Iowa disappoints big time in 2020

   Jack Doppelt

Iowa voters successfully penetrated the GOP-controlled legislature’s persistent efforts to suppress the vote, but to little end in holding the GOP responsible. A record number of Iowans – 1.7 million – voted. That’s 78.6% of all eligible voters, 3rd in the nation behind only Maine and Minnesota. Nearly 1 million voted early. Another 700,000 voted on election day.

Still, Iowa raised the red GOP banner almost across the board -the Presidency, US Senate, two of four US Congressional seats (with a 3rd too close to call), and both houses of the Iowa legislature. 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties are now represented by a Republican in either the state House or Senate.

       Thanks all for your work, efforts, and spirit. https://bit.ly/3n0mzDy

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Election day - it's in Iowans' hands now

   Jack Doppelt

Election day. The finish line looms. Iowa takes 2,095,581 registered voters, the most ever, into today's election potential. Almost 1 million have already voted. Another million are in position to vote today. Final call.

Since the primaries in June, Republican registrations have climbed faster than, and surpassed, Democratic registrations. Independent registrations went down before the primaries because unaffiliateds can’t vote in the primaries.

That's where things stand, polls aside.

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A personal get well soon to President Trump

                                                                                                                                                  Jack Doppelt

                                                                                                                                                 Oct. 30, 2020

I wish you a speedy recovery from the flu, as you’ve often referred to COVID-19. 

You have the best, most comprehensive health care system at your disposal. It affords for hospitalization for a few days even for “monitoring” or for an "abundance of caution" or for those pre-existing conditions you may have. 

I am joined in my wishes, I’m sure, by the millions of fellow Americans, uninsured, undocumented, elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, and those like you with pre-existing conditions. 

At some point, as you said back in February, the flu will go away. It will disappear like a miracle. So I’m not worried about you. 

In the meantime, it must be disconcerting to have to be away from family and to have to wear a mask. We know how deeply you and your family’s convictions run against masks. During your debate with Joe Biden the other day, it was exhilarating to see your whole family act in solidarity by whipping off their masks after being seated for the debate. The act of resistance was particularly patriotic and courageous in that the debate took place in a medical clinic. Rules are meant for suckers. As you said to Biden, masks are ok when needed, but you wouldn’t wear a mask like Biden who shows up "wearing the biggest mask I’ve ever seen." [click on the link-you'll love hearing yourself put it to him]

As you entered Walter Reed Hospital, you had on a mask suitable for being hospitalized among medical teams who were in place to monitor you, whether they signed non-disclosure agreements or not.

By all appearances, it’s possible you may have others join you in your Presidential COVID-denial sycophant movement. Your wife will loyally join you; as may your campaign manager Bill Stepien; Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; your former adviser Kellyanne Conway; Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson; Utah Senator Mike Lee; North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis; Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and of course your confidante Hope Hicks, all of whom have clung by your side and dutifully tested positive for the flu. 

As you tweeted, we will get through this TOGETHER!” 

It is customary in the Jewish faith to wish a person a “refuah shlema,” a renewal of body and an epiphany for a spirit of empathy. 

Amen. 

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=115486880454667&id=101931588476863

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Iowa’s voter suppression by 1,000 cuts

                                                                                                                                                   July 2020 

By the time state lawmakers in Iowa went home at 6 am on June 24, the night had turned stealthily into Sunday morning and the Republican majority in both the House and Senate could close the books on an unusual and unanticipated election law. The law prohibits the Secretary of State from mailing registered voter applications for absentee ballots (ABRs) for November’s election until voters apply for it and provide IDs. 

The legislature added a provision that if election officials detect errors or omissions in a voter’s application, the officials are to contact the voter by phone or electronically within 24 hours. The officials can’t cross-check records in their office. The law doesn’t address this, but presumably, if the voter isn’t reached or doesn’t correct the form in a day, the voter is disqualified from voting absentee. There is nothing in the law that indicates if a voter will be notified that the application didn’t go through. 

All that was needed was for the Governor, a Republican, to sign the bill into law. She did, and the law is now in effect. 

The law was enacted only three weeks after the state’s primary for all offices other than president. (The Iowa caucuses held back in February involve only the presidential race.) The primary on June 2 attracted 530,000 voters, by far the most in any Iowa primary, this despite the pandemic. Much of the success goes to the absentee ballot process triggered by the Secretary of State who mailed absentee applications to all registered voters without being asked. Mail-in ballots made up 80% of all the voting. 

