 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we have with us Eugene Puneer of Breakthrough News and we're going to be talking about the United States elections which are happening on the 3rd of November, the presidential elections of course also elections to the Senate, the House of Representatives, a lot of local races and initiatives as well. Thank you Eugene so much for joining us. Oh thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Eugene so first of all maybe on a more personal note what are you going this is Breakthrough News the first election that's covering and I guess it must be difficult covering the election while not falling into the Trump versus Biden rhetoric that is just so all over the media right now. So what are the key issues as we move into the past last few days? Well you know I appreciate that it is very difficult especially since most of the mainstream media is falling into it willingly. I think there's a few issues that are big issues in the last few days. I think the biggest sleeper issue that we have no idea what the effect is going to be are the protests in Philadelphia, Washington DC, in Illinois but especially Philadelphia where there's a curfew, National Guard called out, some so-called looting. Now it hasn't really been played up in a big way in the mainstream media but of course the right wing media and President Trump have been heavily pushing this and they are really attempting to try to drive white more middle class suburban voters to their banner by saying that the Democrats will unleash this total chaos. So it's very unclear how it's going to play especially because the mainstream media is not talking about it but it's been a major issue for Trump and I think that's one issue that we should be looking at. The second major issue going into this is the issue of when ballots can be counted and we can of course talk more about that but in a range of states there have been three or four different opinions. The Supreme Court has said one thing about one state, another thing about another state. Now the Court of Appeals has gotten involved and said something different about Minnesota. So there is a huge amount of uncertainty about whether or not the record number of mail-in ballots that are coming in, how many of them will be counted, how many of them will be thrown out and as wild as this may seem the decision for that may not actually even be known until after the election itself. So you could think your ballot counted and then have it thrown out a week later. So I think that's the second major issue and then I think the third issue of course is coronavirus in a way. Ultimately the Democrats have really premised a huge amount of their campaign around the shambles of a response of the Trump administration wasn't just him but he's the president in terms of addressing COVID-19 and I think that they've tried to build that into a broader narrative about competence, about compassion, about who Trump really is and I think that as the cases there's an increase in cases in 41 states here, a number of states are seeing the worst outbreak ever. I think this is also a big wild card issue that maybe two weeks ago I don't know if it would have played as big a role but I think now really could given how Trump has gotten coronavirus itself for what Republicans need, which is for a large turnout on election day. It's mainly Democrats voting early. Is it possible that this would suppress the vote that many conservative people might think, you know what, it's not even worth it. This guy Trump isn't even doing it. So I think there's many more issues in that but I think those are the three issues that I feel are most likely to affect the race in a way that would make it different than what the polls show now. All right. So first look at the question of voting itself whether your votes can even count it and like you said there have been court decisions in terms of Wisconsin, in terms of Pennsylvania but there's also the issue of voter suppression at the most systemic level which you've talked to activists working on the ground. So could you maybe take us to in a bit detail to both these issues. Right now what does it look like with regarding the mail ballots, what are the crucial states where there's going to be a problem and the larger voter suppression issues as well. Yeah, no and I appreciate the question huge issue. You know with the mail in ballots the biggest question that is facing the country and I know for many people worldwide this may seem amazing but in America there are no universal rules about voting. Every state makes individual rules. So one of the biggest issues for mail in ballots of course is what happens if a ballot is postmarked by election day but because the mail isn't working right or whatever it may be your ballot doesn't get there until after election day. Now some states just say forget it too late that's on you but many states allow there for to be a small period some say three days some say nine days but something that where as long as the postmark on it that says you put this in by on election day or before election day they can still be counted. So the Republican Party in particular has been aggressively challenging this potentially you know because they know the vast majority of Democrats will be voting via mail this year. So there have been a range of different issues that have happened and there have been different rulings. So in Pennsylvania which is going to be one of the key states here the Supreme Court has ruled that they are allowed to accept the ballots as they planned up to three days after but that they could revisit that decision after the election. So right now in Pennsylvania if it comes in three up to three days after your vote can be counted but that could actually change so we could have three or four different shifts. North Carolina also another big state you know Biden seems to be relatively well ahead in Pennsylvania. North Carolina which is a key state absolute dead heat here and this could be the key state of the whole country honestly is North Carolina but one of the main ones they have a nine-day window. The Supreme Court has allowed the nine-day window but they've also said we could revisit that. Wisconsin another major state now in that case the Supreme Court has decided they can't count any ballots after the election so that is just out of the blue. And then last night and or last late afternoon in a sort of I don't know if it was unexpected decision but a major decision Minnesota which is usually democratic but has been trending a little bit more towards Republicans as of late. