Will there be a popular uprising when the Republicans steal the next election through voter suppression?

The following essay is submitted by an individual who asked for anonymity but declined to suggest a pseudonym.

WILL THERE BE A POPULAR UPRISING WHEN THE REPUBLICANS STEAL THE NEXT ELECTION THROUGH VOTER SUPPRESSION?

On paper it looks like Obama is going to win a second term as president of the United States.  No matter how you crunch the numbers, he is ahead in the electoral vote.

It is important to distinguish the popular vote with the electoral vote.  If you know the difference, then skip ahead. But if not, please read on.  Most Americans don’t understand the difference.

If you poll all American voters as a whole, the race is very close, with Obama only being a hair above Romney.  But presidential elections in the United States are not decided by popular vote. They are decided by the Electoral College, and right now – despite the fact that the popular vote is split, Obama is way ahead in probable electoral votes.

Here is how the Electoral College works:  each state is assigned a number of “electoral votes” depending on the state’s population. The higher the population, the more electoral votes assigned to the state.  California (a blue state) has the highest population in the nation, and so has the highest number of electoral votes – 55.  In sharp contrast, North Dakota (a red state) has 3 electoral votes.  So if Obama wins the popular vote in California – as is expected - he will be assigned 55 votes. If Romney wins the popular vote in North Dakota – as is expected – he gets 3 electoral votes.

The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes wins the election.

Public opinion polls show Obama winning the next election by a wide range of electoral votes.  Take a look at two of the most prominent websites that track electoral votes.  The first is found at http://electoral-vote.com.  

Averaging many opinion polls, this website shows Obama with a commanding lead with 332 electoral votes over Romney’s 206 – far short of the 2070 Romney needs to win.

Another website - http://electoralmap.net/2012/intrade.php - uses a different approach to predicting the winner of the next election.  Instead of averaging multiple opinion polls, Intrade looks at how Americans are betting on the outcome of the election.  The theory is that people betting with their own money can more accurately analyze the odds of which candidate is most likely to win.  Intrade looks at the betting records for each state and also concludes that Obama has a commanding lead in electoral votes – 303 to Romney’s 235.

Intrade and Electoral-Vote are only two organizations crunching the numbers and predicting that Obama will win the November elections by a wide margin of votes in the Electoral College.  But they do this primarily by crunching poll numbers that are derived from asking likely voters how they will vote in November.

They do not take Republican voter suppression efforts into consideration.  In every state where Obama is ahead, but only by a smaller margin, the Republican controlled legislatures in those states have conducted a campaign of suppressing likely votes for Obama by making it more difficult for pro-Obama voters to actually go out and vote. 

The most famous example of voter suppression is the effort by Republican controlled state legislatures to pass laws requiring voters to show identification prior to being allowed to vote.  It is well- established that these kinds of laws prevent minority and less affluent people from voting because these people don’t have a drivers license for any number of reasons including not being able to afford to pay the fee to get one or not owning a car.

So it is very clear that, if Romney beats Obama in November, it will happen because he relied on voter suppression tactics to steal prevent people from voting who would have voted for Obama.

In other words, if Romney wins in November, it will be because he stole the election by cheating people of their votes.

This is likely to happen.  The next president will be chosen, not by the people, but by Republican tactics to prevent Democrats from voting.

The only real question is how the American people will respond.  What will they do when the next president is chosen via trickery, when the election is stolen?  Will they sit back and do nothing or will they rise up in protest and possible civil unrest that includes violence?

This is what happens in other countries around the world: revolutions are born when a corrupt political system prevents the will of the people from being expressed.

How will we respond when the wealthiest Americans game the system to get one of their own in the White House, who has promised to implement policies that will make the richest Americans even richer at the expense of everyone else?  How will the People react?