09/28/26

Title

We Can Be Better

Good morning! It’s Monday, September 28th.

Ask a Stupid Question Day

They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question but, as you’ll see in this episode… that’s incorrect.

And now, the news.

Shooting in Detroit

-via ABC 7 Detroit

We start how we start here in America, with 3 dead and 4 others injured in Detroit after a shooting at, ironically, as Community Violence Intervention zone. Which officials say they’ve had seven calls to so far this year.

Police are still investigating what happened, but it does sound like the shooting was in response to an altercation. A suspect has not yet been named.

SCOTUS v Voting

-via NPR, Brennan Center,

So… we’re gonna talk about voting.

DON’T TURN THE EPISODE OFF!

I need to explain what happened with the Supreme Court and why it’s not good, but not the end of the world. And what to do next.

Because that stupid question I was talking about at the top of the show? The president’s got one of those. And it’s “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if people couldn’t vote?”

We are currently 36 days from the final day you can cast your ballot in the midterms.

What a weird way to say Election Day

Right? I’m… so cute

But it’s tough because it’s Election Day, as in the day we talk about the elections allll day and the day my stomach hurts allll day and the day I go online alllll day to bring you results (sometimes before anyone else should because I’m smart and a risktaker!)

But that’s not the only day you can vote. It’s just the last day to cast your ballot. In fact, voters in 23 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) may already be casting ballots because mail-in and early voting have started.

23 states.

That’s nearly half!

And I note that, that voters and voting and that we are only 36 days from the last day to cast a ballot, because the timing matters here in this story.

When it comes to election laws, there are… a lot of them.

But there are two to know about right now.

First: The Purcell principle. Stemming from a Supreme Court ruling, it generally cautions federal courts against changing election procedures close to an election. It doesn’t give a fixed amount of time, but the case was 2006’s Purcell v. Gonzalez and in it the Ninth Circuit ordered Arizona to stop enforcing its voter ID rules 33 days before the November 7th election.

The Supreme Court reversed that order 18 days before Election Day.

The rules had already been adopted; the last-minute change was the court order suspending them.

So, 33 days and 18 days before the election.

Again, we’re 36 days out.

So, the Purcell principle says you can’t make changes close to the election.

Then there’s the Voter Registration Act. A section of which says states have to finish systematic removals of ineligible voters from the rolls at least 90 days before a federal election.

90 days.

And unless you hit pause, decided to listen to someone who wasn’t going to lecture you about voting, and then came back to this episode on another day (or you’re my friend Siera who will listen to this episode 6 months from now)… we’re still 36 days out.

And among all of this math, the Supreme Court ruled, on Friday, that the Department of Homeland Security can amp up a federal data system that was created to check the immigration status of noncitizens to make sure anyone registered to vote is eligible.

Now, sure, of course we don’t want ineligible voters casting a ballot.

But fear not… it doesn’t happen!

Yes, there are instances of noncitizens registering to vote.

73, in fact.

Since 1996, 129 total noncitizens have been charged with casting a ballot. 73 were convicted.

Since 1996, there have been 15 national elections. 8 presidential, 7 midterms.

In those 15 elections, 1.69 billion votes were cast.

Let’s round it down, just to make life easy.

Let’s say 1 billion.

And let’s round that noncitizen vote count up. 73 convictions? Let’s make 10,000.

Hey, that’s 0.001%.

Pretty small! Two zeros before you even get to .1%

But of course, that’s not the real math is it? Let’s see the real math.

73 convictions. 1.69 billion votes.

0.0-0-0-0-0-431953%

5 zeroes after the decimal and before the first number.

So this is not a problem.

But what is a problem? Well the Republicans have two. No sorry, one but that one has two problems.

The problem the party has is Donald Trump.

The problems he has are:

He lost the popular vote in 2016 and the full election in 2020, and because his dad hard-passed on loving him, and therapy isn’t free or mandatory, he is hyper-focused on how those elections MUST have been stolen.