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that they cannot have a nine-day window which means that everyone who voted yesterday and maybe many people who didn't see the story of the news and voted today their ballots are now invalid. So we've got Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina all states where that are maybe not all traditional battlegrounds but that are all sort of battleground states this year where there's been heavy campaigning that could be the major states where this comes out. Those states are all at a position where we don't even know what's going to happen because the rules could change and right now it seems like it's trending in favor of Democrats in pretty much all of those states but in most of those states it's very close and so a 10,000 ballots here, 5,000 ballots here, 100,000 ballots there could make the election and we could have three or four flip flops in the week after the election so who knows. Now voter suppression which is also a huge issue is going to come into play in a couple other states that are also critical for instance Georgia. Georgia is a state that is almost never a swing state for years it was solidly democratic during the Jim Crow era and now it has been solidly Republican for really about three or four decades but there's been a tremendous voter mobilization in Georgia. In the Senate race there are one of the Senate races the Democrat is up in a way that seems pretty significant and another one it's very very close and so there's a lot of conversation. State of Georgia tried to purge 300,000 voters from the rolls including get this a 92 year old woman who had voted for the same place for 50 years in a row and they tried to tell her that she couldn't vote so there's a lot of efforts going on to sort of fight back against this to get people to re-register this has been happening for months to challenge some of these things but it's unclear of those 300,000 people how many ultimately will not be allowed to vote or will have to cast something called a provisional ballot which means they can't certify you're the person but they let you fill something out many of those aren't counted. Now Wisconsin which I previously mentioned and this is why the issue of the ballots is crucial. Wisconsin is a major voter suppression state there have been tens of thousands of people purged this year it's actually there's still some litigation going on around this so it's not clear but to give you a sense of how wild voter suppression is basically what happens is they send you a card in the mail to say are you a voter are you not and you know they're designed to look like junk mail and all these other things so that people won't either will miss it or just won't respond to it or whatever and then they say that you're no longer there. A study was done by investigative reporter Greg Palace where they looked at thousands and thousands of these votes about did people really move. Spoiler alert the vast majority of them did not move at all and that's the essence of voter suppression is they say well we're just trying to keep the voting rolls clean but they do everything possible in many of these states of voter suppression to get you to not return the ballots and so it's this interesting dichotomy but in states like Wisconsin and Georgia I think this could end up being one of the biggest issues because Democrats are at a knife's edge but these like if the Democrats win Georgia Trump loses the election so they're gonna have a huge amount of energy on the Republican side to try to block this and they've already been doing it beforehand I'm sure they'll do it afterwards and I think that that's more or less where we stand right now and we but more states could come into play Arizona Texas where they've also been similar issues especially Texas with massive voter suppression closing down of polling places making it difficult to vote early all these different issues so you know in the primary we saw this in Texas and one place in Houston where people had to wait for six and a half hours to vote this is a democratic primary in a democratic city where they're trying for it to help people vote so it gives you a sense of the state of affairs absolutely I want to come back to a question we'll actually discuss in one of our earlier conversations so just to lay out the situation here we have an election where like you said one state might tilt the entire balance we have we remember say Florida in 2000 where it was just 500 votes and a very dubious Supreme Court intervention which sealed the nation and this time we have a president of course who is openly at various points been hesitant about committing to even respecting the results so I believe a lot of experts have talked about a situation where the results are not very clear on the date of the election that's November 3rd maybe even in the next couple of days and there is a situation