some scenarios to explain these things and perhaps someday someone will reveal what has triggered this meddling in other states’ elections.

We would rather see Missouri’s officials paying attention to the problems of Missouri than becoming involved in a new civil war that pits states against states.

Or do we no longer believe in the Pledge of Allegiance’s description of one “indivisible” nation?

 

And the winner—

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(Your faithful observer confesses to being less observant than he thought he was, as at least three of you faithful consumers have been good enough to remind me.  For those who don’t or won’t in the future know about that to which I refer, go on with your lives. For those who do, please note that I have made the slight correction you suggest, with thanks.  But Mr. Biden is still P45.)

—won’t be known until January 6, 2021, two weeks before inauguration day.

Not officially, anyway.

We think we’ll know.  The networks will think they know.  The print reporters and the pundits will think they know. But they won’t be correct until January 6.

Officially.

Before we launch into an explanation of those statements, we want to say two things.

First: Joseph Biden will NOT be the 46th President of the United States.  He will be the 45th.  He will lead the 46th presidential administration but he will be the 45th president.  Grover Cleveland screwed up the numbering system when he served two non-consecutive terms and somebody decided he would be the 22nd and 24th President.  He was not two people. But he did lead two administrations.   It’s a small thing. But there are those who get really irritated with the lack of clarity in describing Mr. Biden as our 46th president. If should be apparent who one of them is.

(On Monday, we heard Governor Parson talk briefly about what an honor it is to be Missouri’s 57th governor and to realize how small the group is of men who have led the state in its 200 years.  Actually, the group is more exclusive than that.  He’s our 55th Governor, serving the 57th administration.  Phil Donnelly was 41 and 43 and Christopher Bond was 47 and 49 in terms of state administrations. So Governor Parson is one of only 55.)

Second and more important to today’s discussion: Our county election officials and the hundreds of volunteers who filled various roles on election day—for pitifully little pay—did something remarkable two weeks ago. Not just in Missouri.  Nationwide. With all of the concern about trouble from poll watchers, concerns that the number of voters would overwhelm the system, that the pandemic added hostile and confusing elements, and with the U. S. Postal Service set up to be a fall guy if some absentee or mail-on ballots didn’t get counted, election day happened without noticeable problems beyond the usual ones.  Election days are never easy days for those responsible for administering them.  But November, 2020 should be remembered because our election authorities stayed focused on their jobs and their responsibilities and did a highly-praiseworthy job. Thank Heavens our state went Republican. Otherwise those good folks would be living with unreasonable accusations and insults they do not deserve.

Now, on with our explanation of why we won’t have an official winner until the first week of the new year.

A week ago today we went to bed and we woke up and we didn’t know who would take the oath of office in Washington on January 20, 2021.

There’s a lot about this process of picking a president that we have forgotten about—if we ever knew it.

First, there’s this reminder. You and I were not electing a president two weeks ago.  We were indicating a preference for a president. We were deciding which party’s electors would elect a president.  Missouri Democrats and Republicans each select ten electors, one for each of our members of congress plus two because we have two Senators.  Our system says the person who finishes ahead in the popular vote in Missouri gets all ten of our electors. The electors then vote for the president.  In 2016, Donald Trump won Missouri 10-0.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  Our friend Phill Brooks, who started covering the Capitol about the same time your obedient servant did and writes a weekly political column about Missouri politics, said in a recent column, “the results reported on election night are neither official nor complete.”

Those of us who enjoy reporting the numbers on election night like to think they are, but Phill is correct. Mail-in and absentee ballots are counted after election day if they are postmarked by election day.  That’s why the numbers from the November 3 election were not certified by local election authorities on the spot.

But those are not the official numbers.

“The state law gives the state Board of Canvassers several more weeks before announcing the official state results based on those local reports,” Phill wrote. It is during this time that required recounts in local elections take place and protests or lawsuits are filed.  Once all of that is resolved and canvassers certify no problems with the count, a determination is made about which electoral college panel gets some work to do while the others go home.

The Missouri electoral college delegates will not meet until December 14.  Our ten D or R delegates will give all ten of Missouri’s real determining votes to the state winner, meaning Donald Trump will carry Missouri again 10-0.

