John Oliver examines various efforts to destabilize the vote, how to ensure your ballot is properly counted, and why we may need to prepare not just for an election night, but for an election month.
October 5, 2020

John Oliver started out with "the single best voting PSA the world has ever seen," one that involves dancers and is called getyourbooty2thepoll.com.

"They hit prosecutors, cash bail, sheriffs and the importance of down ballot races -- all subjects we've talked about before on this show but they did it in less time and more entertainingly while also providing a much better get out the vote message than anyone currently working for Joe Biden," Oliver said.

Oliver noted he was taping his show on Saturday, with Trump in the hospital with coronavirus, but "We do need to talk about this election because it's happening right now. More than 3 million votes have already been cast and yet
Trump and his supporters have engaged in a deliberate campaign to undermine the process."

He said we should acknowledge there is "nothing new in Republicans attempting to depress turnouts. They've done it for years, sometimes with a veneer of fighting voter fraud and tactics like strict voter ID laws and aggressive purchase of voter rolls, but sometimes they've just said it out loud."

Cue a clip of founding wingnut Paul Weyrich saying, "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Lots more. I will say, though, I think Oliver is wrong about how long it will take us to know who won the election. If Biden takes Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, all that's left is the final total of electoral votes.

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