What’s at Stake Today

It’s election day. Nov 8th, 2022.

After every presidential election, in the following midterms the president’s party loses seats in congress. It’s the laws of politics, so consistent that betting against it would be your likely loss. Losing big today was always in the cards, it was written.

What’s at stake today isn’t about the standard game at play. Dems & Reps duke it out on the field. Fighting hyperbolically to the death each successive cycle. This is the way it’s always been in these great United States.

Today we see the first wave of a new opponent. One who believes so passionately in the lie that the other side is consistently cheating, that they can easily justify cheating themselves just to get back.

Partisanship has escalated in the past 15 years from fencing against your opponent to demonizing their existence. There is a double digit percentage of the population that believes I’m dining on baby fetuses as I write these thoughts. As such the logic continues, given the horrible things the other side is already doing, it doesn’t matter if I retaliate, tip the scales, move the order back my direction. Because they’ve been cheating for so long. Next year’s recession will pour gasoline on the emotions.

This isn’t about Democrats vs Republicans. This is about disception vs honesty.

If you are one to ignore politics, here’s the strategy that is already underway. The eye is on 2024 and beyond. Starting from the pawns and working our way up.

1. Get poll workers into every polling station possible. There was a huge turnover of county clerks and local elections officials after the chaos and vitriol of the 2020 elections. Those positions have most definitely already been filled.

2. Target the moderate Republicans who prevented the coup in 2021 and primary them out for failing to cheat to justify the outcomes they desire. Focus keenly on every local elected official who can touch any aspect of voting. For integrity you know. Keep going up the state’s chain of command from the attorney general to the secretary of state and ending at the governor. You don’t need to control the legislature if you control the executive spine.

3. It starts at the bottom and snowballs up. Report accusations to the police of elections fraud before and during the election. No evidence required, the accusations are the future evidence. After the election is complete, if the vote count doesn’t align with my desire then cheating is evident and I have a mountain of police reports to point at.

4. Local elections officials refuse to certify the count. Secretaries of States toss out ballots based on perception of impropriety. Just gotta protect the integrity of the vote by targeting majority minority districts that vote counter to your beliefs. All it takes are a few thousand votes here or there to swing most elections.

5. This is where we get those deleterious “Alternate Slate of Electors” (the hanging chad of the 2020s). Now that we have 2 sets of votes, both certified by someone. Suddenly we’re into the court system. It will quickly make its way to the 6–3 supreme court. Who according to the Electoral Count Act of 1877 will defer to the preference of the state’s governor.

That’s all you need to do to invalidate the will of the people if they don’t vote with your beliefs.

Let’s pause here and reflect on what we should do to truly have free and fair elections.

1. Every vote should be captured digitally and on paper. In person voting machines should print off a ballot that is confirmed by the voter and dropped in the box. At home voting, should either require a secondary digital vote that must exactly match the physical ballot. Or once the paper ballot is received, digital confirmation of the authenticity of the data by the voter. Maintaining strong election fidelity without compromising the privacy of the vote can be done but is tricky. With digital overlap, we still need to split the authentic vote from the voter, so retaliation is never possible. Every vote should have a unique ID, that matches on the paper and digital ballot, it just shouldn’t connect back to the voter themself.

2. Everyone move to Rank Choice voting where the top two candidates from the primary compete in the general election. The American people are being strangled by two political parties. The further we pull apart in two extremes, the more likely we are to crumble. Rank Choice voting allows people to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 order their choice of representation. When the votes are counted, the lowest recipient is knocked out each round, the count is retabulated based on each individual’s ranked choice. If my first choice is no longer in the running my second place vote stands, and so on, until one person gets 50% of the vote and tabulation ends.

Some prefer voting ends here, without needing a primary. Whoever gets 50% wins the race. I think we benefit from a wide diverse field of candidates, and then a second vote to confirm out of the top two who we truly want to represent us. And wow, this is a complicated math problem for a human to tabulate at scale. We need computers to help us, which is why we need both paper and digital ballots confirmed. No one will be satisfied unless there are multiple tabulation protocols submitted by our various political factions. And no one will be satisfied if there isn’t a physical copy to verify and audit against.

3. Immediately end partisan gerrymandering of districts. This is another place we need computers to help us. Algorithms contain inherent bias from their creators, but we have to by and large remove the human political calculus from determining legislative districts. When legislators can no longer choose their voters, they have to actually listen to them to know what they believe. How we implement this in practice has many potential variables, the goal should be to make things as fair and balanced for everyone based on physical proximity to each other. A bunch of folks live in the city? Awesome, one rep for the north side, one for the south. Not ten reps who each slice out into the suburbs so the city’s vote is diluted. Or vice versa.

4. Give everyone an ID. And require an ID to vote. When you register or show up to vote, you show the ID to receive a ballot. If you vote from home, you get another unique pin during registration that you can use to vote digitally. Fifty years ago, voter ID laws were used to disenfranchise black voters in the south. We have resisted requiring ID to vote because not everyone can get an ID. But we’ve reached the place of deception and dishonesty in politics, that we need to eliminate this very small potential source of fraud to strengthen the overall voracity of the vote.

It’s complicated to truly get right, but it’s worth it to guarantee free and fair elections. If we institute these reforms we neuter the effectiveness of the strategy I discussed above.

Back to reality. Barring any lame duck changes to the voting process, we don’t get the luxury of instituting those four reforms, because the coup is only two years away, or maybe six.

