As sure as death & taxes, the Trump Party means to steal today’s election.

From Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 to Wisconsin/Michigan/Pennsylvania/North Carolina/Florida 2016, we’ve seen it all before.  Here are some sure signals:

• Gerrymandering: In 2010, with virtually no opposition from the corporate Democrats, a dirty trickster team of Koch-funded Republicans grabbed the re-districting process. They drew “RedMaps” for the US House and state legislatures guaranteeing Trumpist majorities where Democrats cast far more votes. This year’s maps are still absurd, with little hope for change until 2020.

• Secretaries of State running elections in which they’re running: In Georgia and Kansas White Supremacist Secretaries of State (Brian Kemp and Kris Kobach) run the elections in which they’re running for governor. Ohio’s Secretary of State (Jon Husted) has a very long record of registration stripping and is running for Lieutenant Governor. Would they cheat?

• Stripped voter rolls: Non-millionaires throughout the US have been stripped from registration books on the basis of race, gender, income and suspected party preference. Thousands of citizens coming to the polls and being told they’re not on the list is the surest sign. Without massive push-back, the provisional ballots they are given will end up in the trash.  

• Rejected photo ID: Largely because requiring it is being challenged everywhere, but there are meanwhile large areas of the country where photo ID is simply impossible to get.

• Rejected addresses:  As in North Dakota reservations which do not have street addresses, but whose denizens are now required to have it to vote.  

• Mis-Direction: Trumpists love to misguide prospective voters as to where they’re to go to cast their ballots, a strategy perfected by GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2004 when his office directed voters to non-existent precincts and his allies passed out flyers telling them to “vote on Wednesday.”

• Missing precincts: Trumpists love to make neighborhood precincts disappear, making it harder for non-millionaires to vote. In largely Hispanic Dodge City, Kansas, the one voting station has been moved out of town, away from a bus line, with no sidewalk access. 

• Missing voting machines: Trumpists love to make voting machines in non-millionaire precincts disappear so nobody can vote there.  

• Missing paper ballots: Trumpists love to short-change non-millionaire precincts of paper ballots so nobody can vote there when the machines break down or disappear.  

• Long Lines: When you see long lines the media portrays as being due to “glitches,” you know the Trumpists have sabotaged the vote at those precincts and are laughing at all the good folks standing out in the rain for hours on a work day, waiting to cast ballots the Trumpists will do their best not to count.

• Power Outages: What better way to keep suspected Democrats from voting than by blacking out the precincts?

• Intimidation: What better way to keep suspected Democrats from voting than by stacking the precincts with short-fused mega-cops ready to pounce?

• Intimidation2: What better way to keep suspected Democrats from voting than by accusing them of being e-felons, even if they aren’t, and even if the laws against e-felons voting are largely being repealed.  

• “Glitched” Vote Counts: ‘Round about seven or eight pm, when the polls have closed and the vote count looks like it’s going for a progressive, suddenly there’s a “glitch” and enough votes are found to swing the election to someone like Wisconsin’s Koch-owned Scott Walker.

• Miraculous Last-Minute Turn-Arounds: As with Walker, who lost his last re-election bid but was somehow saved when a GOP poll worker miraculously “found” enough votes on her computer to put Walker back in office.

• Democrats Refusing to Fight: As in 2000, 2004 and 2016 when Al Gore/John Kerry/Hillary Clinton all won their elections but conceded stripped voter rolls and flipped vote counts without a whimper, thus yielding us Donald Trump.

We know what’s coming. There are no excuses. No progressive candidate should concede an even vaguely close race.  

And voting will not be enough. Be a poll worker, a registration monitor, a turnout assistant, a post-election auditor and make sure when the votes start flipping you scream loud and long, lodge a formal complaint and insist the machine is replaced.  

NO DEMOCRAT SHOULD CONCEDE.

DON’T LET TRUMP STEAL IT THIS TIME!!

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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored numerous books on election integrity including THE STRIP & FLIP DISASTER OF AMERICA’S STOLEN ELECTIONS which resides at freepress.org and solartopia.org long with Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES and Harvey’s  LIFE & DEATH SPIRAL OF US HISTORY.