Three hours before the first presidential “debate” debacle kicked off, as I was blithely sautéing a batch of mushrooms, my kitchen sink inexplicably plunged—with a loud thunk—to the bottom of the cabinet beneath it. Slightly more than a year earlier, the pricey stainless steel sink had been one of the final finishes to a long overdue, professional kitchen renovation. But, somehow, over the course of 12 months, it had worked its way loose from its moorings.

Then I witnessed a much worse disaster: Donald Trump’s off-the-rails performance at the presidential debate. He was unhinged, out of control, unmoored, unglued, unbolted. Just like my kitchen sink. But with vastly more dangerous consequences.

Minutes after the sink sank, I put in a desperate call to the kitchen renovators. They were shocked. This doesn’t happen, they said. We’ll be out to fix it in the morning, they promised. And they were. When they arrived and assessed the situation, they blamed the problem on the original installers, who, they said, didn’t seem to know what they were doing and did a half-assed job.

Again, I was struck by the parallel with Donald Trump’s presidency. Voters apparently didn’t know what they were doing when they installed him. And he has demonstrated repeatedly that he doesn’t know what he is doing as the “leader of the free world.” Also, he’s not a half-ass, he’s the full Monty.  (One aspect of this comparison that doesn’t work is that, unlike the minority of the American electorate who voted for Trump, I didn’t buy a product that was obviously damaged goods from the get-go.)

The repair squad showed up as promised, their truck stocked with every tool, part, and adhesive product they needed to re-instate my sink to its proper condition. It took them a while to figure out what had happened (the sink had not been correctly braced). And they had to jerry-rig a solution (shoring up the sink with wooden supports). But they got the job done, and I feel  confident that my sink is more stable than it was before.

And despite the emotional hangover I was suffering post-debate, I saw another, convenient metaphorical connection. With Donald Trump as America’s know-nothing, incompetent contractor-in-chief, the underpinnings of our democracy are coming undone, falling apart at the seams.

Can Joe Biden do for American democracy what the repair guys did for my kitchen? I hope so. But he damage is already deep. Trump and his cohort of greedy, corrupt, and anti-democracy cronies have subverted our agencies, our institutions, our traditions and even our hopes and expectations. It’s going to take a lot of work, and more than a metaphorical morning, to shore us back up and restore stability. Even if  we manage to elect Biden, take back the Senate, and keep the House majority, we’re going to need a truckload of good ideas and willing workers. We’ll have to throw everything at the job—including the kitchen sink.

The post My kitchen sink: A 2020 Election Metaphor appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It was another of the many “last straws” in the Trump era. Kyle Murphy, a senior analyst in the US Defense Intelligence Agency, went public with his resignation, appearing on tv news shows and

publishing an op-ed on the highly regarded Just Security site. Murphy said that what he saw in the Trump administration had “grave similarities between events in our country and the processes by which autocratic leaders have brought their countries to the brink of civil conflict and beyond. Each day, Trump’s approach looks more like the autocrats I warned about as an analyst.”

Here is the full text of his powerful op-ed:

I recently resigned as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency after experiencing firsthand the actions of U.S. government leaders to suppress nonviolent dissent during the recent nationwide protests for racial justice.

I have seen up close the president’s disdain for democratic values, and recent events should be put in the context of a continuous slide toward authoritarianism. In 2015, I was detailed to the White House as an apolitical civil servant on the National Security Council (NSC) staff. My term was set to conclude in January 2017, but I agreed to extend for two months at the request of NSC leaders to support an orderly transition between administrations. I briefed President Donald Trump before several introductory calls to foreign heads of state, and as is customary, I listened in and prepared the official transcripts. I was appalled by the ways he actively undermined the democratic principles we have long aspired to model and to advance globally.

