Losing the Right to Choose a New Master? Greg Palast says GOP State Orderlies Have Already Purged 17 Million Mostly Non-White Voters Off the Voter Rolls for Trump, the Numbers Manipulator

Greg Palast CLAIMS THAT 'the GOP's SHRINKING white votary was not large enough to elect Donald Trump in 2016 so he stole it by creating the perception that the election would be close and then purging black, LATINO ASIAN VOTERS OFF THE ROLLS USING INTERSTATE CROSSCHECK [MORE] and [MORE]

From [Greg Palast] I get it:  We all must vote by mail—or we die.  There is really no other safe choice.

But there is much to fear, especially for minority and young voters, with a switch to all-mail voting—unless our broken absentee ballot system is fixed.

Here’s what the “Go Postal” crowd doesn’t tell you:  In 2016, 512,696 mail-in ballots—over half a million—were simply rejected, not counted.  That’s official, from the federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC).

But that’s just the tip of the ballot-berg of uncounted mail-in votes.  A study by MIT, Losing Votes by Mail, puts the total loss of mail-in votes at a breathtaking 22%.

Move to 80% mail-in voting and 25 million will lose their vote.

And not just anyone’s mail-in ballots are dumped in the electoral trashcan.  Overwhelmingly, those junked are ballots mailed by poorer, younger, non-white Americans.

Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposed bill takes baby steps to expanding vote-by-mail protection but will barely bite into the 22% loss of votes especially among minorities.

Columbia Law professor Barbara Arnwine, founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, says that a move to mail-in voting is, “really, really dangerous to the Black vote.” Millions of low-income voters who rarely vote absentee will now have fill out multi-step forms for the first time, which, “will lead to disaster,” says Arnwine.

Vote by mail is not as simple as “pick and lick”—picking candidates and licking the envelope.

Eight states, including the swing states of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Klobuchar’s Minnesota, require mail-in voters to have the ballot signed by a witness. The required double-verification is a nightmare—it requires breaking the lock-down—and is an invitation to ballot challenges.

Three states, including swing state Missouri, require the ballot to be notarized. (Alabama requires a notary or two witnesses.)

All but six states “verify” your signature against your registration signature. Partisan officials decide if there is a “match.”  No less than 141,000 ballots were rejected as “unmatched” in 2016.

Why?  To prevent vote fraud, someone stealing your ballot and voting in your name. President Trump warns, “Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters.”

Except, Mr. President, let’s not mix fruit-cake theorizing with the facts.  Rutgers Professor Lorraine Minnite found just six verified cases of voter impersonation over 12 years of voting nationwide. The Election Law Journal reported that, “the proportion of the population reporting voter impersonation is indistinguishable from that reporting abduction by extraterrestrials.”

The CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project report, Whose Absentee Votes are Counted?, shows rejection rates higher for Democrats than Republicans, higher for younger than older voters, and higher for non-English ballots.  Surprised?

Plus, some states require all or first-time voters to mail in a copy of their ID; another hurdle for the poor, those without driver’s licenses or those who may have the wrong ID and not know it.  Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs told me that 182,000 state university students have photo IDs—which cannot be used to vote. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by less than 23,000 votes.

Nationally, over 100,000 absentee ballots were deep-sixed because they are missing a signature—in many cases, the second voter signature required in some states.  In California, Asian-American voting rights activist Hyepin Im was horrified to find that Korean-American absentee ballots were tossed because the Korean language ballots ask for the voters signature in Korean. Not surprisingly, the voters signed with Korean characters, disqualifying their mail-in ballot.

And another 100,000 ballots are lost in presidential elections because of postage due.