But the winner is not determined then, either.

Congress collects all of the Electoral College reports and will hold a joint session on January 6. It will count the electoral votes and declare the person who got 270 or more electoral votes the winner of the big chair in the oval office.  Two weeks later that person will be inaugurated.

That’s how it works. We voted November 3 to pick someone from our district to represent all of the winner’s voters. That person will present all ten of our votes to one candidate.

And then it’s official.

The Secretary of State reports Donald Trump got 1,711,848 votes in Missouri last week. But actually, he got 10.  Joe Biden got 1,242,851.  Actually, he got none.  But thank you, 1,242,851 Missourians for taking part.

One other thing to mention.  Missouri saw 3,012,436 votes cast for president. The total number of votes cast (because some people did not vote for president but voted for other candidates or issues) is going to be more than that. But the number of votes for president was almost 200,000 more ballots that were cast in the 2016 election.

It has to be FRAUD, I tell you!

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I’ve been studying the Missouri results of the November 3 election and I believe we need some judges to declare there were fraudulent votes cast.  Thousands of them.

One need only look at the winning percentages of statewide Republican candidates to see evidence of illegal activity.

Missouri abolished straight-ticket voting in 2006.  But look at the winning percentages of top-of-the-ticket Republicans:

Trump 58.26%

Parson  57.17%

Kehoe  58.5%

Secretary of State 60.6%

Treasurer 59.2%

Attorney General 59.5%

Clearly, there’s something fishy here.  It’s impossible to have percentages this uniform unless there wasn’t illegal straight-ticket voting going on.  I’m not sure how it was done but it’s time to hire a lawyer, file a lawsuit, and accuse voters and local election authorities of plotting to assure a Republican sweep.

These votes should not have been counted because the percentages show there was clear tampering going on at the ballot box.  Chances are that a check of thousands of ballots will show remarkable similarities in the way the little ovals next to candidates’ names were filled in by reputed voters.

Furthermore, poll watchers were kept so far away from the tabulations that they could not closely examine the way the ballots were marked, thus being unable to challenge each ballot before it was processed.

All of the votes cast in the election of 2020 in Missouri should be voided because the uniformity of markings clearly shows extensive violation of the state election law against straight-ticket voting.

An investigation must be launched at the highest level to find the actual ballots that were removed so these fake ballots could be substituted and elections officials throughout Missouri should be jailed for their parts in this massive voter fraud that resulted in obvious straight-ticket voting ban.

Maybe the Democratic Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and nine other Democratic Attorneys General who have no business sticking their noses into a Missouri election should file a petition asking the United States Supreme Court to throw out all of the ballots showing near-uniform voting for President Trump and the five Republican statewide officers.

Note to Nicole Galloway:  This election is not over!

The whole election was a record-breaking fraud, I say.  FRAUD!!!  FRAUD!!!

A presidential favor

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Our president refuses to admit he’s a loser..

But that’s okay—although his personal behavior and his political attitude suggest he should be sent to his room without supper

—because he might be doing the country a big political favor with his stubbornness. .

Mind you, this is being written by a voter who didn’t cover the campaign or the national election returns with the intensity of the national media, whether friendly or fake in the eyes of the president.

The election was unique beyond the combatants.  It was unique in the process by which it was held, a process that is likely to continue in many parts of the country.  Early voting in one form or another is here to stay. Processing of those votes in this election seems to have satisfied most people, but not our president and his loyal supporters. The president is filing lawsuits right and left alleging various kinds of fraudulent actions that have denied him a second term. The complaints appear to lack evidence but our legal system does not require proof before a citizen files a complaint.

Critics have little good to say about all of this even though they are not surprised President Trump is being a poor sport about losing.

Our president is also a citizen and as with all of us, he has a right to ask the courts to remedy what he asserts is a wrong that has been done to him. It would be nice if he had firm proof to back up his attacks on the elections system and the people of both parties who administered it in this terrible time.

That aside, let us look at the positives he might be providing the country rather than dwell on the negative aspects of his personal behavior.

Your obedient servant sees at least two benefits to his actions.