The process was seamless. Voters had ballots at home. All they needed to do was complete them and mail them in. No lines that threatened people’s health. No long waits on election night to get the vote totals. 

It was so successful that Republican strategists in and outside Iowa saw the writing on the ballots. As the Des Moines Register put it, the only possible justification for the legislature’s overnight stunt, which passed along party lines, is “voter suppression.” 

It fell in line as part of Donald Trump’s clear strategy – if you can’t beat ‘em, complicate the voting or rig the election, whichever is needed. During this year’s primary season, states have already rejected tens of thousands of mail-in ballots, according to NBC News. The reasons cited are ballots tossed out for such trivial errors as not signing in all the right places, using a signature that doesn't exactly match one's voter registration signature, or reaching election officials too late. 

Iowa presents as a red state. A red state, though, shouldn’t need to resort to voter suppression. As Iowans often say, the GOP has won the trifecta. They control the state House, the state Senate and the governorship. Together, they make the rules even for national elections. It has not always been that way, and barring tactics to undermine the election, it’s not likely to continue that way. 

Democratic presidential candidates have won six of the last eight presidential races in Iowa; including Michael Dukakis’s victory in 1988. The exceptions were in 2004 when George Bush won in seeking a second term, and in 2016 when Donald Trump won. The governors for 12 years from 1998-2010 were Democrats. 

For 30 years, between 1984 and 2014, Iowa sent one Republican, Chuck Grassley, and one Democrat, Tom Harkin, to the U.S. Senate. After Harkin retired in 2014, Joni Ernst joined Grassley to make the Senate delegation from Iowa all Republican. 

When I was in college in Iowa in the 1970s, three U.S. Senate luminaries - Harold Hughes, Dick Clark and John Culver – were all Iowa Democrats. 

The Republicans made their inroads in the state House and Senate after the last redistricting in 2011. Before that, the Democrats were in control. By 2018, the GOP had taken control over the state Senate by a substantial 31-18 majority, and controlled the House. 

Since Joni Ernst’s fluke election in 2014 after Tom Harkin retired and Trump’s win two years later, national pundits have colored Iowa red. They wrote off Iowa to the GOP until recent polls showed both Trump and Ernst vulnerable and faltering. 

Iowa is of only modest consequence in the presidential race. It controls only six of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. 

Ernst’s Senate seat is of seismic importance. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, a majority of lockstep voters who defy the president only when it doesn’t matter. Twenty-three seats are up for election. Most of the 23 are considered safe. Polls and pundits differ on how many, and which, are vulnerable, and as the campaign has evolved, the conventional wisdom has moved from five, with Ernst’s Iowa seat considered safe, to 11, with Ernst’s seat shifting to vulnerable as Trump’s ratings drop. If Trump is re-elected and the Democrats lose none of their Senate seats, the Republicans would have to lose four seats to give up control of the body. If Trump loses and the Democrats keep all their Senate seats, three lost Republican seats would turn the Senate and the federal government around. 

Joni Ernst’s seat is all the more critical in that she has voted in line with Trump’s positions 91% of the time. Most recently Ernst voiced support for Trump’s deployment of federal troops in Portland and for his handling of the coronavirus epidemic. 

Trump has announced many times that he opposes mail-in voting. The last time Ernst addressed the state’s recent stealth absentee ballot law, she deferred, saying that “elections are a state issue.” Her opposition for the Senate, Democrat Theresa Greenfield said, “Republican politicians are trying to make it harder to vote. This is unacceptable and wrong.” 

To the extent that Iowa is misperceived as red, its palette is showing its true colors again. Two years ago, in 2018, in the off-year election after Trump became president, Iowa’s four Congressional districts flipped from three Republicans to three Democrats. The fourth Republican has been Stephen King whose racist and vulgar language resulted in fellow Republicans stripping him of House committee assignments before he was defeated in the recent Republican primary. 

Iowa is neither red nor blue, but a lush mix of red, blue and independent. There are 680,000 Republicans, 680,000 Democrats and 627,000 independents, as of July. Can it get any more dynamic than that? 

That would make for a fair fight for president and U.S. Senate if it weren’t for the wild cards that the GOP has hidden away to spring at any time. 

