Democracy is under attack. Stand up—fight back!

Democracy is under attack.

For decades, Republicans have been gradually increasing their attacks on free and fair elections in America. This includes gerrymandering, voter purges, voter ID laws, closing polling places, cutting back early voting, untrustworthy if not compromised voting systems, the sabotage of the Postal Service, and so on.

This matters not simply because it hurts our side, but because it erodes the very foundation of small-d democratic government itself.

Consent of the Governed

As the Declaration of Independence puts it, Governments derive their just powers from the Consent of the Governed. We express that consent through elections—the winner of the election has the majority’s consent to govern.

For many years, conservatives have openly questioned the authority of government to regulate industry as well as individual actions, and raised spectres of a “silent majority” who actually want what Trump and the Republicans are offering, and falsely accused Democratic candidates of winning the popular vote through fraudulent votes for which no evidence exists.

All of this rests on election integrity or lack thereof.

The election is how we establish the Consent of the Governed. The winners of that Consent then have authority to execute the functions and just powers of government—to make and enact laws and see that they are enforced and enforced fairly.

What is and is not likely to happen

So now we get into two possible bleak futures.

The first that some have speculated on is that the election may be canceled or “postponed”.

There’s a reason why that may not happen: Trump and the Republicans will want the trappings of an election victory to give their government the appearance of legitimacy, without actually having to convince a majority of the people to vote for them. They don’t want to win an election; they want to stay in power. And when power is supposed to come from the Consent of the Governed, staying in power without that Consent means manufacturing such Consent, which means engineering an election “victory” regardless of what the people actually want.

Sabotaging elections is how they manufacture the Consent of the Governed. They wield the powers of Government unjustly, unaccountably, because the Consent of the Governed is no longer relevant to their continual holding of power.

If that sabotage fails, we get to the second possible bleak future: Trump loses the election, so he calls shenanigans and refuses to leave.

Basically, there’s three elements to this: The election must be trustworthy; it must be trusted; and it must be respected.

The important question: What do we do about it?

There’s a lot that we can’t do about it here in San Francisco. We can’t do anything directly about other states conducting voter purges, passing racist and anti-democratic laws, adopting compromised voting systems, or anything like that. That’s a fight that people in those states are waging. We can donate money, and that helps, but that’s about it.

There are things we can do here in San Francisco to ensure a fair election happens here.

You can work as a poll worker. You would sign up for this through the City and work at a polling place on the last day of voting, often called “Election Day”. This is especially important due to the pandemic, because many folks who work as poll workers most years are retirees, many of whom are especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus. If you’re less vulnerable, you taking their place or some of their workload helps a lot.

You can monitor the polls on the last day of voting. Election Protection runs a non-partisan volunteer effort for poll monitoring. You would then be present at the polls and make sure the poll workers conduct that part of the election fairly.

You can monitor the count, after the polls have closed. The Scrutineers Community is a group of people preparing to do this. You would be involved with monitoring the opening and processing of ballots to make sure they are handled properly and counted fairly.

You can get out the vote. Many of our voter outreach opportunities are about this.

Much of the Republicans’ attacks over the years have been about suppressing the vote and disenfranchising voters. Reversing that as much as we can is crucial. Much of our phone banking and text banking and postcarding is about getting out the vote; Spread the Vote is an organization that works to re-enfranchise voters so that they can vote.

Getting out the vote is crucial because it eats away at “silent majority” rhetoric and establishes a stronger Consent of the Governed. Every ballot cast by an eligible voter is a step in the right direction. Every ballot not cast is a step in the wrong one.

Doing any of those things is how you can help ensure a free and fair election happens in San Francisco. We encourage you to get loud about this to your friends and family in other states—tell people that you’re serving as a poll worker or poll monitor to ensure that we have an accurate count of eligible votes. We have a whole article on talking to friends and family about Trump and while this wouldn’t be a conversation about Trump, it’d involve many of the same techniques.

Much of that work is about countering propaganda. It’s hard work, but it’s important, because so much of the Trump Presidency’s damage is its assault on truth and on civil service. Part of that assault is sowing distrust in the election, with Trump’s line about “three million illegal votes” and his bogus claims about postal voting and on and on.

Our part is to restore trust in the election, which goes hand-in-hand with demanding that the election be trustworthy.

The best defense against Trump refusing to leave is to have a trustworthy and trusted election. We can’t swiftly undo all the attacks that the right wing has done to both parts of that, but we can do our part to shore things up.

If he does not have the Consent of the Governed, and everyone around him knows it, there’s a real chance that he will fold, or at least get told by his staff that the writing’s on the wall and it’s time to go. The same will go for Members of Congress who get voted out.

Lastly, there is protest.

Mass protest may be an important part of establishing the lack of Consent of the Governed for a second term of Trump’s Presidency. You should start making plans and getting connected with folks like us who have experience protesting and may be involved in protests to come. (We haven’t made any such commitments at this time, but if you subscribe to our newsletter, we’ll let you know the next time we have a protest coming up.)

There are many roles at a protest. Just showing up is a big contribution and always greatly appreciated. There will be other specific roles that are needed, including speakers, event monitors, press contacts, and more. If you want to get trained as an event monitor, let us know and we’ll see about hooking you up.

President Obama said it plain back in 2016: “Democracy itself is on the ballot.” That wasn’t an exaggeration, and it’s true again this year.

Democracy itself is on the ballot.

That’s the stakes. We need to fight for democracy so we don’t lose it.

And we very much want you to get involved, and we want to help you however we can.