First, in filing all of his lawsuits claiming the process was badly flawed, he is giving the courts multitudinous chances to confirm it was not.  He is giving the courts—perhaps ultimately including many judges that he appointed—an opportunity to confirm our elections system worked even under one of the most severe tests it ever has faced.

As this is written, he and his lawyers haven’t won a single case. His efforts to de-legitimize the election and the election process are, in fact, legitimizing them, thanks to his losses in the courts.  So cut him a little slack. So far he has proven the process he seeks to disprove.  Let him keep going.  In the end, the establishment of a 21st Century system of voting might be one of his biggest legacies, much as he might dislike the result.

Second, he is proving something upon which he has at times cast doubt—the concept that no one is above the law.  Not even the president.  In filing his lawsuits he is admitting that he does not have the power as President of the United States to void an election.  He has the same authority you or I have, the authority as a citizen to seek redress of perceived wrongs through the court system.  He’s not above us.  He is still just a citizen regardless of his title.

So let him go, even though his accusations and his lawsuits and his lack of cooperation with the president-elect’s transition effort is not good for the nation.  Let’s appreciate that he’s proving—although he doesn’t seem to want to—that two essential parts of our democracy are true—that no one is above or beneath the law including a president, and the election system not only works, it is capable of working under the greatest of strains.  It might need some fine-tuning after this, but once again, this latest use of the system given to us by our founders has continued to work.

More History Than We Could Have Imagined 

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We have been reminded from all sides that this year’s election is historic. Whether it is as historic as some of the rhetoric has tried to portray it will be determined by the passage of time, as time’s context defines history. But it is, at least, unique.

Especially for Missourians.

We might be—probably are—participating in a huge first step of a transition from polling place to mailbox or other ways of casting votes. While mail-in voting was approved by the legislature as a one-off experience in this pandemic year, this bell has been rung and it can’t be UNrung. It is hard to believe lawmakers here and throughout the country will not revisit this issue, smooth out its rough spots, and move to make remote voting in one form or another a regular practice.

Resistance can be expected. But the arrow is in flight and while its course might become longer than anticipated, it will not be diverted.

More locally, what we are seeing in Missouri this year has never happened before or has happened only once. For example—-

Governor Mike Parson is not running for RE-election. He was Lieutenant Governor when Eric Greitens resigned, moving him into the big office. This is the first time Missourians have been faced with a sitting governor running for election since Lilburn Boggs, who as lieutenant governor replaced Daniel Dunklin, who resigned after becoming Surveyor General of Missouri and Illinois. Boggs, who is best known for issuing the extermination order against the Mormons, was elected to a full term in 1836.

(As a side note, all of this occurred a decade after an unusual gubernatorial succession circumstance put one man in the governor’s office with no opponent. Our second governor, Frederick Bates, died in 1825. Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Reeves had resigned earlier to help survey the Santa Fe Trail.  Senate President Pro Tem Abraham Williams, a one-legged shoemaker from Columbia, assumed duties as governor and under the constitution in effect at the time, called an election.  John Miller defeated three other candidates. Miller ran for a full term in 1828 and to this day is the only governor elected without opposition.  He served the longest continuous term until a constitutional change allowed Warren Hearnes to succeed himself in 1969.)

Never before have we had so many people seeking election to statewide offices they already hold but were not elected to hold.  Parson, Lieutenant Governor Kehoe, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick were not elected to their present offices. But  Mike Kehoe was headed back to private life as a term-limited senator and Fitzpatrick was facing ouster from the House because of term limits. When Parson moved up to governor, he promptly appointed Kehoe as Lieutenant Governor. Schmitt was elected State Treasurer then was appointed by Parson as Attorney General when Josh Hawley ended Claire McCaskill’s U. S. Senate Career.  Fitzpatrick, the outgoing House Budget Committee Chair, was appointed by Parson as Schmitt’s successor as Treasurer. The only statewide office holder who is running for RE-election, not just election, is Secretary of State Jay Ashcoft, who has stayed where voters put him four years ago.