Either way, the deck gets stacked today. Like no time in our nation’s history, a group of people with the capacity to cheat are entering the ranks of our elections process. Whether they do or do not cheat, only depends on whether they support the outcome. It doesn’t take more than 20 of these individuals nation wide at critical junctures to send another election to the Supreme Court.

That’s what will happen in the next decade. And here’s what I think will happen next.

If the Supreme Court votes to uphold the invalidation of legitimate votes, striking down the will of the people, then chaos will ensue. It will not stand. The losing voters will take to the streets; in protest, looting and violence. The president will declare martial law and bring US troops home from around the world to try to restore order. But it’s too late.

There will be violence and innumerable deaths. During the first phase. If anyone is able to maintain complete control of the military and ability to use it to attack the American populous, it is possible for a strong authoritarian to maintain control of the 50 states. We could full on hand maiden’s tale, or we could go a different direction.

But a more likely outcome is after the initial bloodshed, we will get a divorce. Each state’s people voting which way to go. With the amount of guns and ammo that exist in the US today, there could be a bloodbath. But I think the long-term impact will look more like the IRA’s domestic terrorism and less like Call of Duty.

Cascadia or the Pacific States would have no qualms around departure. Colorado, Utah, Nevada might vote to join the pacific states, or might stick with the middle. New New England will probably stop at Maryland. It’s questionable what would happen around the Great Lakes. Or if Texas wants to rule the New America, or if they want to just have some me time. I think 3 countries is the most likely, with some others, like Alaska & Hawaii likely doing their own thing.

Any which way, with turmoil, strife, and resource manipulation games to politicize trade, after a decade things would settle down and we’d learn how to be friends again. All a bit weaker, but finding a way to return to cooperative brotherhood like the modern day European Union.

Here’s where the what’s at stake this Election Day gets super dicey.

During the coup, while America was trying to sort its shit out, we pulled all of our troops from around the world. The Bretton Woods compact, or America’s Sauron’s eye permanently closes. America’s navy pulls back to protect the homeland during the moment of chaos. Military bases around the world are abandoned as they return home to fight for one side or the other.

That means no one is supporting the global world order of transportation and shipping. A few rogue or state actors who pull off large heists will end corporations ability to transfer goods internationally. And the whole system crumbles.

I mean over night. If America ever has a civil war, the entire world order will dissolve in a month. And it will never come back.

That means back here at home, any good that isn’t made in the Americas is now gone. We’ll find a way to manufacture toilet paper again after a shitty few years. America+Mexico+Canada are energy independent. Even if America is no longer whole, we’re still going to trade with each other. But everything else we buy at Walmart that is shipped from China will cease to exist. That collapse of China is likely under a decade away anyway based on the mushrooming population the one-child policy. Soon they will crack under the weight of their aging population either way.

Lol. You thought climate change was a problem? Just wait.

Without the ability to move oil around the world, people will return to coal and wood to stay warm in winter and cook whatever meager food they can access. You think we’re producing a lot of carbon dioxide now? It’ll be laughable when access to renewable energy is removed. Without the global world order there aren’t enough natural resources (rare earth & other minerals) required to manufacture high-end technology products.

With the rapid return of fossil fuels, the environment will ravage the remaining population. Droughts, Floods, Fires, Hurricanes, Tornadoes. It will all become more and more common. The natural world unchained and lashing back by our own creation. As the sea levels rise, coastal cities will become coral reefs, but that won’t matter because global trade ended years ago.

This is not the scenario I want to have happen. I want free and fair elections to maintain the republic through representative democracy. I am an American Patriot.

But today we’ve made a choice. As of writing this I don’t know which choice we made. We might have chosen to believe lies and elect those willing to retaliate against these falsehoods. Or maintained the old order of political fencing, parry attack repeat.

But I think we just lit the fuse to blow it all up.

So what can you do? Hit the bottle, hit the streets, or act?

Call your congress people and demand they pass one of the two voting acts currently approved by either the house or the senate. Get one of them done to close the loopholes in the Electoral Vote Act to potentially prevent the coup before it starts.

If no laws are changed, it’s now time to decide which side you’ll be on. For all my friends in Atlanta, it will then be your time to decide whether you want to live in a Christian Autocracy or a Liberal democracy. You have a year to move before the economy truly erodes. The recession will help as much as it hurts.

For everyone, you have a limited amount of time to learn how to be self-sufficient. Once hoarding begins, access to food and water will become a lot harder. If you don’t know how to garden, hunt, or forage, you won’t live very long.

Smart state governments will quietly beef up their military capacity. Localities need to deprioritize climate change and focus on climate resiliency. If Bretton Woods falls and the global trade economy shudders, no amount of solar panels or smart cars will make a dent in the rapid acceleration of climate change.

If all of this sounds like a hellscape, because it is one. Think about what you can do yourself.

1. End the demonization of those you don’t align to. Don’t agree? Fine. Don’t allow others around you to lie and say the other side are eating baby fetuses or all racists. The hyperbole only accelerates our spin.

2. Reach out to someone you don’t agree with to find some common ground. Find a way to share a meal with someone who you don’t agree with.

3. This Thanksgiving and Christmas, don’t ignore politics, lean in to it.

The very future of our country depends on it.

If you want to learn more, pick up Peter Zeihan’s book, The End of the World is just the Beginning.