They’ve enacted the laws so that voters will be confused as they await absentee ballot applications as were mailed for the June 2 primary. After a number of the state’s 99 county auditors from Democratic-leaning counties decided to mail out absentee applications as the Secretary of State did for the primary, the Secretary of State returned to the legislature to get permission to take the lead again. He got it. 

The Republicans imposed a condition. The ABRs can be sent to registered voters either by the Secretary of State or by the county auditors but the ABRs have to be blank “to ensure uniformity.” The Democrats tried to add a provision that would require election officials to mail voters PIN numbers with or before the ABRs so voters would have the information needed to vote. It was voted down. 

One county auditor suggested that to make it easier, he would mail out the ABRs with the individualized PIN numbers already on the ABR form. The Republican lawmaker who leads the GOP in the Iowa Senate was quoted as setting things straight: “With this order, any auditor who sends out the pre-populated form with the Voter ID pin is frankly ignoring the law. Period." 

The result is that the confluence of laws is confusing and onerous; ideal conditions for the Trump campaign strategy of challenging people’s votes and claiming the election is illegitimate. 

Some county auditors will be lenient about insignificant errors or omissions in a voter’s absentee application. Those who are could be setting up challenges after the election as the Trump campaign works to show that absentee ballots are fraudulent. 

Then there will be some county auditors who will vigilantly detect errors or omissions in a voter’s absentee application and then lackadaisically try to contact the voter by phone or electronically within 24 hours. If the voter isn’t contacted and the errors aren’t corrected, there’s nothing in the law that would keep those auditors from not mailing out absentee ballots to those people. 

Then there’s the Trump playbook that he’s signaled publicly. After the election, he’s prepared to claim that the absentee ballots are fraudulent and that Iowa’s results, among others, can’t be trusted. 

It’s easier to have Iowa to come out red through voter suppression tactics when Iowa is wrongly expected to vote red anyway. 

What to do about it? The election bromide is that to make change, people need to vote. This time, in Iowa, and in all states, to vote, people need to be vigilant, know exactly where the pitfalls lurk and avoid them. 

As the Register warned in its June 8 editorial headline: “Message from GOP lawmakers to Iowans: We don't want you voting.” Show them you know what they’re up to. 

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The effects of Covid-19 on immigrant communities

Jack Doppelt

June 5, 2020 

[A version of this series of stories was published on Immigrant Connect on Jun 5, 2020]

The spring of 2020 brought fear, death and grief to hundreds of thousands across the globe. In the few months that my students and I were getting to know immigrants and refugees, more than 400,000 people died of the coronavirus pandemic. More than ¼ of them died in the U.S. 

As we were meeting for the first times in early April, we decided to focus our reporting on the pandemic’s effect on different immigrant and refugee communities. So many Good Questions can use exploration, so we set out to answer some of them. 

What we came to realize is that one of the potential effects of a global pandemic is to recognize that the experiences of migration and decisions about cross-national travel may pull the U.S., willingly or not, out of its exceptionalist posture and into a more cooperative arena. We shall see. 

Here are our stories on how the COVID-19 pandemic has effected different immigrant and refugee communities: 

How have Chinese students handled what to do as the spread of COVID-19 limited their options to return to China? 

Are people turning to traditional Chinese medicine during the coronavirus pandemic?

How have Korean Americans prepared for COVID-19?

How have Indian grocery stores been impacted by COVID-19? 

How have African refugees coped with COVID-19? 

How did COVID-19 affect Ramadan celebrations in the Arab American community around Dearborn, Michigan? 

 In the process of doing the series on COVID-19, we encountered a couple of extraordinary people you should know: 

Glo Harn Choi: Pathways to citizenship for the undocumented can come slowly, and surely, with collective action 

Mamadul Hasson: A Rohingya retells his traumatic journeys to freedom that still haunt him

 —————————- 

 The student reporters wanted you to know something about themselves and their inspiration for investing in reporting on immigrants unlike themselves. The stories are captured here and on the Immigrant Connect staff page: 

Svati returns the favor years later By Rachel Baldauf 

My mother and I break a Chinese taboo and emerge with unconditional love By Connie Deng 

The life of a refugee is nothing like my life By Michael Fitzpatrick 

A snip, snip, here and some family history there By Jason Harward 

I realize what it means to choose citizenship – US or Korean By Chloe Jeonghyun Heo 

Grandfather Gaioni’s love for cooking and food are the ties to Italy that bind By Bailey Pekar 

