Politics – Page 9 – Pat the Expat

Part Two: Domestic Security

If you watch the news, read a paper, or just surf online, you’ll see people bandy about terms like “coup” or “insurrection” or “treason” or “rebellion”. Some have no idea what they’re talking about, while others have as much or more experience in these issues as I do (thirty-eight years, to be exact). I continue to disagree even with the latter group for one simple reason: while they make studious and serious cases for such language, their reasoning is driven by their emotions, rather than having their emotions prompted by their reasoning. Let me explain.

In these United States, we traditionally treat violence directed at any lawful authority (federal, state, local, tribal or territorial) as a criminal matter, NOT as a national security matter. Even after 9/11, we only unified disparate elements into a Department of Homeland Security to improve information sharing amongst the various border and air/sea port authorities and with non-federal authorities. The FBI retained investigative authority against federal crimes (less counterfeiting and threats to the President et al, which belong to the US Secret Service in DHS).

Why in the wake of the worst terror attack in US history did this remain the case? Because we place such value on individual liberty and freedom of speech that we chose NOT to infringe them even under threat of tremendous assault. You remain free to think the most vile, phobic, sexist, racist thoughts you can imagine. You can even gather together (really or virtually) and share those disgusting thoughts and comments with others. Up to the point you plan violence or take a specific act, you remain free. Even if your target was the US government.

A short digression, if I may. I worked the domestic security issue at DHS in 2010, when a certain Faisal Shahzad attempted to set off a car-bomb in Times Square. He was a naturalized US citizen born in Pakistan who was married, had children, owned a house, had a job and was completing a Master’s degree. He traveled to Pakistan once, where he had family. He was self-radicalized, although we later learned he had attended a bomb-making school while in Pakistan. After the 9/11 attacks, a friend heard him say “they had it coming.” That was it. Ten years later, the first truly obvious illegal thing he did was double park an SUV full of explosives in Time Square. This was the risk we accepted, even after 9/11.

We treated it as a crime, and we never turned the elaborate, powerful US Intelligence Community apparatus against the domestic threat. Why? US intelligence could no doubt gather the information to determine all kinds of nefarious intentions domestically. But it would also gather reams of information that represented nothing more than citizens exercising their constitutional rights. The cost to liberty was simply too high a price to pay for effectiveness against this threat.

“Yes, yes,” I hear you think, “but this Capitol Hill assault was a direct attack on our system of government!” and you are correct. But what was the civil war, if not such an attack? And no southerners were ever executed for treason, and its leaders weren’t even tried for it. Lincoln and later Johnson pardoned most accused of these and related crimes, despite the fact they had taken up arms and violated oaths. Even northerners who sided with the Confederacy generally ended up with leniency.

If we invoke national security language like coup or legal terms like treason or insurrection we change the rules of the game. The former calls into play the Intelligence Community or the US military, and no sane American should want that: I can tell you that many intelligence and military professionals would quit rather than comply. The latter lower the bar to crimes which should remain rarely–if ever–charged. The Insurrection act is triggered solely by the President in cases when “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States” and allows him to deploy the military (Posse Comitatus notwithstanding!) to handle it. Yikes! People want to use these terms because they are upset and want to make a statement, but this is bad policy. Why would anyone want to set a new, lower standard for such crimes, knowing that someday it will be used against others?

One final story about domestic security to pull it all together. There are groups in the United States who disavow the legitimacy of the federal government: Sovereign Citizens comes to mind. They don’t pay federal taxes, they resist even traffic citations, they seize government buildings and assault government officers. All the time. All over the country. Most of the members of this movement are harmless followers who don’t follow through, but there are violent activist members, too. If there ever was a group eligible for charging under some of these terms, they are it. These are not right-wing nuts or left-wing nuts, these people are just plain nuts. Yet we let them go, only charging them with tax evasion or fining them or imprisoning them if they conduct a violent attack. Why?

Back in 1993, a man named David Koresh led a cult-like commune called the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. His outlandish behavior and alleged abuse of children brought him to the attention of Texas authorities who could not substantiate any charges. Eventually, Texas got the US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (USBATF) involved due to suspicions about weapons at the Davidian compound. When USBATF raided it, a firefight ensued and four federal agents (and six Davidians) were killed. This brought the FBI into the case, as the death of federal agents is a federal crime. The FBI under Attorney General Janet Reno laid siege to the compound for fifty-one days, then, attempted to force them out using tear gas and a US Army combat engineer vehicle. The compound caught fire (probably set by the Davidians), and seventy-nine Davidians (including twenty-one children) died.

But that was not the end of the story. You see, a young man named Timothy McVeigh was a protester outside the siege. He had no interest in the Davidians or their cult, but he was pro-gun rights, and the ensuing violence left him a changed man bent on revenge. Two years later, he got his vengeance by blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City on the anniversary of the Waco fire.

Waco wasn’t handled in a routine criminal way. The US government created martyrs at Waco, and reaped the result. It is important to note that the rightness or wrongness of what the government did was irrelevant.

The question before each of us is simple: do you want righteous vengeance or domestic tranquility? You can not have both.

Part One: Domestic Violence

Trying to get my head around the recent events at the Capitol, and fend off some poorly-thought out commentary from the national media, I kept circling around three related issues: how we view violent groups of Americans, how law enforcement and the national security apparatus approaches them, and how the media plays a role. I have labelled these three topics as domestic violence, domestic security, and domestic tranquility. In addressing all three, I will note similarities and differences in each case, but I do so to highlight the larger phenomena: please spare me comments like “you can’t compare the brave BLM members who were brutalized by police to the white supremacists in the Capitol” or the reverse. If you don’t understand how to compare such things without making a value judgment about the rightness or wrongness of the causes, stop reading now and retreat to the safety of your Twitter/Parler feed.

The phrase domestic violence is traditionally used to refer to violence within a couple or family. I find it appropriate here because the larger problem is an American cultural one: our American family is at war with itself. Much like a family, we all take sides and vilify the other. Much like a family, there is a little truth and a lot of hyperbole on both sides. Your large rally with a small riot at the end is ‘the inevitable and understandable cry against injustice’ while mine is ‘racist hate-filled mobs bent on white supremacy.’ And vice versa. Both sides may be correct, and neither may be.