In my years analyzing foreign political and military decision-making for senior policymakers, part of my job was to observe whether foreign governments protected their national security services from politicization and whether they committed abuses against their own populations. These are critical measures of the health of a democracy, and failures not only disqualify countries from U.S. partnership but also can be a warning sign that a country may play a destabilizing role in the world. Our laws enshrine a fundamental belief that a nation’s security forces should defend, not undermine, the core principles of democracy, and that they are not a leader’s personal tool to silence critics and retain power. Respect for this principle is one of the starkest lines dividing democratic and authoritarian leaders, and I see grave similarities between events in our country and the processes by which autocratic leaders have brought their countries to the brink of civil conflict and beyond.

Each day, Trump’s approach looks more like the autocrats I warned about as an analyst. I am alarmed by the decision to send federal forces to Portland and additional cities, over local objections, as well as the abusive approach of those forces to protesters in operations well beyond their normal jurisdiction. The use of intelligence elements to monitor citizens engaging in constitutionally-protected activity is deeply disturbing and strikingly similar to illegal domestic spying that prompted the Church Committee in 1975 and resulted in our modern intelligence oversight structure. Set against the backdrop of the dereliction and callous disregard for the more than 160,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, I fear the president and his allies may choose further escalation in an attempt to avoid the personal consequences of defeat in November.

I saw several patterns repeated in the behavior of foreign leaders who lacked majority support and refused to respect their constitutions and constituents. They ignored or manipulated facts, rejected legitimate criticism, sought to disenfranchise opposition voters, invited foreign interference, and planted seeds of doubt about their own institutions and electoral processes. They also identified security elements willing to spy on their own citizens and to use force to put down protests calling for the leader to step down. Sadly, the similarities to current events in the United States are striking.

I have seen up close the president’s disdain for democratic values, and recent events should be put in the context of a continuous slide toward authoritarianism.

But some of the same situations I watched overseas give me reasons to be hopeful. I have seen several authoritarian leaders attempt but ultimately fail to subdue populations deeply committed to advancing democratic values – including Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia and Blaise Compaore in Burkina Faso. In these cases, massive turnout for elections and non-violent protest as part of disciplined and enduring social movements were vital to resetting the course of countries on our current trajectory.

These basic acts of civic participation, undertaken by millions, help rebuild the foundations of democracy and bolster governing institutions against efforts to tear them apart. It is up to all of us to ensure historic and safe participation in this election, and to be prepared to peacefully reject any efforts to subvert the will of the people.

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Did I just almost fall for a scam? I thought I was smart, but they almost got me by making me doubt myself. It sounded like a call from Ameren—my electricity provider—telling me that my power was scheduled to be cut off in less than two hours, because my last two payments had not processed. Stupidly, I believed him! Here’s the trick: He said that my “ACH” autopayment authorization with my bank had “expired,” and they can’t process payment without that. He said that “Ameren” had sent me a form to fill out—but I didn’t return it. Which was true—the part about me not returning it, because I never saw it. But he had me wondering if I had neglected something important.

So, he wanted me to fill out a new form. Like an idiot, I said, please don’t cut off my electricity, I can send you an immediate payment. No, he said, that won’t work. We can’t accept payment without the authorization form. He put me on hold, telling me that he would consult with his supervisor about a credit or debit card payment. But after 10 minutes, the call disconnected. I panicked. [I should know better.] I called the number back. He had given me his “name,” a “work order,” and his “extension.” The person who answered the phone had no idea what I was talking about and hung up on me.

How stupid am I? Of course, I should have immediately looked up Ameren’s number online. If I had, I would have known that this was a fake. But I didn’t. My heart was palpitating. I told my husband what had just happened. To my relief, he was totally calm and understanding. He said, “These things happen. It’s not your fault.” [He bought the story, too, apparently.] Then he said, “Why don’t you look at the account where the payments come out of, and see if they have been processed for the past couple of months?” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? And, of course, there they were: perfectly legit autopay withdrawals for the past three months.

And then, by accident, I saw something on my Facebook feed that changed everything. [Don’t ask why I looked at it at that particular moment—I’m an addict, I guess.] A friend wrote a post about the exact same call, which she had fielded just hours before I got mine. She was savvier than me, and immediately knew it was a scam. Her post saved me from a trip to the ER for an EKG.

