No One Gets to Sit at Home on Election Day

Last night, after a monthly religious study group, while we were standing around visiting, three people separately asked me the question, “What do you think is going to happen in the November election?” I’m not a good predictor. But I am, in some very local circles, the go-to person on political matters. I wish I had more answers. But I do have thoughts.

The prevailing estimates are that it will be a bloodbath for Democrats in November. Recent polls are trying to say otherwise, but I doubt their validity; I’m guessing such polls have an opinion-forming purpose, rather than an opinion-learning purpose.

FiveThirtyEight makes these predictions for House races.
Image from here; you can go there to click on individual races.

Typically, the midterm after a presidential election goes against the president’s party.  Typically, when the economy is in bad shape, the midterms go against the president’s party—and the state of the economy right now is pitiful. There’s a useful Katie Pavlich article here. And here are a few stats from a Heritage Action email I received today:

·        Inflation rose 9.1% for the month of June, even higher than anticipated.       

·        Milk and coffee prices are up 16% percent, butter is up more than 21%, flour by more than 19%, eggs are up a staggering 33%, regular gasoline is up more than 60%, natural gas is up 38%, and electricity is up almost 14%.

·        Real wages are down 3.7% over the past 12 months, which is nearly a 40-year record. This means that a typical family now pays more than $1,900 in inflation tax.

In any normal year, that would be an automatic death knell for the party in power.

meme found on Facebook here

Add to that, the country’s respect worldwide has plummeted under Biden. His Middle East tour this week produced nothing positive. Without a strong America, the imminent attainment of nuclear weapons by Iran leaves Israel alone to protect itself and others. In case you've forgotten, under Trump’s leadership, Middle East countries allied against Iran in the Abraham Accord. Biden has managed to undo all that progress.

Add to that the spending of taxpayer resources on the Ukraine/Russia conflict rather than on our own southern border. And then add the Hunter Biden evidence of Biden family corruption, including deals that seem to explain Biden’s favoritism toward China.

Any of these things would be enough to sink a presidency that was otherwise functional. This one is not otherwise functional. The president’s own party entertains the possibilities for replacing him, in full view—only a year and a half into his administration.

So of course the predictions are for a Democrat blood bath.

FiveThirtyEight makes predictions for governor races, here.
This shows that in 96 out of 100 scenarios, Abbott beats Beto in Texas.

However, these are not normal times. And these are not normal people. These are power mongers. They will do anything to maintain their power. That means they will be desperate, like a cornered wild animal. Expect lashing out. Expect the unlikely.

And remember, they have the media covering for them. Even though those of us with eyes wide open can clearly see what they’re doing, people who allow themselves to be fed the propaganda day after day don’t know what we know.

What can we do?

As far as that November election goes—be more vigilant than you have ever been. No one gets the luxury to sit home on election day this year. This is not a call to simply go vote, although you must do that. It is a call to volunteer to be part of the army necessary in this very real war against those who want to take away our freedoms.

This is not a year that you can leave it to someone else and maybe you’ll volunteer another time. Because if they get away with stealing elections this November, we will not have a next time that matters.

Be a poll worker—a presiding judge, an alternate judge, or a clerk. Or be a poll watcher. All of these are necessary for Early Voting, Election Day, and for the counting of the ballots after the polls close.

In Harris County it takes an army to run an election. There are roughly 1,000 voting locations on Election Day. Each takes an average of 6-8 workers. That’s 6,000-8,000 right there. We need more than half of these to be Republicans. Add in Early Voting. With roughly 50 locations, with more clerks to handle more voters, there’s probably 10-12 workers for each—and we’ll assume they all work all the Early Voting days, for simplicity. That’s another 500-600 workers, of which we need at least half to be Republican. Add on the counting of the ballots. I’m not sure of numbers, but I’d say around 20 of each party to do this.

I haven’t mentioned the many volunteers who handle the pickup of equipment and supplies, including ADA regulations. That’s probably another 20-40. And the people to deliver equipment to those 1,000 voting locations, another 20-30, I’m guessing.

And, besides the people who count the ballots, there are the workers who accept the ballots and equipment being turned in. There are an additional several dozens of these.

In addition to all these jobs, the Harris County Republican Party is trying to put at least one poll watcher at every polling location. Close to 1,000. Some of these got practice at easy places during the Primary Runoff.

Harris County’s now-fired-and-finally-gone Elections Administrator has tried to institute pickup of the ballots and equipment by Constables and random (Democrat) county employees—breaking the chain of custody between election officials. Republicans have refused to go along. But any polling place led by a Democrat presiding judge will do that again in November, if we don’t stop it by then.

The point here is, there is something you can volunteer to do. And you should. Here in Harris County, you can go to the party website and find a way to volunteer. The Harris County signup is here. Training opportunities are underway. And, in our party (can’t say as much for the County, whose official training you’ll probably also have to undergo, depending on the position you volunteer for), we have good training from some of the best experts on election integrity in the country. Poll watcher training is especially good on election law.

Another way you can help is on cleaning up voter rolls. For us, here’s the instruction:

1.      Go to https://www.harrisvotes.com/VoterRegistration/Search.

2.      Search by your address; i.e., house number and street name.

3.      Confirm the list for valid, registered voters.

4.      Repeat for neighboring addresses.

If you see anything odd, send a message to your county party, preferably someone involved in ballot security, and they can help any citizen file to challenge a registered voter. This is a fairly easy process (I’m working on it right now; daughter Social Sphere, who hasn’t lived here or voted here since 2011, is on our rolls; I’ve checked, and no one has voted in her name, but I want that possibility to be gone). People move, yet our county, as most counties, has not done a good job in removing invalid voters. Spread the word, we can all play a small part in forcing the county election administrators to do their job.

There are lawsuits underway, and on the way, in our county, because of previous lawbreaking. There’s work to do in the state legislature. There’s holding people accountable to the law. Good people are working on those things.

But more than anything there is the need for everyone who cares about preserving our freedoms to be part of the solution in November.

We don’t know what the enemies of freedom will try. But we’ve seen them act as though they have a right to do whatever they want to get their way. We try to anticipate. But we don’t know what they’ll try next in their desperation. When they see the looming loss of their power, they’re going to pull out all the stops.

So, watch. Be vigilant. And be part of the army of volunteers that day. Voting is absolutely not enough at this critical time.