Letter to Editor: 8-13
Letter to The Editor
As of this writing, there are two issues which are timely and salient which Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be able to keep from inserting himself into, meddling, and creating more chaos and controversy:
THE CENSUS
After the Census Bureau asked Congress for MORE time to complete the Census due to the Coronavirus, the Trump administration now ordered the Census Bureau to CUT OFF Census collection EARLY and stop counting people in the United States on September 1 even though they have counted far fewer people than at this point in the last Census. Wonder why?
1.) The population of hard-to-reach people usually consists of minorities and immigrants. These require more efforts to reach such as door-knocking than others. This administration wants to leave these hundreds of thousands of people out so they can reduce the number of representatives they get in Congress, re-apportion their districts, and give these districts less Federal funding.
2.) Under the Census’ original schedule for counting every person in America, per procedure, the results would have been submitted to the White House AFTER January 20, 2021 when Joe Biden could be in the White House rather than Trump. Trump is cutting off and shortening the Census count so that the results get submitted to HIM before he leaves office.
THE 2020 ELECTION
1.)Laying the groundwork for sowing doubt about the safety and integrity of the American electoral process, Donald Trump is yammering to anyone who will listen that mail-in voting is rife with abuse and “voter fraud” and that this election will be “rigged.” He is laying the groundwork and hoping to buy insurance in the case that he doesn’t win on November 3 so he can claim the election is illegitimate, create a national crisis, and try to make a Supreme Court drama out of it. He also suggested “delaying the election” which he doesn’t have the power to do as election day is set in the constitution and can only be changed by Congress. Also, that idea was quickly smacked-down by Congressional Democrats and Republicans, including Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.
2.)Trump is hawking conspiracy theories that include the threats that foreigners will print and mail in ballots, ballots will be forged, the Post Office can’t handle the volume, people will vote twice, and we won’t know the results of November 3 for weeks or even months, hoping to create fear and mistrust in the American electorate.
3.)Of course, the elephant in the room that Trump has sought to ignore and pretend doesn’t exist from day one is the Coronavirus pandemic, now a runaway train in the United States while most other nations have gotten it under control. He knows that millions of people, fearing being infected by crowds at polling stations would prefer mail-in-voting and that mail-in is the most practical and sensible alternative under these circumstances. But, just like his “forced school opening” efforts and thinking ONLY of what makes HIM look good and might affect HIS re-election, he couldn’t care less how many Americans become ill, hospitalized and die.
4.)Nevada just enacted the procedure of sending out a ballot to every eligible voter to which Trump replied that he will sue to stop it. Again, he doesn’t have the power to do that anyway AND, after trashing and stoking fear around the practice of mail-in voting which has a less than .001% history of “voter fraud”, just today Trump came out praising and supportive of mail-in voting in Florida. Why Florida? A.) The governor of Florida is Trump buddy and rabid supporter, Rod DeSantis. B.) Republicans in Florida reminded Trump that mail-in-voting is very popular with Republicans there and widely-used for years. C.) There are hundreds of thousands of retired persons in Florida who have traditionally voted Republican and who voted for Trump in 2016. So, suddenly, when Trump thinks mail-in voting might benefit HIM, it’s suddenly “OK.”
For those tired by this non-stop, 24/7 stream of chaos, controversy, and conflict, I’m sorry to announce that it most likely won’t stop at least until January 21, 2021. Until then, try to hang in there.
William E. Conti, PHD
Honolulu, HI