of chaos and anarchy so what is the common consensus regarding the possibility of that I think the common consensus right now is that there's going to be a contested vote I think the only situation in which that that is likely to not happen is a blowout when on either side but you know it seems like the democrats may win big in the sense of the number of votes but that in a number of key states like for instance North Carolina it could be very very close and if it's close that will the I mean Republicans have quite frankly already signaled that they are planning to challenge in a number of these states certainly if the election is close the validity of the election itself so it's certainly possible that the wind could be so overwhelming for Biden and the polls are certainly showing that could happen that Trump will just concede I think most people myself included are not banking on that because there's so many different variables to it here and I think it's a it's a real just ball of confusion in terms of what happens I think the key dates for people to recognize is this if it's before early December I believe the date is December 14th things could ultimately end up happening the way you'd expect and there's a peaceful transition of power one way or the other but since the popular vote in America does not matter we have an electoral college which means that the popular vote plays some role but not a significant not the ultimate role in determining who the electors will be from the various states who then come together and they elect president now the issue with that is you have to have a certified election results to then pick the electors to represent the person who won the state but if the election is contested then you can put forward both parties could try to put forward competing slates of electors and then you're in almost uncharted territory about how that plays out and and that is the those are the sorts of scenarios where the supreme court will become involved so I think it will certainly we will not know election night I think it's possible we will know in the week after the election and not even improbable but I think that there's definitely it could be two or three weeks but I think you know the level of chaos will certainly depend on the length of time it takes I think most people are anticipating the longer it goes on the sharper the conflicts are going to be and it's unclear what sort of street politics will be happening you mentioned 2000 of course Republicans disrupted the vote count in Florida in 2000 to do whatever they could to try to prevent you know people for coming in and doing and being able to count the votes and do so on and so forth so some of that is expected too so I would say the general consensus is going to be a contestation I think most people consider the idea that we could have a true contested election like you get to inauguration day and there's no consensus to be a pretty outside chance but I think if we get to that early December date and you can't certify electors in a number of different states and you have dueling electors then the logic on both parties really becomes to maximalism and to do everything possible to win regardless and there's no clear rules that's the other thing there's there's no clear rules about what exactly happens here so who knows exactly what's going to happen there so I would say the consensus is we're going to have some level of contestation they probably won't go beyond a week or two and everything will end up being fine but that there is a very serious chance that some of these issues could really throw this thing into December into January and it's it's not impossible that we could reach January 20th inauguration day in the United States and there will be three people who have a claim for president because in the US constitution the speaker of the house can become president if there's no consensus on January 20th so you have Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and Donald Trump all with good claims. Right absolutely and really slightly changing track a bit I mean there's been a lot of talk about this being an unprecedented historic election and you yourself have talked about how in another interview about how that's that's a slightly dangerous way of looking at it but I'd like to look at it from the other aspect which is that this happens of course after some of the most historic waves of protests in the United States like you mentioned in your first answer especially we're still seeing them in Philadelphia we're still seeing them in Washington DC and these have continued the demand for justice the demand against police violence and in a very organized fashion these have continued across the country so how do you see this mobilization sort of shall we say maybe playing into this election and also continuing after this election so that we don't look at it purely in terms of four year cycle as well or two year cycle as well. Yeah I think that's a great question because you know my personal view is if Joe Biden wins this election you know he should think the people who were in the streets this summer because it's pretty clear when you look at how things were playing out in the polls that it was after Donald Trump suppressed the demonstration in front of the White House in such a brutal fashion that that really opened the race up millions of people came into the streets all around the country in the next week and it created almost a new urgency in the country I mean as people may remember Biden was not really the consensus pick of the Democrats many people even centrist people with similar politics were not that excited you know his mental state it was kind of unclear exactly what was going on so there was a feeling of let's get