Protests and mobs and riots are peculiar things, made up of many people with disparate intentions. That they act coherently at all is something odd in itself. If you have ever been among a group of fans, chanting and screaming for your team and against the other side (or the refs, or God), you had a small taste of the phenomenon. A protest is simply a group expressing a point of view. When the protest becomes agitated, it starts to turn into a mob. At some point, someone moves from agitation to an act of violence, and the mob becomes a riot, where otherwise reasonable people do violent, unreasonable things. Once the riot has begun, it must burn itself out: either through time, or at the point of police force. Ever ask why rioters burn down their own neighborhood? Because once the riot begins, reason goes out the window. Police force is not always the correct response: at a certain point, rioters stop fearing for their own safety and even deadly force does not deter them.

Sometimes a large police presence deters the mob, other times it incites. Sometimes an arrest halts the violence, sometimes it worsens it. This is a tricky matter, made more so by the fact every protest/mob/riot is different.

But one thing we all, as Americans, can agree on is that until violence happens, the rioters-to-be are simply an angry mob (or even just protesters) practicing their constitutional right to assemble and seek redress of grievances. Perhaps the problem is becoming clearer now. No one can tell when or if the line of violence will be crossed, and yet the police must be prepared in every case, and that preparation may be the spark. Tricky indeed. To borrow a line from A Few Good Men,: “I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post.”

Colonel Nathan Jessup: usually wrong, always entertaining

But let’s not leave it that simple. Remember, the mob and the riot have their own will. Imagine yourself on the police line: When they turn off the approved protest route, are they heading to attack a target, or just lost? The guy carrying a fire extinguisher: is he putting out little blazes that break out, or will he hit me in the noggin with it? Somebody is spraying a mist at me: is it acid (a deadly attack) or urine (just disgusting). There’s a bag flying over my head: a Molotov cocktail or loose stool? (In case you’re wondering, these are all real examples.) In all these cases, people have to make split second decisions between good and bad intentions, legal and illegal acts, violent or just gross behavior. It goes both ways: the face hidden behind the visor with a badge–good cop or racist waiting to crash in my skull with a baton? What do I do when the police line says stop but the people behind me push forward? Why can’t we get a little closer to make ourselves heard? Why is my voice stifled?

For opinion-makers, it’s all so clear-cut tweeting out your outrage and sharing your disturbing allegations, but at the point of attack, it is very murky. Hucksters on all sides inflame the true-believers and repeat the cycle. And our family rift goes on.

Other than deploring violence, there is another area where almost everyone agrees: that those who specifically incite violence deserve more serious sanction. But even there the consensus is illusory. What is incitement to violence? The Supreme Court has held that the act or language must be imminent and likely to cause violence. Thus no one can use something I say today as justification a year from now for a violent act and blame me. Likewise, if I post to no one in particular “the Governor has to go,” my statement is unlikely to cause any specific act (even if by some chance someone did attack a Governor). And the words themselves are tricky; which of the following is an incitement:

“freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed”
“justice that law gives is a punishment.”
“where justice is denied, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.”
“It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”

The first is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The second is Mahatma Gandhi, the third is Frederick Douglas, and the last is Jacob Chansley, aka the QAnon Shaman, in a note he left for Vice President Pence.

Clear as mud. I invited you into this morass to show that when one takes off their ideological blinders, it is much more difficult to pontificate. We are making snap judgments (“I know that look on his face” was a famous one about a teenager that cost several media outlets millions of dollars) about people we don’t know, spurred on by sources we don’t always check for bias.

And it’s not innocent, for reasons I’ll explain in parts two and three.

Meanwhile, mom and dad are at each other’s throats.

This Time

I was against the initial attempt by the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump. I was against it because it was a convenient excuse (a “Pleiku” as I explained). The Democratic Party wanted to impeach the President from the day of his election, and finally settled upon an excuse to do so. It was an ill-fated attempt (one Speaker Pelosi even initially opposed) and one that came to the impotent end it merited.

What is happening today is different. First, let’s remove the emotional aspects of this case. This impeachment is not about removing the President from office. It will barely affect his term. It is also not about the President’s claimed lapse into unreality. He has always believed what he wants, nothing has changed there. Nor is it about his finger on the nuclear trigger. Some may be excused for not knowing this, but Speaker Pelosi does, so she bears responsibility for the hysteria she engendered: there is an entire system involved in nuclear release. It is not a button to be pushed. There are messages, codes, things that must be ascertained and confirmed. The system is designed to allow the President to respond in the case of a surprise nuclear attack. In the absence of indications of inbound missiles, it does not allow the President to launch, willy-nilly.

This NOT how we do it! (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

So what is this about? Since his surprise (to him) election loss, President Trump has been in engaging in a slow-motion autogolpe (tip of the hat to Ken Copeland for reminding me of the word!), which is a Latin American term for when the leader attempts to retain power through non-legal means. The President began his opposition to the election results legally, but after losing lawsuit after lawsuit, he began seeking and supporting other means.

What happened at the Capitol was the culmination of those efforts. First, a legally permissible rally on the Mall followed by march to the Capitol building, which quickly descended into a riot and occupation. I have watched more video of the event that I care to admit, and it resembles every riot I have ever watched. Yes, there are people making specific threats against specific people, but they are screaming out as groups run and wander all about. In the end, all were allowed to leave, and they did so. Some coup. Law enforcement should treat this as the dangerous riot it was, nothing more but nothing less.

But this was no normal Congressional day. The President called for the rally, and spoke at the rally, and incited the rally members toward the Capitol to intimidate the only activity underway there: the counting and certifying of the electoral college results, finalizing the victory of Joe Biden. Did he specifically call for violence? No, but that is irrelevant. He organized the rally, fired up the rally goers, and sought to pressure the electoral certification. While there was very little chance of this scheme working in any real sense, the very act itself was an affront to the notions of the peaceful transfer of power all Americans should hold dear.

This President has routinely broken norms, and rarely if ever acknowledges any limits that should restrict his behavior. But there are norms and then there are rules, and he broke both. For the latter, he should be charged with impeachment by the House of Representatives and found guilty by the Senate. Most importantly, he should be banned from further federal public office, not only making an example of him but also removing the danger of another Trump candidacy. Perhaps the Republican Party can seize the opportunity to rediscover its moral bearings.

One final point: I still strongly oppose invoking the 25th Amendment. That law was introduced to cover the eventuality of an incapacitated President, not the removal of one who has behaved poorly or even illegally. The former is solved by an election; the latter is reserved for impeachment. The discussion of the 25th Amendment is one that should only be conducted in private among the principals involved (the Vice President, the Cabinet) to compare notes about disability, not bandied about by the Speaker of the House. As I have said before: we must avoid setting new, ill-advised precedents in response to the Trump presidency. Mark my words: having just elected a seventy-eight year old man to the presidency, we’ll hear more about invoking the 25th Amendment in the next four years!

