With rising fear about the dramatic increase in coronavirus infections in most states across the U.S., there’s ongoing and concurrent concern about how to safely vote in this November’s critical presidential and congressional election. While President Trump has attacked mail-in voting, falsely claiming that absentee ballots are tainted by fraud and will be used to rig the 2020 election, many states are making plans to offer voters easy access to “no excuse” mail-in ballots.
But throughout this winter and spring as voters cast ballots in primary elections, many through mail-in voting, an NPR analysis found that in the primaries held so far this year, at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots have been rejected because they arrived past the deadline, often through no fault of the voter. Other pitfalls with mail-in ballots include some state’s onerous requirements for voters to have their absentee ballots notarized, and rejection of large numbers of ballots where election officials mistakenly believe a voter’s signature doesn’t match their registration signature on file.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Greg Palast, known for his investigative reports for BBC, The Guardian and Rolling Stone. Here, Palast, author of bestsellers including “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” warns voters against blind faith in mail-in ballots, an issue examined in his new book, titled “How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America’s Vanished Voters.”
GREG PALAST: Please, people, stop telling me about the polls with Biden. If you look back, it was Hillary and Trump were about the same position as Biden and Trump are today. And you know, MS-“DNC” was telling us, “No path to 270 for Trump, okay?” You know, I did a film, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” warning that Trump would steal the election. Remember Scott, the film was about how Trump was going to steal 2016, right? And no one believed me. They bought their party dresses for Hillary’s inaugural, and then they were all shocked when the balloons didn’t drop. I wasn’t shocked. I did a film about how it would be stolen. Now I’m giving you a book about how it will be stolen. Hello? Can we try again, pay attention this time?
When I say it’s been stolen, I ain’t kidding. 16.7 million people have been removed from the voter rolls in the last two years. That’s from the United States government, voters have vanished. There is an alien invasion, but it’s not alien voters from Mexico coming to vote. It’s like spaceship has come in and the spaceship is called the Republican National Committee, which has come up with very brilliant ways to remove people from the voter rolls. You know, the first chapter of the book is very short. The very first chapter is called The End. This is the entire first chapter. Donald Trump was re-elected president on Nov. 7, 2018, two years before a single vote was cast.
That’s because I was on your show during the 2018 race between Stacey Abrams, first black woman to run for governor in America and Brian Kemp, her GOP opponent, who was also secretary of state in charge of the voter rolls. So he simply knew that he couldn’t win because there’s just not enough white guys in Georgia anymore. It’s a white minority state, by the way, now. Not enough white guys to elect Brian Kemp or Donald Trump. So they removed the nonwhite guys.
In that case, I had my experts. I sued Brian Kemp. I won in federal court, got them to open up his files. I had experts go through the people he’d removed from the voter rolls. And we found out that exactly 340,134 were illegally wrongly removed from the voter rolls, a third of a million voters. That’s just Georgia, Scott, but that’s where it starts. That’s where the GOP took this new system of wiping out hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several key states. That’s where the test drive happened. And now they’ve taken it across the country – Michigan. They’re trying in Wisconsin, all over the place. And this is — we’re just not getting the reporting. The light ain’t shined on this burglary.
SCOTT HARRIS: Greg, I did want to make sure to ask you of this before we say goodnight. And that is to re-emphasize to our listeners. What are the central and most important things people have to keep in mind if they’re going to opt in for mail-in ballots this time around. What are the key things that hangs people up and discounts their vote?
GREG PALAST: Number one, check your registration. They’re not going to send you a ballot if you’re not registered. Number two, if you didn’t vote in the last election, re-register, even if you’re registered, I know it sounds nuts, but that makes you active. The third thing. Ask for that ballot really early. I know the ACLU chief asked for about 45 days in advance. That wasn’t enough for her family, now.
And then finally, as you found out from what happened to Josh Fox — and by the way, my sister too, who is a lawyer who lost her vote. Be very, very, very careful when you fill out that ballot and have someone else check it. Use a black pen or a blue pen. Don’t put an extra smiley face in the boxes where it says, fill in the bubbles. Fill in the bubble. Be very, very careful, get the right postage, use a signature that’s exactly – and that’s why you’re going to check it online, to see how you did sign. Lots of things that they can trip you up on. Fill out that outside envelope. Be very careful. All I’m telling you, Scott is that it’s a minefield. So tiptoe and get that ballot condom, which comes with “How Trump Stole 2020.”
For more information visit Greg Palast’s website at gregpalast.com.