The last time a sitting statewide office holder was elected, not re-elected, was 1996 with the election of Bekki Cook as Secretary of State.  She had been appointed to succeed acting Secretary Dick Hanson after the Missouri Supreme Court removed Judi Moriarty from office. Hanson, incidentally, served in the office only a few days and as far as we know holds the record for shortest time in office of any statewide official.

Cook did not see re-election but four years later was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor. She lost to fellow Cape Girardeau resident Peter Kinder who went on become the only person to serve three full terms as Lieutenant Governor—a record unlikely to be broken if Amendment 1 is unfortunately approved next week.

President Trump’s repeated refusal to say he would assent to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses recalls an instance in Missouri when the legislature refused to allow such a transfer. Democrats had a stranglehold on state offices and on the legislature in 1940 when Republican Forrest Donnell was elected Governor.  In those days, the Speaker of the House proclaimed the official winners of statewide elections and Speaker Morris Osburn refused to certify Donnell’s election. The loser, Democrat Larry McDaniel, and state Democratic Party Chairman C. Marion Hulen claimed voting irregularities made McDaniel a winner by 30-thousand votes, not the 36-hundred vote loser. The Missouri Supreme Court finally ordered Donnell be sworn in—six weeks late, and to serve until a recount showed he had lost. The recount became a disaster for McDaniel, who withdrew his challenge without consulting Democratic leaders who had urged him to fight.

The event is unlikely to be repeated. A new state constitution adopted five years later made the Secretary of State, not the Speaker of the House, the person who certifies election results.

Many who read these observations already have cast their ballots and already have contributed to this historic election.  Thousands more will go to polling places next Tuesday to do their parts.

It’s not often that so many people make so much history.  We hope you will have or already have done your part.

 

Our application

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We have not been posting comments on current affairs on any day but Wednesday for some time but Nancy, the insightful wife of your loyal correspondent, asked a question yesterday that prompts this rare Tuesday inquiry.

A few days ago we received in the mail—and maybe you did, too, if you live in Missouri—a “Missouri Vote-By-Mail Kit.”  It was not sent to us by our county clerk although it is to be sent to that person.  It was not sent to us by the Secretary of State, the state’s top election official, who is facing a lawsuit filed by a voting rights group accusing him and local election officials of violating the rights of voters by making them do extra things and risk their health to vote in November.  Whether that is an appropriate or accurate allegation is for the courts to decide.

The point is: This “kit” does not come from anybody who will be administering our November elections.

It comes from Uniting Missouri Political Action Committee, an organization that supports Governor Parson’s re-election.  It includes vote-by-mail applications for Nancy and her husband to finish filing out—a few check marks here and there, a telephone number, an email address and a signature line.  All we would have to do is fill in those blanks and send the application to the county clerk.

But Nancy noticed the address on the “kit.”  It was addressed to “The Priddy Household or Current Resident.”

“What if somebody else was living here?” she asked.

A Current Resident.

That makes us a little nervous.  What if the Priddy Household had re-located?  What if the people at this address filled out this form and signed our names to it?   What if the email address didn’t have our names in it—many don’t.  What if the signatures were close enough to the signatures on file with the clerk’s office that an employee there decided “close enough” was good enough?  If the signature by Current Resident doesn’t match and a clerk’s employee calls the phone number listed (which would not be our own) the Current Resident could apologize and say it’s the best they could do since breaking their wrist last week.

We wonder if this mailing won’t just make the Cole County Clerk’s job more difficult.

What if we were to later re-register and go to our regular polling place on November 3 and be told we already had voted?

We worry that this “kit” could lead to confusion at best and voter fraud at worst.

We wonder how this political action committee can encourage a voting process that its party’s presidential candidate constantly blasts as already rife with fraud.

Perhaps those presidential concerns are neutralized by a message on the outside of the kit: “Our Republican candidates up and down the ballot are counting on you to cast your vote this year.  Liberal Democrats hope you’ll let fear stop you from voting. Don’t let the Democrats win!”

It also reminds us to “Stay Safe. Vote by Mail.”

Us.   Or the Current Resident.

Of course, if the Current Resident (who might not be us) were to vote by mail, we couldn’t “stay safe” in OUR voting, could we?

