Progressive events calendar

If you can’t see the calendar below, click here to view progressive events in and near Chester County. Agenda view (upper right of calendar) is easiest to use.

Heather Cox Richardson’s thoughts on 11/8/22

Commentators keep saying today’s election will have once-in-a-generation consequences. Will it be on a par with Trump’s 11-3-20 defeat and the almost-successful pro-Trump insurrection on 1-6-21?

Some highlights of Heather Cox Richardson’s blog about today’s election:

• “Never before in our history have more than half of Americans lost the recognition of a constitutional right, as the Supreme Court took from us with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision in June.”

• “Never, too, have we had to vote in an election where more than half the candidates of one of the parties deny that the president was fairly elected.”

• “Perhaps even more than most elections, this one will come down to turnout.”

• “There has been a crazy amount of money invested in this year’s contests, much of it by a very few people.”

• “Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and the leader of the private military company the Wagner Group, who is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, boasted that Russians had interfered in U.S. elections and continue to do so.”

• “Many of the Republican candidates have refused to say they would accept the election results,”

• “Aside from tomorrow’s election, there is an epic fight brewing in the Republican Party.”

• “Far more Americans today are concerned about our democracy, and determined to reclaim it, than were even paying attention to it in 2016.”

So, no matter what the details of the vote in all the states, a lot of pending issues will remain in December. All we need to do is phrase the above remarks as questions….

R. fantasies about public education

You can’t make this stuff up. Well, actually you can, or at least R. candidate Doug Mastriano can. This from Stephen Singer, “Top Five Republican Nightmare Fantasies About Public Schools,” in his blog Gadfly on the Wall, 10/15/22:

…Pole dancing!

Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania, actually promises to ban pole dancing in public schools.

“On day one, the sexualization of our kids, pole dancing, and all this other crap that’s going on will be forbidden in our schools,” he says.

Mr. Mastriano, I hate to tell you this, but the only school in the commonwealth where there was anything like what you describe was one of those charter schools you love so much. The Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in Philadelphia used to run an illegal nightclub in the cafeteria after dark.

But at authentic public schools with things like regulations and school boards – no. That just doesn’t happen here….

Heather Cox Richardson on the case vs. Eastman and Trump

Heather Cox Richardson’s March 29 column gives an alarming retrospective on the Jan. 6 insurrection fomented by Donald Trump with legal cover from the one-time law school dean John Eastman.

A federal judge has ordered Eastman to turn over 101 emails about his secret proposals for state legislatures and VP Mike Pence to reject enough Electoral College votes to give Trump victory. Richardson ends her analysis with:

Judge Carter concluded that Trump’s actions “more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.” He also concluded that “Trump likely knew the electoral count plan had no factual justification.” The plan, Carter wrote, “was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means.” He also found that “it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” 

 

Eastman and Trump “launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote. “Their campaign was…a coup in search of a legal theory….  If [the] plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.” 

The courts need to act against Eastman, Trump, and their co-plotters, but clearly, it is mainly up to the American people to see that January 6 never repeats itself.

Votes and voting in 2021 in Chester County

by Tom Buglio

As I read the frequent articles in our Daily Local News concerning the 2021 election and the challenge to get the results certified, I am dismayed by the lack of trust in our election process that now exists here in Chester County, and all across the country. 

After the unprecedented attacks and misinformation spread before, during and after the 2020 election, there are a significant number of people who won’t accept the results, as evidenced by the vocal critics of the Chester County Commissioners who voted 2 to 1 to certify the results of the 2021 election. The lone dissenter, Commissioner Michelle Kichline (Republican) would like the election ‘audited.’ Other citizens at the meeting were calling for a full ‘forensic investigation’ of the election, which implies that the results were secretly and deliberately distorted to help certain candidates win their races unfairly. 

How did we get here?  It started with Donald Trump, declaring before the 2016 election that if he lost, the election was rigged.  Even though he won the Presidency in 2016, he argued that the real vote count was much higher for him than for Hillary Clinton, who ended up winning 3 million more votes, despite losing the electoral college vote totals. 

This laid the groundwork for 2020, when in the spring, Trump started to slam Mail in Voting every chance he could, and once again started repeating a mantra about the votes being rigged if he lost the election.  He must have repeated this Big Lie thousands of times before the election.  And, of course, he has never stopped repeating the Big Lie, which eventually resulted in the horrendous attack on our US Capitol Building, as enough Americans believed that their country was being ‘stolen.’       

Another factor in our mistrust of elections is the increased importance of Mail In Ballots.  They existed in other states in previous elections, but this was the first time they were used in a Presidential election in PA.  The Pandemic made mail in voting extremely popular.  The problem is in PA, we can’t do any ‘voter harvesting’ or counting mail in ballots until after Election Night is over.   This creates a scenario where the actual election totals take days to count.  Since Trump slammed mail in voting, most  were overwhelmingly sent in by Democrats.  So while Trump was winning on election night, the mail in ballots in PA pushed Joe Biden over the top a few days later. This infuriated Trump and his minions.   

Commissioner Kichline and others are dismayed that previous elections were decided on election night, but that was before mail in ballots were instituted in PA.  There is a simple fix to make electoral decisions more timely: early harvesting (counting) of mail in ballots before election day, currently illegal to do in PA.  There have been many bills to do this exact fix, but the Republican Legislature refuses to make this simple change… so Commissioner Kichline, if you would like to see a quicker election process, get your party to pass ‘early harvesting.’     

The damage that Donald Trump has done to our elections with his incessant lying and attacks on the people who run the elections is cancerous to the future of our democracy.  For now, the system has held up under tremendous strain.  But many election officials have been attacked and threatened across the country, and as a result are quitting. It takes many dedicated and selfless Americans to make our elections work, and we owe a debt of thanks to those who step up every election to do just that.       

For those who don’t believe the election was fair here in Chester County, please know that at every step of vote counting, there is a Republican and Democratic representative there to watch, according to County solicitor Nichole Forzato.  Also, lawyers representing the two parties both stated that the election results are fair and transparent.

For those who wish to believe in conspiracy theories when their candidate loses, this may not satisfy.  It is such a travesty that the future integrity of elections can be held hostage by the fragile ego of a man who just can’t accept losing.  And we are a more fractured country because of it.