Also, he’s a white supremacist. Oh Kim, that’s just more of that extreme Trump-hating rhetoric.

The only book we know, for sure, he’s read is a book of Hitler speeches that he kept on his bedside table. The only person that he never fights with is a guy who once said he only wanted there to be 100 million Americans and they should all look like him (he looks exactly like what you’d think. He doesn’t truly know, though, because he can’t see himself in the mirror. Or eat garlic. Or go out into the sunshine.)

And that says nothing about the horrifically racist things he said about non-white countries, non-white people, his rental practices back when he was a landlord, and everything else.

Donald Trump is a white supremacist and, not unlike the fact that fraud by voters has never affected the outcome of any election ever, that is an evidence-based fact.

It just is.

And it’s no wonder that a party led by Trump, someone who is named in the Epstein files more times than Harry Potter is named in the entire Harry Potter series, who started a deeply unpopular war simply to distract people from the fact that he doesn’t want a child sex trafficker investigated because of his connections to that person, who is the reason everything you buy is more expensive and who doesn’t care… it’s no wonder that party, who willing lets him do whatever he wants, isn’t popular.

They’re not doing anything to help voters. They’re simply there, in office, to follow dear leader.

But if the midterms do what they’re supposed to, and the expected blue wave happens, then how will Trump be able to go back in time and tell his dad that he should love him?

So now Trump needs to cheat. And who better to blame it on but the immigrants he hates (unless, of course, he’s marrying them)?

And that is the backdrop upon which Trump’s DHS overhauled something called SAVE (Not the SAVE America Act, another voter disenfranchisement thing he was working on). SAVE stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements data system.

And in the overhaul, Trump wrote an executive order that directed DHS and the Social Security Administration (aka SSA) to expand citizenship checks. A move that a US district court found was a violation of the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

But on the other hand, it COULD cause some voter disenfranchisement. So when Trump didn’t get the answer he wanted, he took it to the Supreme Court.

And on Friday, the Supremes, in a 6-3 ruling, voted that the DHS use the tool to check the citizenship of voters on the rolls.

Now here’s the thing… this isn’t great.

There’s no getting around it.

BUT I think it’s a 2028 problem. Which is great, because we’re going to win the midterms and say no to this.

States do NOT have to use this tool.

So already we can be sure that the liberal states won’t.

But what about the conservative states?

We’re 36 days away.

There’s just not enough time for this system to get fully used.

But that doesn’t mean that states won’t try.

So here’s what I want you to do.

You have to, I mean you should every time anyway, but you MUST this time… you have to double-check your voter registration.

I don’t care where you live or how many times you’ve voted – double-check your registration.

If you go to vote and you know you’re registered, but you’re denied a ballot? Ask for a provisional ballot. That’s your right.

You have a right to cast a ballot.

You have a duty to cast a ballot.

I say this every time but I want you to hear me again… we still have a democracy.

It’s an experiment.

A republic – if we can keep it.

It’s a verb. An action.

It is your constitutional right and your duty as a citizen.

A promise you make to yourself. To the people you love. To the things you love.

This election is for the future of this democracy. That’s a fact.

We cannot hold this administration responsible if the people in charge are just going to roll over and show their tums tums to Dear Leader.

Plus, I want you to think about how fun, how absolutely delightful, it’ll be to see Mike Johnson’s face when he’s no longer the speaker.

Genuinely, the worst speaker this country has ever seen. That’s not even political, that’s a fact. That dude is bad at his job! And he shouldn’t be able to keep it.

They work for us! We pay their bills! And if someone’s not doing their job right? They don’t deserve to keep their job.

All we have to do is be brave enough to cast a ballot.

This whole thing turns on turnout.

The only reason we’re even having this talk, the only reason I’m running my little mouth again about this, is because they know they’re going to lose if people vote.

So they’re trying to prevent it.

They understand how important your vote is. Shouldn’t we?

We can do better. We can be better.

36 days.

Let’s get it done.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

And because of all of that… I’m proud of you.