Savta shows me that tradition doesn’t stagnate By Ash Ravid 

My mother lived like an Ethiopian princess and left it all behind By Lydia Rivers 

Ignorance or innocence? The dragons of South Africa are the real Africa to me By Channing Russell 

Instructions for death can be a Chamorro woman’s expression of life fully lived By Imani Sumbi 

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Addressing the dissemination and spread of intended disinformation

 Jack Doppelt 

 May 5, 2020

In issuing the report, “Fair Elections during a Crisis,” the Ad Hoc Committee for 2020 Election Fairness and Legitimacy proposed 14 recommendations for presidential elections that have become even more timely because the pandemic’s indeterminate end leaves the election even more susceptible to the whims of those in power federally and in each state. 

What balloting will be acceptable? Will attempts to open up voting be stymied by contrived concerns of vote fraud? Will the elections be held? On Nov. 3? If so, will the losing part of the electorate accept the results? 

Our committee took on these questions immediately before the pandemic set in. They resonate now, as the election looms six months off, and because of the pandemic, are barely on the edge of the media radar. 

To many, that’s just as well. Campaigns had become all encompassing, grotesquely expensive, and driven by negative, divisive strains of the body politic. All true but what lurks beneath the surface, regardless of the duration of the campaigning, is disinformation that has overtaken our elections. 

Disinformation, from the Russian term dezinformatsiya, is designed to stick and spread through word of mouth, social media and unwitting news outlets. It is used by government intelligence agencies, in the negative advertising of political campaigns, and recently by foreign governments, such as Russia obviously. Representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google have testified in Congress that disinformation leading up to the 2016 election and planted by Russian operatives alone reached more than 125 million people, according to NPR. Twitter representatives invoked these numbers: 2,752 Russia-linked Twitter accounts and more than 36,000 automated "bots" tweeting 1.4 million times about the election. Much of the content was aimed at widening divides in American culture. 

When responsible media identify disinformation, they tend to dutifully ignore it so as to not give it oxygen to circulate. The damage is done though. The disinformation has seeped into the bloodstream of conversation and social media, often with a boost from the President, whose campaign has been reported to be heavily financing a strategy, called “death star,” that is primed to unleash disinformation during the campaign cycle. The piece, "The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President: How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 elections" in the Feb. 10 issue of the Atlantic, is a playbook worth accounting for in the nation's defense strategies and worth circulating to all college students.

Instead of ignoring disinformation campaigns, responsible media should call out the disinformation as such in as real time as possible. It is, of course, tricky to distinguish disinformation from differing points of view in a messy democracy, but we’ve come to expect it of Facebook and Twitter. One cautious step for the media is to piggyback off Facebook and Twitter, and when they take measures to keep disinformation off their platforms, the media can step in and call attention to that disinformation. The way the media should do that is to lead in given stories with the truth or the reality and back into the debunked disinformation efforts, citing the sources seeking to pollute the democratic discourse. This is a technique we teach in social justice journalism and is directed at giving prominence to accuracy and at punishing through sunlight those who intentionally are a corrupting influence. How to write those stories without pumping oxygen into the disinformation is a conversation starter for news organizations. One model might be how news outlets handle corrections without repeating and magnifying the error being corrected. 

A useful primer is the American Press Institute’s Trusted Elections Network Guide to Covering Elections amd Misinformation. 

It's incumbent on we in the media to take it on. We’re on deadline.

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Is the American Creed adopted by immigrants of other people, by other people, and for other people?

                                                                                                                                               Jack Doppelt 

                                                                                                                                              April 30, 2019 

[A version of this talk was delivered at the Wilmette Public Library on April 30, 2019]

Possibly the most controversial legacy of the last few years will be that a nation of immigrants is being replaced by nation of enough immigrants. Should something be done about it and if so, by whom? It’s a slippery slope caked with mud. 

American Creed, a documentary by Sam Ball and Randy Bean, examines through profiles of diverse people what constitutes The American Character. 

It has challenged me to work with a different lens. My lens for ten years has been to sustain an online network for immigrants, refugees, their families and communities. Our network is stoked by the personal stories that emerge from the multiple immigrant communities in and around Chicago, to find threads that connect them with one another. We came up with weavable threads – stories of back home, culture shock, family, fearing the law, identity, learning the language, problems with papers, the migration, and experiences with work, jobs and money - and we’ve been at it ever since. The immigrant experience is historically one of isolation and insecurity, and the sharing of stories and information is a time-honored antidote. 