Well, it’s kind of academic in our case because we are the Current Resident and we plan to risk our lives, if you will, by FEARLESSLY donning our masks, going to our voting place on November 3, and casting our ballots.  Who we vote for is none of your business. But fear won’t keep up us from voting.

Will this piece of mail lead us to bear any kind of a grudge against Governor Parson?  No. Our perceptions of candidates are not based on what we get from them in the mail but are based on what we learn and what we know about them. We suggest that is a course for all responsible voters.

In fact, as we have noted before in some of these entries, it’s a good thing that we don’t base our votes on the crap we get in the mail from their campaigns.

Current resident might.  But not The Priddy Household.

 

 

 

Seeking honesty

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Last week’s entry encouraged participants to look carefully at and listen skeptically to claims and accusations that will be blowing over us at hurricane velocity as election day nears. We’ve always felt it dangerous for citizens of a republic to restrict themselves to one news source and accept statements from candidates, surrogates, and social media without question.  The internet offers us opportunities to seek the truth but it also floods us with untruths. Responsible citizens will be unafraid to check sources of information and investigate truth or only truthiness, or outright falsehood.

The sources we list today will provide evaluations of the stuff we hear or see. Although all of us are busy, the search for truth always is time well-spent and these sources can provide important perspectives quickly.

The Berkeley Library at the University of California calls its site Real News/Fake News: Fact Checkers. It has a list of sites on its webpage and we’ve added a few more.

Pollitifact: Pulitzer Prize winning site run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times (Florida) newspaper. “PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics…. The PolitiFact state sites are run by news organizations that have partnered with the Times.”  Politifact offers a Pants on Fire Truth O Meter.

The organization rates statements as True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire.  It has made 140 checks on Biden statements and finds 39 percent true or mostly true, 25% half true. 19 percent mostly false, 15% false and 3% Pants on Fire. It has made 840 checks on Trump and found 13 percent true or mostly true and an equal percentage half true. Twenty percent were mostly false, 35% false, and 16 percent Pants on Fire.

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania….a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.”  FactCheck.org recently was asked if a video shown on social media purportedly showing Joe Biden asleep during a television interview was genuine.  The answer: No, it was manipulated and fairly recently was circulated n Twitter by White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino.

Flack Check: “Headquartered at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, FlackCheck.org is the political literacy companion site to the award-winning FactCheck.org. The site provides resources designed to help viewers recognize flaws in arguments in general and political ads in particular.”  The site reports on politics, science, and health. On the “politics” page you will find a helpful video about how to spot fake news.

OpenSecrets.org: “Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.” Among the topics on the web page is one about Dark Money and another about Political Action Committees. There also are specific stories about inside political influence and activities.

Fact Checker: “The purpose of this Web site, and an accompanying column in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post, is to “truth squad” the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local.” The web page bills it as “The Truth Behind the Rhetoric.”  This is the site that rates truthfulness by awarding Pinocchios, using the famous puppet whose nose grew with each lie he told.

Snopes: “The definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” One fairly new posting asks if “The CDC readjusted the COVID-19 death toll from 60,000 to 37,000.”  Snopes’ investigation rated the statement “false.”

Duke Reporters’ Lab: Fact Checking: Includes a database of global fact-checking sites, which can be viewed as a map or as a list; also includes how they identify fact-checkers.

AP Fact Check: Associated Press Journalists throughout the world check facts and accountability.

There are other resources, too:

CNN Facts First: This one recently had entries about nine conspiracy theories our president is pushing and a review of his opponent’s speech on Social Security, fracking, and crime. It also fact checks FOX News.

FOX News: We checked numerous sources for a FOX News fact checker but found no indication it has such a service.

ABC News: The Australian Broadcasting Company has a fact-check page but it focuses on that Australia, not the United States. (See below).

Traditional Networks: We searched for independent fact-checking efforts at the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and ABC. None of them seem to have their own fact-checking staff that we could determine. But they do report on the fact-checking by other entities.

C-SPAN: Does not appear to have its own fact-checking staff.

Unfortunately there are those who will look at all of these resources and decide to ignore them because they know all of them are liars, fake news, or some kind of joint anti-American conspiracy.

