There was excitement under gray skies and moisture out of the Patio. Everyone was up and active, since it is a day that may have come from the Marvel Comics people: “It’s Super Tuesday!”
We are not sure we can get everyone to the polls this morning, nor are we sure who we would vote for if we did. Is there an Independent candidate running? Besides Nikki? There was quite a discussion about the matter, since we have some diehards who are still adherents of the old Big Two parties, and several of us who have walked away from the squawks for donations from both of them.
The dimensions of absurdity for these particular significant days is remarkable. They used to be fairly low-key events. We view voting in the General Elections as a civic duty and have not missed one since we achieved our majority shortly before the first Nixon election a zillion years ago. But primaries? Sometimes we forget. It brings back an old excuse for our laziness- we want to see what our fellow citizens think, and who they think would manage the best Administration with a shot at keeping us prosperous and at Peace.
Our approach to then examine the candidates who are selected by their parties and which of them will be the least damaging to those who will have to live with the lingering consequence. As DeMille, the Writer’s Section Chief, has observed: “H. Ross Perot was a pretty good guy with some interesting messaging. And look what a vote for him actually produced, you Independent Paragons!”
There is an entertaining set of revelations that have emerged only three and a half years after the last General voting festival. Our generation is now trapped by age in the usual unexpected paradox of the parade into the future. We still think there is something called ‘NORMAL,’ and we will slide back into it after all the hysteria. Our cognitive bias is that the system is generally accurate, and (usually) mostly fair.
It appears that is not true, and what we must subsist on is a steady diet of falsehood. We gave you a short blurb the other day on Michigan’s Constitutional Convention that met back in 1960, propelled George Romney into the Governor’s mansion in Lansing, and cleaned up some of the natural contention with a major Industrial and Union linear concentration plopped into what was then a largely rural and natural resources-rich state.
The point was to recall the three year effort (1960-’63) to clean things up, and how apparently it has all been overthrown in a large and relatively efficient scheme of corruption that includes most of the techniques of manipulation brought to us in the digital age.
This is not a diatribe, nor partisan in messaging. Our disclaimer is firm on that- and the views of the independent contractors who contribute to The Daily do not necessarily reflect that of management. But the Wolverine State has some great recent lessons that reflect much of the rhetoric emitting from left, right and middle sides of this morass. This morning, the morning of execution for the primary part of the election process, we are seeing delayed reports about how things worked up there the last time.
The old Michigan had an industrial corridor that ran from Downriver in Detroit in the southeast part of the Lower Peninsula (LP) due north through Saginaw and ending at Flint. The Western region of the LP includes Grand Rapids, where some of us resided and joined the United Auto Workers (UAW). Moderate-sized towns like Muskegon were just to the west on the Big Lake that carries the name of the State.
The controversy of what is coming this fall is all mixed up with the controversy that happened in the state in the last General popularity contest. Muskegon Clerk Ann Meisch had already reported one of four strings of state irregularities. She said her office had received an estimated 6,000 applications from a single organization, a firm based in Tennessee with an office in Suburban Detroit. Meisch indicated “Most of the applications were valid,” but estimated that “several hundred” had “irregularities,” including wrong birthdays, addresses and signatures that did not match versions on file. More significantly, the handwriting on them was identical.
We won’t bore you with accounts of the vote-counting shutdown, which made a lot of us uneasy election night. Five swing states suspended their tabulations for hours, adding votes for the candidate who was trailing at the time of the midnight suspension of the counting. Or at least some of the counting. That had never happened, though of course the pandemic machinations on mail-in ballots added to uncertainty, including its legality. What convinced many of the non-traditional outcome were the additional oddities that circulated in the immediate aftermath.
In Detroit, the truck delivering pallets of ballots to the polling site be counted during the shut-down. The cardboard sheets erected over glass observation windows, with legal poll monitors held fifty feet away from the counting tables. The strange report from Antrim County the day after, indicating the voting machines there- we don’t have to state the name of the company- had flipped 5,000 votes from one candidate to another in jurisdiction with only 8,000 registered voters. Note, these stories come from Red and Blue districts, in manual, write in and digital machines. It suggests similar activities were conducted across the state and not reported. The scheme looks comprehensive as well as integrated.
The favorite tale is not directly tied to possible vote fraud, although it must be at least related. That was the big story about crazy insurrectionists who were going to kidnap the Governor. It was a fairly lurid tale, but later investigation revealed it was actually inspired and led by Federal agents. You know, like ones who urged entry to the Capitol or the Police who held the doors open for the “paraders” and welcomed them in.
We have been told the 2020 General was a secure and fair election, but there was enough information available in the immediate aftermath that looked “funny” without a lot of laughter. Then there was one of those strange video clipss from a senior figure who said “We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter ….. organization in the history of American politics.”
We don’t need to tell you the word that the dots above represent. We don’t claim any specific knowledge about what might be coming, but it is something we are thinking about in the context of the next General election. This will be fun to see, since “normal” seems to no longer apply another unusual election could mean an end to our Republic, which we like a lot.
We did a focus group on the issue and are in a compromise consensus on that matter. But it is a little sad that the integrity of our elections, good for most of our history, is just added to the myriad of current uncertainties!
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com