And then, belatedly, I figured out what they were really after. At first, I wondered why he didn’t just ask for my credit card number and scam me out of a few hundred dollars that way—as well as gain access to my credit card. Then I got it: They wanted me to sign an authorization that would allow them to go directly into my bank account and suck out all of my money. But you probably already knew that.

Fortunately, I didn’t give out any information, and maybe something in the way I sounded on the phone made the caller think that I wasn’t going to go for it. [He probably got a good laugh out of my protestations about having been an Ameren customer at the same address for 45 years and never having missed a payment.] I’ve read that many older people [like me] who are approached by these scammers, have the same reaction I did—panic. Many do not tell anyone what happened and how they were robbed because they’re embarrassed at being so gullible. So, although I’m feeling sheepish, foolish and more vulnerable than I thought I was, I’m telling you all of this so you won’t fall for it the way I almost did, and that if you get this kind of call, you’ll tell someone, too.

The post Today, I almost fell for a scam. I hope you’re smarter than I was. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For Los Angeles County election chief Dean Logan, Tuesday, March 3, 2020 was, to quote a famous children’s book, “a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” It was Super Tuesday, a critical point in the 2020 election timeline. News reports chronicled long lines at polling places, equipment failures and mad-as-hell voters. Much of the blame, it seemed, landed on the debut of a $300 million dollar, custom-designed system of electronic voting machines, many of which appeared to have malfunctioned or failed completely. But other factors appeared to play a role, as well: The rollout of an early-voting option; and the first-time use of a vote-center configuration, which reduced the previous 4,000 neighborhood polling places to 900 geographically dispersed centers.

But those first impressions, like many heat-of-the-moment media stories, were only the first draft. The real story emerged later. In the days that followed, LA County launched an investigation into what had gone wrong. The resulting 135-page report showed up on the LA County website at the end of April, without a public announcement, and it doesn’t take an advanced degree in logic to understand the zero-publicity approach: The embarrassing problems revealed during the investigation are not flattering to Logan and his operation.

The report highlights system failures that might have been prevented with better planning and testing and they offer a cautionary tale for other jurisdictions as the critical November 2020 presidential election approaches. Key findings in the report’s executive summary include the following facts, followed by my annotations:

• 20 percent of voters surveyed after the election reported a negative voting experience.
• 15 percent of voters reported waiting more than two hours to vote.

In the world of election management, those are terrible numbers.

• Vote Centers were open for ten days before election day. 27% of voters cast ballots in the first 10 days. 73% voted on election day.

Election officials had projected a much higher early voting percentage. They staffed and set up vote centers thinking that a much smaller percentage of people would vote on election day. Some election-management experts speculate that the early voting option—in play for the first time—was not as accepted by voters as had been hoped for, because voters, typically, are wary of any change in procedures.

• Long wait times primarily resulted from technical issues with the electronic pollbooks (Poll Pads) that are used to check in voters as they arrive at Vote Centers. Even though ample network bandwidth was available, the Poll Pads had issues synchronizing date with the voter database, and the voter search function was too limited for the size of the county’s electorate. This resulted in delays as voters checked in. Also, some Vote Center had fewer Poll Pads than needed to handle voter turnout on Election Day.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but LA County’s report pins a big chunk of it on the company—Missouri-based Knowink—that programs and maintains the electronic pollbook system.

• While there was a perception among voters and the media that [the new ballot-marking machines] were not operable and contributed to wait times, generally this was not the case.

Having spent 10 years and $300 million dollars designing a custom-made voting system, LA County’s election administration has a big stake in reassuring the public that they made the right decision. To their credit, in the report, they acknowledge that they made many mistakes, understaffing help desks and some Vote Centers, and not adequately addressing a previously identified problem with the gears in some ballot printers, which caused jamming that further slowed the flow of voters. But “problems” with the new ballot-marking system, they contend, were less about the machines not working and more about not deploying enough of them.