Waste not, want not

You may have heard that the US Congress passed (and the President signed into law) a series of massive spending bills, which included government funding for the rest of the fiscal year and additional Covid-related relief. As is usually the case in DC, the bills also included funding for a variety of special interests and pet projects. But the one which garnered the most outrage was a provision for a $10 million dollar study of gender in Pakistan, at a time many American students are not in school, their parents are not employed, and the families are looking at a measly $600 (each) bump.

“Why?” so many asked, with much anger and justification. And they deserve an answer. Foreign aid is always a touchy subject in the US, as we have so many things on which we need to spend domestically. Polls show Americans think the federal government spends about 25% of its revenue on foreign aid; the actual figure is 1%. We spend about .2% of Gross National Product, putting us behind almost all other rich nations in such giving, yet we’re still the largest donor in terms of total amount.

“Ok, ok, it’s still a lot of money, and why now, when Americans are hurting? And why to a country like Pakistan that is arguably not even much of an ally?” Well, that takes a history lesson, and one which is rich in irony with respect to foreign aid.

Way back in the 1970s, the US and Pakistan were close allies, as the US sided with the Pakistanis against their bigger, bitter rival India. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the relationship deepened, as we funneled aid through Pakistan to the mujaheddin making life impossible for the Russians in the Hindu Kush. We also tried to aid the development of a more democratic, liberal Pakistan by funding schools and clinics and the like. This wasn’t much money: it doesn’t cost much to put up a concrete building, buy some tables and books, and pay a teacher there. But who wants to vote money for their schools over say, the ones in West Virginia? So we found an alternative: another Muslim country with close ties to Pakistan that had unlimited funding: Saudi Arabia.

The House of Saud was more than willing to fund education in Pakistan. These madrassas (religious schools) excluded girls and taught the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam popular in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan and Afghanistan were once considered among the most liberal Muslim states, but all that changed. Graduates of the madrassas spread throughout the region, which in turn led Pakistan and Afghanistan to become the fertile home of Al Qaeda (the base), the secure enclave from which they planned, and to which they retreated after, the 9-11 attacks.

Now those nations are rife with anti-American, fundamentalist Islamist thought. Pakistan has determined that its Saudi-funded madrassas are a problem, and wants to fix it. America is cautiously engaging with the notion of how to recover a lost generation of Pakistanis, to change their way of thinking and remove the possibility of those countries ever being a base for terrorism again. Rather than throw money at the problem, the US government is studying what to do, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

That’s the $10 million dollar study you heard about. It amounts to what the US government spends every minute. It pales in comparison to the costs of 9-11. Maybe it’s still a waste of money. Maybe someone in charge will make the study focus on gender neutral pronouns in Urdu. Maybe it won’t uncover anything useful. Educated people can disagree about this. But see how one can take any budget item out of context and make it look ridiculous? And there are many real cases of fraud,waste and abuse: ever see a bridge to nowhere built because Congressman Snodgrass wanted it? So people are right to question any budget item, but don’t fall for the easy targets and remember there is always someone out there trying to outrage you.

I’ll end with another cautionary foreign aid story. Once upon a time, the US sent doctors to developing nations to train local medical professionals in how to treat infectious diseases. We bore the costs of such programs, making the training and advice free to the other nations. We did so out of charity and out of self-interest: diseases arrested there don’t spread here. One such nation was China. China became a more developed nation, but what we began in charity we continued in self-interest.

Except Chinese-American relations hit the skids, and we decided to end the program. We pulled out our liaison from the Chinese CDC. In early 2019, we took our doctors out of the training site at the regional medical center in some city named Wuhan. We didn’t end the program because it was too expensive or China wouldn’t pay for it; we just decided cancelling it was a low-cost way to show we were angry. You know how that story ends.

What we learned from the election

While nothing is final just yet, three things are increasingly clear: Joe Biden is the President-elect, Mitch McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader with a tiny majority, and Speaker Pelosi lost some Democratic seats in the House. In no particular order, some analytic points about the whole enchilada:

Joe Biden received over seventy-four million votes, the largest number of votes in the history of the United States. This is most amazing, especially considering that in two previous Presidential runs, he never got past “*%” (that is, negligible) support. His support was strongest among non-white voters (especially black women), young and/or first-time voters, the irreligious and voters not employed full time. According to the New York Times exit polls, two-thirds of those voting for Mr. Biden said they were voting primarily “against the other candidate.”

President Trump received over seventy million votes, or the second-highest number in the history of the United States, eclipsing even winning candidate Obama in 2008. Trump won both white men and white women voters (while losing some ground) but registered gains with blacks, Latinos, and LGBT voters (% increase over 2016). Whether you loved or hated him, it’s fair to say he had the worst four years of media coverage in modern American presidential history (deserved or not), and somehow gained over seven million votes!

Mr. Biden has called repeatedly for reconciliation and stated bluntly he will work as hard for those who voted against him as for those who voted for him. These are exactly the right words for our times. The country is deeply divided, and until we stop referring to one another as enemies, Nazis, morons, etc. we cannot move forward. With President Trump out of the White House, the “but Trump” excuse for rudeness or vulgarity has expired. President Biden will have his hands full restoring dignified disagreement.

The exasperated foreign coverage of the election was amusing. Yes, there are many more efficient ways (to have a Presidential decision) than holding fifty state elections. But these are, and will remain, the UNITED STATES of America. The Soviets held very fast, very efficient elections: it was not an improvement. Those Americans calling for a more centralized, national vote have either (1) never worked in Washington, or (2) forgotten their civics lessons. The system is working well, thank you very much, and we’ll keep it. President Trump’s claims notwithstanding, we only started “calling” elections on election night in the 1960’s with the advent of television and polling. There is no reason to consider systemic change because it takes a few days to finish vote counting, or to conduct a recount.

One bright spot was the dog that didn’t bark. Thus far, there has been no government commentary about possible foreign activities to affect the actual voting. If that holds true, it would appear that the United States Cyber Command, Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community accomplished the mission.

