The storm before the storm

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The weekend before Election Day is usually one of my favorite times.

The last campaign ads have shipped, field plans are finalized and Election Day preparations are in place. The fury of last-minute charges and countercharges subsides as candidates try to deliver a positive closing message.

A seriousness settles over the electorate as election officials make final preparations for voting and vote counting.

For a few quiet days, the fate of the election lies solely in the voters’ hands. 

I normally use the time to get organized and catch up on tasks I’ve set aside. I get some sleep, knowing that Tuesday will be a long night. 

It is the proverbial calm before the storm that is sure to come once the polls close and states begin the process of counting ballots and certifying results.

This year, however, has been different. The weekend before Election Day has been anything but quiet. It has been the storm before the storm.

Even with the warnings that Donald Trump would try to rig the election, and even knowing that Attorney General Todd Blanche would carry out Trump’s every whim, I did not expect it to be this bad.

Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed a daily escalation in the government’s assault on free and fair elections. In the last few days, it has reached a level never before seen in this country.

Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to force election officials to set aside, or segregate, ballots it claims are suspect, and it is threatening officials who refuse to comply. It is now using the threat of criminal investigation to intimidate political opponents and their supporters.

On Friday, the DOJ admitted that federal agencies had contacted officials in five states, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington, about voters it claims are ineligible to vote in the midterms. 

The DOJ also revealed that it had sent letters to election officials in all 50 states, warning that they could face prison time if they do not preserve voting records for 22 months after the election.

In Alaska, the DOJ has asked a federal judge to order election officials to segregate ballots based on which candidate a voter cast their ballot for. This is a lawsuit Donald Trump has said he ordered filed. 

It asserts powers the federal government does not possess. It tramples on the right of states to run their own elections and makes a mockery of the Constitution.

Yet Trump’s loyal foot soldiers filed it, and they have been bobbing and weaving ever since to avoid a ruling on motions to dismiss their frivolous case. 

Now they have loudly announced a criminal investigation in the days leading up to the election.

Now, as we head into Election Day, the question is not whether good people remain. It is whether they will ever speak out.

I am not going to bother pointing out the DOJ’s policy against this type of action. Nor will I dwell on the fact that the U.S. attorney seemed unable to articulate what the potential crime would be.

Instead, I will only ask why so few are willing to speak out about what they know is happening.

In the depths of the struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Now, as we head into Election Day, the question is not whether good people remain. It is whether they will ever speak out.

Instead, they prefer to act like nothing is really that different. This is just another election.

Acknowledging the depth of the crisis would require large law firms to defend the rule of law instead of sitting on the sidelines. It would force corporate titans to speak out instead of cutting deals with Trump. It would make the legacy media confront how their fixation on both-sides coverage has damaged their reputation and failed their profession.

Instead, they all pretend this is a normal election when it is anything but. Better to feign ignorance than to confirm their complicity.

In the coming days, the storm will grow. Donald Trump will escalate his attacks even further. That is what he has done before.

He may disrupt voting or demand more meritless lawsuits and baseless prosecutions. He might insist that ballots be seized and election certifications set aside. He might even try to declare some sort of national emergency.

What he won’t be able to do is change people’s hearts and minds. He can try to rig the maps, suppress the vote and subvert the results, but he cannot change the fact that he and his party are deeply unpopular and that they will lose this election.

I don’t know how big the blue wave will be or how many Republicans will be washed out when this storm finally breaks. 

What I am certain of is that once the election is over, we must stop the DOJ from being used as a tool of naked partisan aggression. And we must insist that more people who claim to be good speak out before the next storm arrives.