But for those whose minds might be open, even if only for a small sliver of light, they’re worth looking into. They might help convince a few folks that if they’re the only ones going a different direction than the rest of the traffic on a one-way street, it might not be the other drivers who have a problem.

Just the facts, ma’am*

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Well, we’ve endured two more political conventions, their tiresome tirades, their excessive exaggerations, their profound puffery, their ferocious flag-waving, their multiple misstatements, and sometimes their litany of lies.

We want to think those we root for in their pursuits of public office are pure in thought, word, and deed.  But we know better.  And we would be better if we were unafraid to challenge them, even those we support, when they mislead us.

One of the greatest responsibilities we have as citizens is to demand truth from those who seek our votes and our money. But experience shows we citizens fail to meet those responsibilities time after time.

It would be nice to say our candidates owe us their integrity.  But politics doesn’t work that way. Integrity often must be forced by those who are picking the men and women who will lead them.

So our conventions are finished. Dancing With the Candidates is down to the finals. Now it’s not Dancing with the Candidates.  It’s a World Wrestling Federation match. In the mud.

No, it isn’t.  It’s more real.

It’s a street fight until November 3. A sweaty, nasty, bloody, anything-goes brawl.

It’s too bad that we who want to be led will too much expect too little of those who want to lead.

One thing is abundantly clear after the conventions.  The busiest people in the country for the next few weeks will be:

Fact-checkers.

We should pay attention to them. We should know when the people who want to be (presumably) the most powerful person in the world aren’t shooting straight with us.  We should notice those who spout conspiracy theories—-and they seem to be more outlandish every day.  Watch out for those who say, “I have heard…” and those who, when challenged to prove their statements say, “I’ll let you know later.”

More than ever, this is a time to tell our candidates, “Prove it,” or because we’re Missourians, “Show me the proof.”

Conservative organizations are going to be especially watchful of liberal candidates. Liberal organizations are going to be especially watchful of conservative candidates.  We should pay attention to both of them.  We should pay attention to those doing their analysis from the middle. And in the end we should think for ourselves despite the plentitude of loud voices on our airwaves telling us they can think for us.  No, they can’t—unless we let them. Have enough citizen responsibility to think for yourself.

There will be carloads of commercials that wave at truth from a distance. Don’t believe them.

There already have been manipulated videos on our social media. Question them.  Better yet, turn off the social media except for person-to-person communication with people you know.

We’ll get all kinds of flyers in the mail that are not worth the postage that sent them.  Recognize them for what they are. Fill up your recycling bins with them.

It will be easy to throw up our hands, abandon our responsibilities to ourselves and to our neighbors, and just mark a ballot so we can say we voted.

Congratulations.  You just trashed your country. Or your state. Or your city.  You just put it in a big blue plastic container and rolled it out to the curb.

CARE, dammit!  Find the truth.  Demand the truth.

After two weeks of political conventions, it should be clear to all of us that we have a responsibility to reach beyond ourselves and understand who is most trustworthy in a time when truth too often takes a back seat to bombast, accusation, misrepresentation and conspiracies.

We won’t find absolute truth from either candidate at the top of our tickets or from some of their supporters. But we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our neighbors from coast to coast and border to border not to elect the biggest liar.  That’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it?  But it’s also the

Truth.

And we have to be honest with ourselves, for ourselves, to determine who that is. Sometimes that means traditional party loyalties have to give way to loyalties to something bigger. Increasingly, it means we have to get our noses away from the social media screens.

Keep up with the legitimate, established fact-checkers.  These campaigns will keep them up all night in pursuit of truths we haven’t heard from our candidates during the day.

Just the facts.  That’s all we should ask for. It’s all we should demand. There are reliable sources that will provide them because our candidates and their surrogates might not.

In a later entry we’ll try to recommend some fact-checking resources.

*Los Angeles Police Detective Joe Friday, badge number 714, the main figure in hundreds of police investigations dramatized on radio and television for decades, never said, “Just the facts, ma’am.”  Snopes.com, one of the longest-running reliable fact checking websites, says that the character typically said, “All we want are the facts, ma’am,” or “All we know are the facts, ma’am.”