For the second time in as many Presidential elections, pollsters made fools of themselves. Chagrined after their 2016 fiasco, which fostered some of the initial paranoia about President Trump–since after all, he couldn’t have won the election fairly based on what the polls predicted–the pollsters believed the 2018 mid-term results proved they had adjusted and were once again accurate. What they forgot was President Trump was only figuratively on that ballot, and the massive 2020 blue wave the pollsters imagined only demonstrated they were once again looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Citizens of all stripes should remember that polling is roughly akin to fortune telling: you see mostly what you want to see, and that’s not necessarily what will be.

On the other hand, massive kudos to the prognosticators who looked at the demography and changing State voting rules and identified where the “red mirage/blue shift” would happen. In case you missed it, this was the concept that President Trump would hold an advantage in some states at the end of election day, but as the counting went on, that edge would narrow and disappear. To those claiming the constant erosion of support for President Trump in the final state election tallies is evidence of fraud: sorry, that’s not the case. States who counted absentee ballots late demonstrated the effect of greater Democratic Party representation in those votes, that is all.

Progressives and Democrats dancing outside the White House, . . .

Whither Progressivism? I still have friends who say this election was only close because the Democrats ran a moderate, and the result would have been a blue wave with candidates Sanders or Warren. The notion of either of them capturing Pennsylvania or Arizona, let alone Georgia? I’ll leave the last word to Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a moderate Democrat and former colleague of mine who oh-so-narrowly won re-election. Leaks from the House Democratic conference call on Thursday had her screaming at Speaker Pelosi and others, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. . . . We lost good members because of that. If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022.” The House Democratic majority may be in the single digits when all the races are decided. And Progressives should avoid looking at State results, where the GOP gained control of several states just prior to redistricting.

The GOP danced in the Statehouses, gaining at least one, holding total control in twenty-three.

This year, as in several past elections, pundits claimed that the Republican Party was doomed because demography is destiny. That is, younger voters skew liberal and Democratic, so they will stay that way in perpetuity. Or minority voters do, and the Unites States will shortly be a non-white majority electorate. So Democrats win. ((Brief aside: population estimates for China all the way through the 1970’s showed accelerating growth. Demographers joked that the modal person on the planet was an eighteen year-old Chinese female, and nothing reproduces itself like an eighteen year-old Chinese female. Demography is destiny. Except the Chinese Communist Party had other ideas, and the will to enforce a draconian one-child policy. They were so successful they halted Chinese population growth, because political demography is not destiny, it’s a variable. People change.)) Young people want free stuff and fewer restrictions. They grow up and get jobs and hate the high taxes. They buy a house and resent the loud music from the bonger next door. Minority groups refuse to act like monoliths, because they are comprised of real people, not stereotypes: for example, Latinos overwhelmingly do not identify as “people of color.” While it is undeniably true the Democrats capture the most minority votes, the GOP has gained an increasing share of the black and Hispanic vote in the last several Presidential elections. Both parties will continue to evolve and compete for all voters. . . for that is what they do.

The Media? Where to start? Major media organizations decided that President Trump was a unique threat to the American experiment and therefor adopted the stance of active resistance to his administration. Will they reclaim any semblance of nonpartisan coverage, let alone objectivity? Unlikely. President Trump was a major boon for the bottom line of these media, and that is at an end with the end of his Presidency. Where do they go for eyeballs, now? Can they possibly resist covering former President Trump?

What about President Trump? While it is possible he’ll just walk away from politics, it is very unlikely. Late in the election cycle, former President Obama broke with tradition and campaigned heavily against President Trump; former President Trump won’t even consider staying above the fray. Trump will resume his role as Tweeter-in-Chief, grabbing headlines with outrageous comments and over-sized rallies. Needless to say, any sputtering of the economy or increase in coronavirus cases will yield a Trumpian tweet-storm of ridicule. Nothing would more salve his ego then attempting to oust President Biden, so he’ll remain in the mix.

Trumpism as a movement? It’s future depends on what you think it is. If you view Trumpism as a collection of racist, misogynist, ignorant and hateful ideas, then Trumpism will recede back onto the fringes of the American polity. But Trump’s view of China as a problem, not a partner? Already mainstream in foreign and economic policy circles in DC. President Biden will have nothing good to say about President Putin, but he’ll be hard-pressed to develop a more oppositional Russia policy. The Wall is over, but support for immigration is flagging, and both parties admit immigration reform is essential, or another wave of child refugees is likely. Protecting the working class from the ravages of globalization is now a rare area of bipartisan agreement. Oftentimes, Trump’s extreme words belied mainstream thoughts. If he were at all introspective, he might realize how easily he could have won re-election with a little moderation.

So we’re headed for a period of Divided Government, which has gotten a bad reputation of late. The “Not My President//the other side is Evil” stuff really got started after Bush v. Gore in 2000 and became steadily worse. By the end of the Obama presidency it deteriorated into the Merrick Garland Supreme Court debacle, a preview of most of the Trump presidency as nothing useful could pass both Houses of Congress and be signed by the President. Let me counter all that by stating that divided government is something America traditionally has a genius for, and we should welcome the chance to re-awaken the spirit. Our worst policies happen when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches, as they inevitably overreach. A willingness to compromise among the three branches has previously and can again result in laws and policies that are supported by the vast majority of Americans. Not accepted under force of law, not resented but accommodated, but supported as the best for all.

Finally, the closeness of the election should put to bed some of the more extreme and unwise ideas: dumping the electoral college, conjuring up new states, creating a national election, packing the Supreme Court. The system worked, people: leave it alone. In the end, the Electoral College will reflect the popular vote, and will exaggerate (a positive thing) the size of Mr Biden’s victory. Adding states fixes nothing, nor does adding legislators! Could you imagine the chaos if we were amidst a national recount right now? And the Supreme Court has nine legitimate justices, quite capable of doing the job assigned by the Constitution. There is no constitutional provision they have to be liberal, they just have to be confirmed.^* The urge to change the system every time one is unhappy with a candidate, a party, or a policy is immature. As The Beatles put it, “You say you’d change the constitution, welll-llll, you know, we all want to change your head.”

“Don’t you know it’s gonna be . . . alright”

We’re not out of the woods yet. President Trump could still be truculent in the months left in his administration, and his supporters could begin a “lost cause” mythology. Supporters of President Biden must resist the overwhelming urge to use the power of government to persecute former officials of the Trump administration: that is the stuff of banana republics, not our United States. All told, I’m optimistic the country can regain some normalcy and make divided government work again.