Trump out but also a feeling of apathy and I think that seeing Trump this brutally suppress a peaceful demonstration flipped a light switch in people's head I mean I would not make this connection and I think in many ways it's crafts but I did see someone who is knocking doors for Biden in Philadelphia tell you know the people they were you know hyping up to go knock on doors you know we're knocking on a door to save a life and that Donald Trump supporting the suppression of the demonstration shows we have to get rid of him and I really do believe it'll never be written like this probably until 20 years afterwards but I really do believe that the mass movement and uprising against racism gave people a reason totally outside of Biden to come out and vote against Trump and I think if you're someone who says they didn't vote in 2016 but did vote in 2012 you maybe don't love Biden you didn't know exactly what you were going to do you start to see stuff like that and you think well how can I just do something to this guy I can vote him out I can vote against him and I think absolutely that's going to play a huge role in this election and I think by and large the election is not going to resolve anything that was really put forward by these protests especially I mean when you look at the issue of policing I mean Biden is saying he's going to give 20 billion dollars more to cops and basically give them the discretion on how to spend it so he's going to give them 20 billion dollars to allegedly address you know issues in policing but let the police address the issues you know every time he goes out he says why don't they just shoot him in the leg I mean not only is that a shoot to main mentality but not to be a marksman here but it's also more dangerous you're more likely to hit a bystander so just the mentality behind that that yeah don't kill him just maim him and maybe you know hit a baby because you the bullet ricochets off the street trying to hit someone in the knee just gives you a sense of Biden is not really taking it that seriously and that ultimately most of his surrogates on the city level the mayors the council members the congress people are generally supportive of the police have generally been supportive of these policies and will continue to be so so those contradictions on this sort of granular level will continue and I think really the things that are driving people to be against Trump whether it be climate change I mean Biden mentioned the last debate he wants 50,000 charging stations as the financial times I think it might have been the economist one of them mentioned he actually has no plan for how to carry that out so there's a lot of things that they're saying they're going to address and saying they're going to do but they don't have strong claims around them you look at the issue of fracking which has been big you know how's all these different things going to play out who knows so most of the animating issues for why people hate Trump poverty income inequality the lack of jobs low wages fracking the environment climate justice racial justice policing none of these things are really going to be resolved by the plans that Biden has which means and I think that the protest movement and the protest energy is I think could actually get stronger because there will be a feeling amongst many people that like well we put you in there like what are you possibly doing and I already say it's unprecedented really in America to have major protests this close to an election usually you know liberal forces democratic party forces are trying to tamp down protests in every way possible and the fact they haven't really been able to do that and that even amongst sort of middle of the road liberals there's a very strong discourse that well to get what we want we're gonna have to keep pushing we're gonna have to stay in the streets so I think it's very likely unknown but very likely that unlike when Obama came in and people were just very hopeful and like let's just see what he does I think a lot of people are going to say no let's not wait and see let's get out here and let's push for Medicare for all and different things like that and we're already seeing some indications from progressive politicians that they claim that they're going to do some of these things well they I don't know but it just shows they're feeling the pressure from their own constituents to have a plan to really get things done absolutely so what we are expecting is that irrespective of if Biden does come to power it's still going to be a lot of movement on the streets a lot of push from progressive and radical forces to make sure that none of the sacrifices are the the sacrifices are respected in honor absolutely I mean the chasm is too deep now the problems are too big and the two major parties are unable to meet the task and we've seen this multiple times in American history I mean most notable the 1850s that when things like this happen the status quo can't hold and even though it has held for you know 100 years there's never been any big change the same two parties have been in there I think that neither party is offering anything to their own base I mean forget you know what what I might want to see as a radical person their own base on Republicans and Democrats want to see the parties doing different things and they're not seeing the response from them in Washington and I think the depth of the depth of that chasm is going to be difficult to bridge and I think ultimately we're going to see more and more in the streets and I think we're going to see new political forces emerge in a way that we haven't seen in some time right thank you so much Eugene for talking to us thank you so much for your time for today keep watching Peoples Dispatch