A chart in the executive summary lists the problems and offers potential solutions, The chart illuminates the scope of failings on Super Tuesday in America’s largest voting jurisdiction: Excessive wait times. Short-staffing at Vote Centers. Inadequate poll worker training; Late delivery of 17,000 vote-by-mail ballots to voters. Discrepancies between official publications of Vote Center locations and actual locations. Malfunctioning voter hotline. Problems with Vote Center set-up and deployment of resources.

Between now and November 2020, LA County election officials have a lot to do to make sure none of these problems happen again. To that end, the report includes a to-do list whose succinct bullet points only hint at the amount of additional behind-the-scenes planning, meetings, logistical changes and staff overtime it will take to improve the outcome in November—the kind of grunt work that is invisible to voters, but crucial to the integrity of elections.

They’ll try, because no election administrator wants to be the lead story on CNN on election night, and the vast majority of people in this line of work want to get it right. But there are no guarantees. Election day, no matter where you vote, is a crap shoot for election managers, and things happen that cannot be anticipated or even, sometimes, imagined. Good luck, Mr. Logan.

The post Behind the scenes at LA County’s Super Tuesday election meltdown appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the 2008 Minnesota election for US Senate, Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by less than three hundred votes. In that race, almost four thousand absentee ballots were not counted because votes didn’t sign the envelope, as required. The problem was a flaw in the design of the envelope. Voters didn’t notice the signature line, an innocent mistake that ultimately disenfranchised them. That screw-up prompted the Minnesota secretary of state’s office to redesign the absentee mail-in envelope to include an outsized X to prominently indicate where voters needed to sign. In the 2010 election, the missing-signature total dropped to 837.

The way your ballot looks influences how you vote. Anyone who paid attention to the 2000 presidential election will remember how “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County, Florida, confused thousands of voters, who may have voted for Patrick Buchanan rather than Al Gore, because the layout of the ballot was ambiguous. More recently, in the 2018 senate election in Florida, thousands of voters didn’t mark their ballots for that contest, because it appeared at the bottom of a long column of instructions—a column that many voters skipped. Election officials calculate that more than 30,000 votes may have been lost because of that design error. The winner of the Senate race, Rick Scott, won by less than 10,000 votes. No one will ever know if that margin of victory was attributable to the missing votes.

In 2020, as American politicians, election scholars and administrators try to figure out how conduct elections in a pandemic—and increasingly by mail—ballot design is going to be a critical factor in getting it right.

The Washington Post recently posted this very informative, four-minute video on this subject. Watch it here.

The post Ballot design is important, especially now appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the final hour of the 2020 legislative session, the Missouri Senate passed SB631, which would allow Missourians to vote absentee by mail in 2020 in the upcoming August and November elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However—and this is a big one—unless you expect to be confined, ill or in a specified high-risk category for COVID-19, the absentee mail-in ballot still must be notarized. The provisions will go into effect once the bill is signed by the Governor. It will expire on December 31, 2020 so this provision will not continue beyond that date. At that point, the rules will revert to the confusing state of being that existed before SB631. So just when you’ve figured out what to do in 2020, the rules will change back again in 2021–adding a further level of consternation to a situation that could easily be remedied by simply allowing no-excuse absentee voting–as is allowed in 29 states and Washington, D.C. (in addition to Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Hawaii and Washington, where all voting is conducted by mail.)

The Missouri Voter Protection Coalition has created this chart in an effort to clarify the changes. The chart is a worthy effort to explain the overly complicated rules. No doubt, the new “system” will generate many calls to election hotlines across the state.

The post New rules for absentee voting in Missouri: More complicated than ever appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Trump’s former consigliere, Michael Cohen, is reported to be writing a tell-all book. Whether he’ll be writing in in a jail cell or at home is still not clear, as his pandemic-related release from prison was suddenly, unceremoniously, and suspiciously rescinded just days after it was announced in late April 2020.  One thing is certain, though: He’s got the goods on Trump and his circle.

This article first appeared on this site in 2018, just after to the FBI raided Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s office, home and hotel room,  where they found and seized a cache of old cell phones—sixteen cell phones, to be precise.  The parody song at the end of this post could be the theme song for his new book.