^* To those who continue to claim the denial of Merrick Garland somehow invalidates the nomination of Justices Gorsuch or Barrett or both, let me put this argument to bed. Yes, it was completely hypocritical of Majority Leader McConnell to claim he was upholding some standard in denying Mr. Garland a vote. But, there would have been no difference in the Supreme Court. McConnell should have simply held the hearing, held the vote, and failed to confirm Mr. Gorsuch. There was ample historical precedent for this, including most recently Mr. Bork's nomination. If he had chosen this path, we would have ended up with the same court as today, but without this silly argument about non-existent precedent.

A Really Old Car

There was a news item the other day you might have missed, in all the to’ing and fro’ing over the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. By the by, I found the trolling over the death of this great American to be in bad taste. People on both sides immediately began arguing over her Supreme Court seat like greedy relatives clutching at jewelry. How about a moment of silent reflection or a prayer, in place of politics, calls for violence or virtue signalling?

But this is not about that. It’s about the news you missed. Seems they discovered the first automobile ever created. Intact. And still functioning, if by functioning you mean capable of moving its passengers forward under its own power, which was/is not much. Which is pretty amazing for a two-hundred and thirty-one year old piece of equipment.

Now most cars don’t last a decade, but back in the day, they built them to last. Its longevity stems from the fact the owning family kept up with the maintenance, periodically making small changes here and there, but mostly because the family still had the original owner’s manual–on parchment!

The car ran on burning logs, but was eventually upgraded to charcoal & steam. There was that time a nephew decided to pour ethanol into the water pipes in a misguided attempt to “supercharge” performance. That explosion precipitated a replacement, gas-powered engine for the car and a trip to reform school for the nephew.

The family likes to tell the story about the odd shaped device near the driver’s seat: it easily held a Big Gulp, so it must be a cup-holder, or so they thought. But upon consulting the manual, they realized it was originally a spitoon which had transformed into an ashtray before settling on its current usage.

Of course the car had to change with the times: pulling into a gas station and asking for fireplace logs is a drag. Replacing the solid tires with inflatable ones was very popular, but then there were those annoying flats. But the family kept returning to the manual to see what was what, and why things were the way they were. And to understand how all the various moving parts worked together to create a functioning . . . car.

When Uncle Rico got a little tipsy and tried to drive it into the lake, claiming it would float, the car did not behave like a boat, because it was a car. The manual helped explain how to dry it out, and if the family had wanted, they could have used the manual to figure out how to seal the undercarriage and make it float. But then it would be a floating car, not a boat.

What’s the point, you ask (if you haven’t been checking the links above)? Well, obviously, it pays to know something about a device, a vehicle, heck even a recipe before changing it. Not just what it says, but what did the people who originally designed it mean when they wrote the manual. If you’ve stayed with me this far, but still haven’t caught on, you just received a brief parable on the judicial concept of originalism.

Why? That goes back to my original lede, about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When I heard she had lost her battle with cancer, the first thing (after a brief prayer) I thought of was how happy she would be to see her good friend Antonin Scalia again. When I first mentioned their friendship (upon Scalia’s death), I was scolded by some progressive friends saying “the notorious RBG” was only being polite if she did indeed say anything nice about Scalia. Au contraire, they were close friends whose families spent New Year’s Eve together.

Scalia was the chief proponent of originalism, and he was so successful that he changed the nature of the argument over constitutional law. Justice Elena Kagan, no conservative herself, famously said “we are all textualists now” (textualism being almost identical to originalism), not suggesting she agreed with Scalia but that because of the Scalia’s influence, all justices had to contend with this judicial philosophy in the future. And they do. Which is a good reason to understand the concept–even if you don’t agree–and even at the cost of reading my tongue-in-cheek car story. And no, there was no “oldest car” found.

Finally, if there was anybody Justice Ginsburg should have loathed, it was Antonin Scalia. He skewered her opinions and reasoning, and she returned the favor. I imagine their debates in the afterlife would be standing room only, except they must agree on everything now. Few of us can aspire to the greatness of these two figures, but in their personal friendship despite professional differences, we can see a model to emulate, and one sadly in great need today.

Messy Elections

A group called the Transition Integrity Project just held a series of “serious games” simulating a variety of catastrophic outcomes for the impending US presidential election. You might have seen the headlines “What if Trump refuses to leave the White House?” or “The Dangers of the Red Mirage.” They also considered the delays inherent in large mail-in voting or what-if Joe Biden were to pass way shortly before or after the election. If you don’t have enough keeping you awake at night, I highly recommend you read the link!

Seriously, there are several factors combining a la “The Perfect Storm” to make this a particularly contentious election in terms of public confidence. But how unusual is that? Consider the history:

The standing record-holder for most contentious election is the 1824 John Quincy Adams’ victory. How bad was it? Well, for starters, there was only one political party at the time (The Democratic-Republicans), so the nominee was guaranteed the Presidency. Several states didn’t hold votes; they so distrusted democracy that the state government simply named electors (which was and still is constitutional!). However, the party leadership was fragmented, and ended up with four different nominees splitting the electoral college so that no one got a majority. This threw the Presidential election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts a single vote. Adams, who had come in second in the electoral college, cut a deal with Henry Clay, who had come in fourth, to secure the state delegation votes of Ohio and Kentucky, thus defeating Andrew Jackson (who had the most electoral votes) thirteen states to seven. The deal became known as “the corrupt bargain” (Clay was named Adams’ Secretary of State) and set the stage for Jackson establishing the new Democratic Party and whipping Adams in 1828.

A pro-Jackson political cartoon from the 1824 election that attacks Republicans, the press, blacks, Indians, the US Treasury, you name it.

The runner-up for messiest election has to be 1876. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat from New York, easily beat the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes from Ohio, winning an actual majority (not just plurality) of the popular vote. Tilden also held an electoral college victory of 184-165, but twenty uncounted electors from four states were in dispute. Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the controversial twenty votes. This body developed a compromise whereby all twenty votes and the Presidency went to Hayes (!) in exchange for (1) his commitment to serve only one term, (2) the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, and (3) the end of Reconstruction. This might be the most consequential messy-election, but for:

Third place, one with which you might be more familiar: 1860. Jackson’s dominant Democratic Party broke in half over the issue of slavery, and the new Republican Party ran a little known Illinois legislator: Abraham Lincoln. Southern states left Lincoln off the ballot, but he still got an electoral college majority. The possibility of a President who would prohibit the extension of slavery (the Republicans were not then against the continuation of slavery in the South) was enough for seven states to secede before Lincoln took office: the ultimate denial of legitimacy is open warfare.

