election 2020: how it’s going down rn

As we wait for re­turns from this year’s elec­tion, what we are see­ing is about what we ex­pect­ed.

In-per­son bal­lots cast are weight­ed to­ward Trump, while the un­count­ed mail-in and ear­ly bal­lots are ex­pect­ed to fa­vor De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Joe Biden.

Few states ex­cept the rock-sol­id De­mo­c­ra­t­ic or Re­pub­li­can states have yet been called by the As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

This is the sce­nario we all fore­saw. The elec­tion re­turns look rel­a­tive­ly good for Trump, which is why he talked about claim­ing a vic­to­ry at the end of elec­tion night. This is the so-called “red mi­rage.” But as the mail-in bal­lots get count­ed, every­one ex­pects the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic num­bers to climb fast and far.

As they do, the Trump team will fight every sin­gle bal­lot. They will try to claim that count­ing the mail-in bal­lots is “fraud,” or that De­moc­rats are “steal­ing” the elec­tion when, in fact, elec­tion of­fi­cials are sim­ply count­ing all the bal­lots.

Re­mem­ber that no one is ar­gu­ing that Trump will win the pop­u­lar vote. He wants to win in the Elec­toral Col­lege.

What we are see­ing in this elec­tion is the re­sult of vot­er sup­pres­sion across the south­ern states, along with an Elec­toral Col­lege that has been cor­rupt­ed from its orig­i­nal in­tent and is now ar­ti­fi­cial­ly skewed to­ward rur­al states.

In 2018, for ex­am­ple, peo­ple in Flori­da vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to re­store vot­ing rights to felons. This would have added about 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple back to the rolls, many of them African Amer­i­cans. But the Re­pub­li­can leg­is­la­ture passed a law say­ing the for­mer felons could not vote un­less they had paid all their court fines and fees. A fed­er­al judge said that law was es­sen­tial­ly an un­con­sti­tu­tion­al poll tax, but an ap­peals court over­turned that de­ci­sion. Five of the six judges who up­held the law were ap­point­ed by Trump.

This sum­mer, the Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al, Louis De­Joy, a ma­jor fundrais­er for the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty and a key ally of Trump, changed the rules for mail de­liv­ery, slow­ing it sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

It turns out that more than 300,000 bal­lots were checked into the USPS mail sys­tem but not checked out of it. U.S. Dis­trict Judge Em­mett G. Sul­li­van or­dered the USPS to sweep 27 pro­cess­ing cen­ters for the miss­ing bal­lots, but USPS of­fi­cials re­fused, say­ing they al­ready had a sys­tem in place and that chang­ing it would be dis­rup­tive. Sul­li­van has called the par­ties in to­mor­row morn­ing to dis­cuss the is­sue.

The prob­lem of vot­er sup­pres­sion is com­pound­ed by the mis­use of the Elec­toral Col­lege. The Framers orig­i­nal­ly de­signed del­e­gates to the Elec­toral Col­lege to vote ac­cord­ing to dis­tricts with­in states, so that states would split their elec­toral votes, mak­ing them rough­ly pro­por­tion­al to a candidate’s sup­port.

That sys­tem changed in 1800, af­ter Thomas Jef­fer­son rec­og­nized that he would have a bet­ter chance of win­ning the pres­i­den­cy if the del­e­gates of his own home state, Vir­ginia, vot­ed as a bloc rather than by dis­trict. He con­vinced them to do it. Quick­ly, oth­er state of­fi­cials rec­og­nized that the “win­ner-take-all” sys­tem meant they must do the same or their own pre­ferred can­di­date would nev­er win. Thus, our non-pro­por­tion­al sys­tem was born, and it so hor­ri­fied James Madi­son and Alexan­der Hamil­ton that both want­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to switch the sys­tem back.

Democ­ra­cy took an­oth­er hit from that sys­tem in 1929. The 1920 cen­sus showed that the weight of the nation’s de­mo­graph­ics was mov­ing to cities, which were con­trolled by De­moc­rats, so the Re­pub­li­cans in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­fused to reap­por­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tion af­ter that cen­sus. Reap­por­tion­ing the House would have cost many of them their seats. Rather than per­mit­ting the num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives to grow along with pop­u­la­tion, Con­gress then capped the size of the House at 435. Since then, the av­er­age size of a con­gres­sion­al dis­trict has tripled. This gives small­er states a huge ad­van­tage in the Elec­toral Col­lege, in which each state gets a num­ber of votes equal to the num­ber of its sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

These in­juries to our sys­tem have sad­dled us with an Elec­toral Col­lege that per­mits a mi­nor­i­ty to tyr­an­nize over the ma­jor­i­ty. That sys­temic ad­van­tage is un­sus­tain­able in a democ­ra­cy. One or the oth­er will have to give.

We should know the re­sults of this elec­tion by Thurs­day night, I would guess.

Biden is still pro­ject­ed to win and if he does we will see how se­ri­ous he is of “fight­ing for the soul of our na­tion.” If we do not seek to rem­e­dy what I shared above as a pri­or­i­ty what we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now will con­tin­ue to oc­cur. As ac­tivists, we must join our fo­cus to erad­i­cate the elec­toral col­lege and its sys­tem­i­cal­ly racist lega­cy.

 

—jasper james

NOTE: This post con­tains thoughts from Jasper mixed with Boston Pro­fes­sor Heather Cox Richard­son.

Flom­mist Jasper James is a mul­ti­fac­eted di­ver­si­ty-trained en­tre­pre­neur, mul­ti-in­stru­men­tal­ist/ writer, event pro­duc­er, and for­mer Bill­board Record­ing Artist. They are also the co-founder of Ac­tivism Ar­tic­u­lat­ed, and Women’s March Blac, an all-Black branch of Women’s March Na­tion­al Lead­er­ship. Jasper is on the ACLU Sacra­men­to Chap­ter Board and the Sacra­men­to Stonewall De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Club (PAC) and is an ac­tive mem­ber of the ACLU Speak­ers Bu­reau. They were also one of only five Black sit­ting fe­male Pres­i­dents in the na­tion for the Women’s March Sacra­men­to Chap­ter. Copy­right © 2020 Jasper James. Pic­tured: Man be­hind the cur­tain, Wiz­ard of Oz, 1939.

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