You have to wonder why Cohen held onto all of the phones. It is possible, after all, to transfer one’s contacts to a new phone. It’s possible, too, to destroy a phone and its memory, if it contains things you don’t want discovered. One could speculate that he kept them for sentimental reasons, or because he thought that someday a Blackberry would be a valuable collectors’ item. Not likely, though. A more plausible explanation would be that Cohen hung onto his old phones because they house, in their micro-memories, some important things that didn’t transfer over to the next generation of mobile phone. And what might those things be? Could they be saved voice mails and “taped” conversations with people Michael Cohen worked with? Cohen is known to record conversations—perhaps to retain them to play back in the future as embarrassing evidence or leverage, perhaps to use them as gossip fodder, or perhaps to play them for the merriment of his friends.

Whatever his reasons, the seized cell phones are now in the hands of the special master appointed to evaluate the attorney-client privilege-ness of what they and other documents contain. Are they the 21^st century equivalent of the incriminating Nixon tapes? We may never know. Suffice it to say, though, that Cohen is probably sweating—as are all the people he may have talked to over 16-phones-worth of conversations.

So, in honor of the 16-phone seizure, I’ve composed a parody of Tennesse Ernie Ford’s, “16 Tons.

Here is the original 1955 hit. My lyrics follow:

Okay, now you’ve got the melody. Here goes

“16 Phones: A Michael Cohen sing-along”

Some people say my ethics are stuck in the mud,

 I never had to worry: I had Trump as my bud.

I said I’d take the bullet if it came down to just us,

But I’m getting run over by Donald Trump’s bus.

You load 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass,

I’m holed up at home tryin’ to save my own ass.

I was born a fixer, and I’m good at the game.

Bully and Sleazeball are my middle names.

The Boss trusted me with the nastiest jobs,

And I’m consigliere to the Trump family mob.

You load 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t ask for more:

I’ve sold my soul to the Trump-any store.

I was born on Long Island, just a privileged kid,

I’m working for Trump now, and you know what I did.

I paid off some women and threatened the rest,

And now I’ve been raided, and I’m facing arrest.

You save 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass:

I’m holed up at home tryin’ to save my own ass.

Some people say I’ll flip and just tell it all,

Listen, you assholes, I’m not takin’ the fall.

Shut up for a change, and try to be wise,

‘Cuz I’ve got the goods on all of you guys.

You save 16 phones, and what do you get?

A ton of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass:

I’m holed up at home, tryin’ to save my own ass.

Parody lyrics, Copyright 2018, Gloria Shur Bilchik

The post 16 phones: Theme song for Michael Cohen’s tell-all book on Trump and Company appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For those who don’t vote in the US because they think it’s too time-consuming, too complicated or too confusing, consider the voting process in the African nation of Burundi.

Burundi, for the Africa-map-challenged, like me, is landlocked country. It’s that little red dot on the map between Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. Its capital cities are Bjumbura ( the political capital) and Gitega (the economic capital). Burund’s population is about 11 million. The country’s literacy rate is 68 percent. It operates politically as a constitutional republic with a bi-cameral parliamentary structure. Currently, 24 different political parties hold seats or are vying for them.

And that’s where the complexity sets in. According to the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa [EISA], in parliamentary elections, each valid voter is given 24 ballots – each bearing the name and symbol of a different party – and two envelopes. In the polling booth, the voter puts her chosen ballot paper in the white envelope, and the rest into the black one. Exiting the booth, voters then put the white envelope with their chosen ballot paper into one box for votes cast, and the black envelope into another box, before having their thumbs marked with indelible ink so they can’t vote again. The number of black envelopes containing useless ballot papers (at any given polling station) have to match with the number of white envelopes to avoid cheating.

I have now read that description about a dozen times, and I think I’m beginning to understand it. But still, I’m glad I’m not a first-time voter in Burundi.