Fourth place in my rankings goes to the little known vote tabulations after the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Everyone knows who won, and that Kennedy did so with a sizeable electoral college advantage: 303 to 219. You may have heard Kennedy’s electoral advantage belied the popular vote, which historians originally thought Kennedy won by just .17%! But subsequent review of contested Alabama votes shows that Nixon probably won the popular vote by 50,000 even though he still lost the election. Nixon’s resentment at pro-Kennedy political shenanigans and favorable press treatment led to his early retirement from politics (He famously said, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!”). This was of course short-lived, but the lessons he learned in 1960 (i.e., do whatever it takes to win, and take nothing for granted) would tarnish his later landslide victories.

Finally there is the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote 48% to 47% for Bush, but Bush won the electoral college 271-266. Most everyone here remembers the drama of the “hanging chads” and lawsuits contesting the results of one key state: Florida. Bush originally won Florida by only 537 votes out of six million cast. The popular story is the Democrats pushed for a Florida recount, which would have given Gore the state’s electoral votes and the Presidency. This effort was halted by the US Supreme Court, in effect giving the victory to Bush. There is one small problem with this story. Long after the election, the Florida Ballots Project, a consortium of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago did a deep dive into Florida’s ballots. Over ten months, they had 153 specialists examine 175,000 disputed ballots at a cost of one million dollars. All the results, with one exception, show Bush won Florida. The exception? If one counts the overvotes (ballots where more than one candidate is indicated) and assumes all were actually Gore votes, then Gore wins. Of course, candidate Gore never requested a recount of overvotes–nor does anyone–as assuming which of two (or more!) candidates marked was the final choice is impossible. Most people only know the popular story, since the results of the Florida Ballots Project weren’t released until two months after the 9/11 attacks, and were thus immediately forgotten.

Hope you enjoyed (?) this rundown. Here’s hoping this year’s outcome doesn’t merit inclusion in this list! It is (a little) reassuring to see what the country has been through before. I would note that in most cases short of violence, the biggest effect of a messy election has been to cause change in the parties or processes of the election, showing a system capable of changing to correct past errors.

“Watch your mouth, . . . “

I’ll wash it out with soap!”

I don’t recall ever hearing this threat from my parents (correct me if I’m wrong, Dad). But it was commonplace back when, what you’d call a meme today. And I think it’s a good self-admonition, due to the growth and increasing acceptance of polemic language. Polemic language degrades communication, demeans both the speaker and recipient, and generally poisons the atmosphere. You may infer that I don’t like it.

What, you say, is polemic language? Let’s consider a hypothetical example rather than a cold definition. Imagine you’re sitting in a bar and strike up a conversation with the person on the next stool. After a few (too many) drinks, you’re debating religion, and your drinking buddy says “God? Oh, I don’t believe in God.”

As a Christian, this is an opportunity to spread the Good News; there are so many ways the conversation could go! You might ask whether your friend EVER believed, or what do they believe now, or even were they familiar with the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche (an atheist who hasn’t read Nietzsche is like a Christian who hasn’t read the Bible). But imagine the same situation, only this time your drinking buddy says “religion is just the opiate of the masses.” This phrase, which doubtless rings some bells, is a bit of Marxist drivel, and is polemic language. It marks the speaker as someone not interested in discourse, only domination. You can argue religion with an atheist influenced by Nietzsche, but not a Marxist.

What does polemic language do? It replaces thought with slogans, and not only slogans, but slogans designed to enforce an orthodoxy of belief. George Orwell’s 1984 captured the nature of polemic language in slogans like “War is Peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”

In today’s America, polemic language exists all along the political spectrum. On the right it is superficial and less well-developed, mostly revolving around invoking the terms “deep-state” and “swamp.” Even the latter term is borrowed, as it long predates the Trump administration, and was earlier invoked by Ronald Reagan to identify the cozy relationship between publicly antagonistic Washington politicians, who (along with their families and friends) seemed to thrive despite animosity or even the economic conditions of the country writ large. Progressives originated the term decades earlier as “drain the swamp of capitalism.” Since I previously remonstrated on the deep-state, let’s look at the other side.

Polemic language on the left is far more well-developed, primarily due to decades of work in academia. Theories of race, power, and sex developed into academic studies which generated an alternate language. And as any linguist will tell you, language in turn constrains thought. All this goes back to post-World War II academic debates over post-modernism: the notion that there are no moral certainties — or even truth–and that what we believe to be modern morals or systems are just the remnants of past power struggles. These debates matured into current theories of patriarchy, intersectionality, heteronormativity, anti-racism and the like. Click on the links if you’re unfamiliar, but be warned: like Alice, you may find yourself “through the looking glass.”

So what’s the problem with using such language? Don’t you (I) respect academic theory? Of course, I am a big fan of the theory of gravity, for example, because it has proven itself a useful way to look at how objects behave everywhere and always (except at the quantum level!). But these other theories are not proven, and in some cases are unprovable. Their polemic language blurs the discussion, and that is never good. Let’s take a recent example.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) opined on the statue of Father Damien in the Capitol building, tweeting this is “what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks [sic] like.” The statue is one of two representing the state of Hawaii (the other is King Kamehameha). Now it is true Father Damien was a Belgian, a man, and a white one to boot. By the theories of patriarchy, colonization, and white supremacy, he is guilty as AOC charged.

Father Damien seems unconcerned about the controversy

Unfortunately for the theories, the Hawaiian people chose to put his statue there, because this white, Belgian, Catholic priest chose to come to minister to the Hawaiian lepers in their colony on Molokai. He lived among them, cared for them, caught their (then) incurable disease and died among them. To Hawaiians, he was more Hawaiian than Haole.

AOC later amended her complaint to say she objected to the fact that Hawaii has no female memorialized in Capitol statuary. Assuming this is what she originally meant, she is correct. But that is not what she said. She used polemic language that was inaccurate and unfortunate. Had she tweeted, rather, “why doesn’t Hawaii have Queen Lili’uokalani as one of its statues in DC?” she might have initiated an interesting debate.

Now, if I were a Hawaiian, I might thank the Representative for her interest in Hawaiian affairs, and point out her own great state of New York has two dead white males (Robert Livingston and George Clinton) as its statuary representatives, and suggest she should perhaps turn her attention to getting her own house in order, so to speak.

But I am not Hawaiian. And this is not about statues.