American Creed got me to pull back to see beyond the vivid, often tattered tapestry of immigrants, refugees, their families and communities to explore the sets of beliefs and principles that delimit "we the people.” Who's in, who's out? Who decides? Are there core values that pull Americans, or that can pull Americans, together?

One line that sticks with me is all we have to hold us together is a story. To that I add other stories that emanate and resonate from there. What stories do we want to endure? That’s a not too distant echo from what I’ve focused on with immigrants. 

One of the core principles of American Creed is that we are a nation of immigrants. Are we? Or has the American Creed evolved like manifest destiny or the great frontier and shifted to a nation of enough immigrants. 

As Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace would say, “let’s do the numbers.” The countries with the highest percentage of immigrants (foreign borns) other than islands and Vatican City are gulf states (United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Kuwait-over 70%), small European countries (Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland), middle east countries (Jordan, Lebanon), and Singapore. The U.S. and Germany are about the same-14%.  The UK- 13%. Russia-7%. 

In terms of sheer numbers though and that’s what “we the people” may notice and feel more, only four countries have more than 10 million foreign born residents. The U.S. has by far the most, with 46+ million. Germany (12 mil),  Russia (11 mil), and Saudi Arabia (10 mil) are next. Other hugely populated nations such as China (4 mil), India (5 mil) and Brazil (700,000) are much more insular. Japan has 2 mil or less than 2% of its population and Mexico, 1 mil or less than 1%.

Any wonder the U.S. is a nation of immigrants? That realization may also make it more understandable that there are plenty of Americans, a movement of them, and an easily fomented movement, who believe the U.S. should be a nation of enough immigrants? 

At his juncture, in a nation in which living room conversations occur, when they do, in encampments of like-minded, isolated creeds, there are dueling storylines. 

Hordes, terrorists, drug-dealers, rapists, criminals, job takers, and benefit leaches, from hell hole countries. 

The slippery, mud-ridden slope is in place. 

That slope is what Donald Trump appealed to when during his first hundred days in office, he issued a flurry of executive orders that, in addressing immigration and refugee policies, staked out a vision of the American Creed:

• Removals (Deportations) 

• Hire 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents 

• Hire 10,000 additional immigration officers, who shall complete relevant training and be authorized to perform the law enforcement functions described in section 287 

• Empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law under the 287(g) program 

• Those who entered US fraudulently (knowingly lying on papers) 

• Detain individuals apprehended on suspicion of violating Federal or State law, including Federal immigration law, pending further proceedings regarding those violations; 

• Expedite determinations of apprehended individuals' claims of eligibility to remain in the United States 

• Ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law pending the outcome of their removal proceedings or their removal from the country to the extent permitted by law. 

• Border crossings now being treated as federal criminal misdemeanors –illegal entry - people get mass due process - so immigrants who cross the border illegally are considered criminals. They weren’t before. That way, anyone who’s undocumented in the U.S. is a criminal too. For a sense of how that worked, listen to This American Life's All Together Now, which documented that 74 of 74 people pleaded guilty – included asylum seekers. After pleading guilty, most got sentenced to time served for the time they already were in detention. Phase 1 – if done a 2nd time, they can be tried for felonies. 

• On a weekly basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any (sanctuary) jurisdictions that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens. 

• Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information. 

In summary, just those initial executive actions resulted in:

1. More arrests, more detentions as cases pend;
2. Public shaming of undocumented and welcoming cities;
3. Priorities for enforcement shifted from criminals convicted of felonies to those -
• convicted of any criminal offense;
• charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;
• committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense;
• engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency;
• abused any program related to receipt of public benefits, such as subsidized housing, free education, English lessons, free school breakfast and lunch, urgent medical care, prenatal and postpartum care for pregnant women under the Women, Infants and Children program, and food stamps for families with U.S.-born children;
• in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security. 

Of course these measures left people and communities without the American Dream they prized. For a nation of immigrants, the measures appeared at the least to strip any vestiges of the American Creed from those in the country who'd already come to cherish it.

The nation of immigrants seemed to be evolving into a nation of enough immigrants. If immigrants and refugees sought a better life, they should take their business and families elsewhere. Maybe the American Creed they'd adopted of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity were of other people, by other people, and for other people.

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