Burundi is slated to hold a presidential election on May 20. 2020. With six candidates vying for the job, voting will presumably be somewhat simpler than the complicated routine of parliamentary elections, and the current ruling party is expected, by knowledgeable observers, to win the day. Notably, other African nations have postponed their national elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, but as of this writing, Burundi is moving ahead.

The post How to vote in Burundi appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Oregon has conducted all of its statewide elections entirely by mail since 1998. A Huffington Post article explains how it works:

The process is simple. It’s secure. And it means residents don’t have to worry about leaving their houses and risk getting the coronavirus in order to vote. They don’t even have to worry about putting a stamp on their ballots; Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed a law last year that requires the state to pay for ballot postage.

…There are so many benefits to Oregon’s vote-by-mail system that it’s a wonder why other states haven’t already made mail-in voting an option for every voter, never mind during a public health emergency. The system is simple: Ballots are mailed to all registered voters’ addresses three weeks before each election, along with a pamphlet of information on candidates and issues. Voters mark them, sign them and drop them in a mailbox. Election officials verify every signature ― clerks are trained in forensics and will contact you if your signature doesn’t match ― and tally the results, which are easy to reproduce for recounts. They’re also hard to manipulate, which reduces the risk of foreign interference in U.S. elections.

“You can’t hack paper,” said the governor. “You can replicate and verify the results.”

It’s also cost-effective. Brown said while her state still operates some polling stations, its vote-by-mail elections cost 20% to 30% less than in-person voting because of reduced costs from staffing polling stations and ballot counting systems. Beyond that, Oregon has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country.

Let’s all be more like Oregon.

The post Oregon knows how to vote by mail appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder—to overturn the “pre-clearance” requirement in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—continues to have major ramifications for voting rights in America. Just before the decision came down in 2013, The Brennan Center for Democracy looked into its crystal ball and envisioned what would happen if the Court decided against pre-clearance. The predictions were ominous, and, unfortunately, they began to materialize, just days after the Supreme Court’s opinion went live. Here are the general categories into which new voting rights abuses were likely to fall, according to the Brennan Center’s prescient predictions. Check them against what has actually happened. I’m republishing this post because of its continuing relevance in the Trump era of diminishing American democracy.

Jurisdictions could try to revise discriminatory changes blocked by Section 5.

To give you a sense of the scope of this category, consider that 31 such proposed changes have been blocked by the Justice Department or the federal courts since the Voting Rights Act was last reauthorized just eight years ago. In just the past six months, after the 2012 election, many such challenges have been rejected.

Jurisdictions could put in place broad discriminatory practices they were previously “chilled” from implementing by Section 5’s pre-clearance requirement.

In South Carolina v. Holder, a Section 5 challenge that preceded the 2012 election, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of George W. Bush, highlighted the deterrent effect of the statute — how it prevented state lawmakers from moving forward with the most obviously discriminatory practices, and how these officials narrowed the scope of their proposed voting change to track the requirements of the Section. That deterrent effect will be gone.

Jurisdictions might implement those discriminatory practices they tried but failed to get past the Justice Department under Section 5.

The Brennan Center reports that 153 such voting measures have been submitted and then withdrawn in recent years after federal officials questioned the discriminatory nature of these proposed laws. Even if just half of these policies were to be reconsidered and adopted in the absence of Section 5 they would significantly change the voting rights landscape in several Southern states.

Finally, the most obvious impact — jurisdictions might try to adopt restrictive new voting measures they neither contemplated nor dared submit for preclearance under Section 5.

For best effect, those lawmakers could do so on the eve of an election, forcing voting rights advocates to scramble and practically daring the federal judiciary to enjoin the measures. We wouldn’t likely go back to the age, as John Lewis recounted, where black voters would have to guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. But we wouldn’t be too far off, either. Just last election cycle, in Texas, lawmakers sought to impose what amounted to a poll tax on indigent — or carless — registered voters.

If you think these predictions sound hysterical, Orwellian and unlikely to occur in this country, think again. In the past seven years, states and local jurisdictions enacted legislation on many of the fronts outlined by the Brennan Center. We need to stay on full alert.

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