If you see famous people using polemic language, beware. Don’t use it. If you think there are not enough statues of women, say so. Or that police stop too many African-americans. Or that television doesn’t show enough same-sex relationships. Those are arguments to be made. Slipping into polemic language doesn’t help. It marks the speaker as uninterested in the truth. Or maybe just as uninteresting.

And it gives credence to academic theories of little weight.

Goin’ Postal

The United States Postal Service (USPS): where to begin? A national treasure founded by the legendary Benjamin Franklin. A lifeline which literally delivered life-changing news: college acceptance (or denial), love letters between spouses separated by work or travel, family updates and sweetheart encouragements from home to distant soldiers. Calls to mind dedicated civil servants, deterred by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” A path to the middle class and the American dream for millions of employees, many veterans, all over the country.

And dead on its feet. A veritable “dead (post)man walking.” Or in the dry language of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), “unsustainable.”

The sad truth is the USPS as it is today can not long survive. Some seek to kill it and privatize its work. Others want to solve the problem by simply giving it more money. I favor neither. But before we jump to solutions, let’s understand the problem.

Everybody “knows” the Postal Service, but what do you really know about it? It has 600,000 employees (100,000 veterans) and 600,000 retirees and is an independent agency of the executive branch. As a civilian, it looks like a government outfit; as a federal retiree, I can say it looks that way to me, too. But it is very different. It receives no annual federal funding (some say “no tax dollars” but that is a mistake). Both Congress and the Executive Branch influence its day-to-day operations in numerous ways (just try to close a post office building and see how). Its employees have the same job security and nonpartisan rules (Hatch Act) as other federal employees, and get the same generous retirement and health benefits. They run a retail network larger than McDonalds/Starbucks/WalMart combined, own and operate over 200,000 vehicles and deliver almost half of the world’s mail (more on this curious fact later).

USPS was helped by its status as a government monopoly, but technology has proven to be a grave danger. Once upon a time, it was the only reliable way to get something from here to there. Over time, the mandate to provide daily delivery to every home and business in America changed from blessing to curse. New, more nimble rivals (UPS, FedEx, DHL) could run the numbers and start winning the more lucrative routes, and leave the less desirable ones to the Post Office. And then along came e-mail, e-commerce, e-business.

The USPS has run a deficit every year since 2007. Wait, if USPS does not receive annual federal appropriations, but they run short of money, who pays the bill? They can’t borrow from a bank, nor do they have investors like a private business. Sometimes they use funds they should set aside to fund pensions. Also, the Federal government gives USPS a line of credit to spend on things like new infrastructure or life-cycle replacement of vehicles/computers. And USPS has been dipping into it to do all that, and to cover operating expenses. Well, someone has to pay the postman, too. And you do.

But wait, some say, isn’t the cause of the annual USPS operating deficit the fact that the government makes it ‘prepay 75 years of retiree benefits in advance, a rule no other government agency of private business has to comply with (sic)‘? What this Tweet refers to is the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, passed without objection by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Bush (43). Prior to this law, USPS made its own rules on how it pre-funded pensions, and set aside no funding for retiree health benefits. Private companies can always cut benefits or simply go bankrupt and default on pension and health benefits. The federal government recognized if the Post Office ever failed, someone would have to keep paying its retirees’ pensions and health plans, and that would be (again): you.

This was not unusual, since the federal government was likewise concerned about generous federal pensions and health benefits and started trying to raise contributions and reduce benefits at the same time. But now the USPS suddenly had to account for its large funding shortfall; they tried for three years, then decided to stop paying the pre-funding requirement for health benefits. So since 2010, they have defaulted on this obligation every year, and since they paid no money, it can not have affected their annual deficits. The USPS unfunded liabilities are now double their annual revenues. If they were a business, they would be defunct.

The real reason for the USPS deficit is one you already know: who mails a letter anymore? The USPS infrastructure was built for a time when they were the main way to get goods and info to the last mile (your mailbox). That is no longer the case. USPS total mail volumes started declining in 2007 (due to competition, technology, and the Great Recession) and haven’t stopped, generating losses every year. Marketing (aka junk) mail has grown to one-half of Post Office deliveries, even though its cheap rates mean it generates only one-quarter of revenues. Yes, the USPS delivers half of the world’s mail because it delivers the tons (literal) of trash you (like I once did) throw directly into the trashcan next to your mailbox.

The Post Office tries to reduce operating expenses, but as I pointed out earlier, there are both political and labor (union) issues with doing so. USPS has improved productivity almost every year, but improving a failing business model will not succeed. Somewhere the world’s best buggy whip maker can explain why that is so.

However, unsustainable is not the same thing as hopeless. If the USPS keeps operating as is, or simply relies on an infusion of federal dollars (or a relaxation of its unfunded liabilities, which must eventually be paid), it will ultimately fail. What needs to be done? I do have ideas about this.

End six days a week delivery. Who needs daily mail delivery? Only one percent of Social Security recipients get checks by mail, and that’s once a month. Even those vulnerable, at-home seniors don’t get drugs delivered every day. Splitting delivery into three-days-a-week zones (Mon/Wed/Fri, Tue/Thu/Sat) would halve the delivery burden.

Return to postal boxes where appropriate. Way back when, USPS only delivered mail to local post offices in cities, then people walked to the post office to get mail when they wanted it. Add in mandatory electronic notification (they already have this as an option) when you have mail (and what it is).

Consolidate postal offices. Like military bases, start a commision which decides what stays and what goes. Sometimes it is more cost effective to keep a remote site, sometimes not. Let a nonpartisan, business-oriented commission make the call. Perhaps the USPS could generate one-time revenue by the sales of some choice locations.

Encourage retirement. USPS does this occasionally, and it’s time again. Offering early retirement and retirement bonuses can help. In the end, a retiree costs less than an employee, and if you reduce service, you need fewer employees.

Double the price of junk mail. By the rules of price elasticity, this might decrease the volume by half, which would be a good thing. If the volume reduction is less, it would actually increase net revenue!

Publish data on package delivery costs. Post Office public data cites how much package volume they deliver and the revenue, but not the associated costs. It’s true they are often the lowest cost option for packages, but if they are losing money on every package, well then, the punchline to the old joke is “they’ll make up for it in volume.”

Invest pension/health funds in other instruments. Currently these USPS funds can only invest in ultra-safe Treasury funds. Like the Federal Thrift Savings Program (TSP), let USPS invest in other safe, but far more lucrative funds.

All of the above are in the category of putting out the fire, pumping out the water, and keeping the USPS afloat. But the most important issue is: What is the purpose of the United States Postal Service? If it’s to deliver what those younger than forty sneeringly call “snail-mail” to everybody’s home, it will go away. They don’t write letters, they expect Amazon or WalMart to deliver packages, they do all their business and meet all important deadlines online.

I wish I knew what the answer to this is, but I don’t. Japan’s Post Office is a monster in banking and insurance, and was once the world’s largest financial institution. Germany’s BundesPost was heavy into telecommunications before it divested into separate organizations. Perhaps there is a business model for lots of small locations and vehicles and delivery personnel that will work in today’s environment (and the future). I hope for the Post Office’s sake (and all their employees and retirees) they figure it out.

Mailing it in

There is one thing that MAGA-hat wearers, Never Trumpers, and the Progressive resistance agree upon: everything–and I mean EVERYTHING– revolves around President Trump. Nothing better represents this delusional state of affairs than the debate over mail-in voting. To wit:

Supporters of the President are sounding the alarm that rampant fraud will accompany mail-in voting. President Trump himself has stated he opposes liberalizing mail-in voting because he believes it will only favor the Democratic Party; some Progressives apparently agree and have seized upon the pandemic quarantine as a reason to support only mail-in voting. For the record, there is no data that mail-in voting favors either party, and little evidence of widespread mail-in voting fraud. Perhaps your own view about mail-in voting is driven by these same factors. Please permit me to explain why it’s wrong to do so.

First, mail-in voting is a necessity: not everyone can make it to a polling place on election day. As an expat, mail-in voting is the only way I can participate. However, mail-in voting is an exception, not the norm. Why? While all voting methods are vulnerable to fraud, mail-in voting is more vulnerable (I’ll explain why below). Thus when the number of mail-in voters is small (as an exception), the risk of fraud changing the election results is also small, so mail-in voting poses an acceptable risk.

Second, mail-in voting poses a vulnerability even if there is no evidence of fraud. Several states use only mail-in voting, and cite their success as proof there is no issue here. However, who is interested in interfering in the state elections of Washington, Oregon, or Colorado (places relying on mail-in voting)? There are several nations (e.g., Russia and China) capable of and interested in influencing, undermining, or corrupting US federal elections. Moving to large-scale, mail-in voting changes the calculus for such nations and thus the vulnerability becomes a real threat.

Third, while the 2020 election is a federal one, everyone should know that it is run as fifty distinct state elections, with different rules in each case. Asking states to make sudden changes within months of an election, while their employees are furloughed or working from home, is a recipe for disaster, especially when both political parties are primed to cry “foul” at any suspicious instance. Wisconsin conducted an in-person election in the teeth of the pandemic and had outrageous, unfounded claims of vote tampering by both sides. States would find it difficult to make big changes now, and errors they make would only compound the confusion.

Fourth, massive mail-in voting results in a much greater time lag between election day and when the results are announced. In some cases in the past, mail-in votes weren’t even counted if their total was less than the difference between candidates established by in-person voting (i.e., the outcome could not change). If the mail-in vote total is large, all must be counted, and each mail-in vote requires additional scrutiny and verification.

Fifth, that verification process is also a point of dispute. Anyone old enough to remember the “hanging-chads” debacle in Florida in 2000 knows that the authentication of votes is subjective. Imagine the public debates, protests and the like as days lead into weeks after the election without a final result (and with constant leaks and charges of corruption)!

Sixth, current security for mail-in voting is adequate for optional, small-scale use, but not for widespread use. Every state is different, but let me use my voting experience in Ohio as a example. I am currently registered to vote there, a process that required only a government ID and a banking document with an Ohio address. I mailed in my federal postcard application for a ballot: it contained nothing more than part of my social security number and signature. I opted for an e-mail ballot, which I will fill out and e-mail back to Ohio with my signature. So the security involved is (1) my social security number, (2) my signature, (3) any government issued ID, and (4) some paper documents with my Ohio address. Let’s look at those in turn:

Throw out number four (documents with an address), as any nitwit could have forged and printed those out.
Social security numbers were commonly (and wrongly) used for identification, so the many data breaches out there mean it is likely your SSN has been compromised.
Signatures? More difficult to find, but easy to copy/forge once found.
Government ID? An American passport is incredibly secure, but your state driver’s license not so much. Yet both count.

The bottom line here is it’s not easy for you to pretend to be me and vote in Ohio, but it’s also not impossible. The real problem is not you or me, but . . .

Russia. Seventh, what may be difficult for you is easy for Russia. Or China. Or even North Korea. Remember when the Chinese hacked the US Office of Personnel Management database and made off with the Personal Identifying Information of hundreds of thousands of federal employees? What about the routine credit card data breaches; all that data is available on the dark web for pennies. When Russia was hacking into state voting systems before the 2016 election, they often accessed voter registration rolls. Those could not change votes, but they would provide the Russians with the means to affect future elections. All a foreign actor needs to do is submit the same federal postcard I used and have the absentee ballot sent to a different e-mail or physical address. Whether they may or may not have the ability to forge a signature, they could submit a vote, meaning some voters showing up at the polls would be told they had already voted, and some mail-in voters would have two ballots submitted. All this could be sorted out in time, but at what cost to the credibility of the election process?

Finally, remember that the motivation for a foreign actor need not be changing votes. As the Intelligence Community pointed out in the 2016 report on Russian interference, Russia sought to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The partisan divide in the United States has made this Russian operation one of the highest pay-off influence operations in history. Intelligence officers will be studying that one for decades. And the last straw would be a drawn out, contested, post-election series of public political and legal battles as states deal with a backlog of mail-in votes.

And I won’t even go into the challenge to the US Postal Service. I know you will breathlessly await my review of the USPS in a future blog post (if you’re still in quarantine and desperately bored).

What about the risk of contracting the coronavirus while voting in-person? This is indeed a quandry. I support allowing those who are at risk (e.g., aged, suffering comorbidities, immunocompromised) to get a doctor’s note and vote by mail. But for the vast majority of voters, there is nothing especially dangerous about in-person voting, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. People gather and stand in lines for all kinds of reasons during the quarantine. And we make some people (grocery store employees, truck drivers) work despite the dangers because what they do is essential. So is voting.

I continue to support mail-in voting, as an exception, not the norm. I contend it could be expanded and secured, but not quickly or painlessly. Voting is so important, and in-person voting has many advantages in terms of preventing fraud. Please consider this issue with the seriousness it deserves, not as yet another simple Trump-driven dynamic.