Maybe It’s Exactly What It Seems to Be

“How very wet this water is.”
– L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

“If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck!”
– Robin Cook

Over the last weeks there has been a series of hearings in Washington, unlike anything we have seen except perhaps the Watergate hearings (for those of you who are old enough to remember those). We listened to the testimony of a lady whose name is Wandrea Moss. She is commonly known as Shaye. Who in the world would have ever thought that the whole nation would be listening to Shaye Moss? I’m sure she didn’t. After all, Shaye is just a humble government worker in Fulton County, Georgia. She is like all of us, trying to make a living, trying to make a better life for those she loves. But for nothing more than just doing her job, an honorable profession I would argue, her life has been upended. She now fears for her life.

What in the world happened? Shaye was an election worker. Somehow for some reason, she was accused of pulling fake mail-in ballots from a suitcase while working on Election Day. (Election officials quickly confirmed that the “suitcases” were actually standard ballot containers and that there was absolutely no fraud.) It is not clear why Shaye and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was also a temporary election worker were selected for the attack and identified to the public. In the now infamous call in which our own former President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, he singled our Shaye and Ruby, calling them “professional vote scammers”, “hustlers”, “known political operatives” who “stuff ballot boxes”. The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, falsely claimed that he had video footage showing the women engage in “surreptitious illegal activity” acting like drug dealers “passing out dope.” The reaction by the Trump Faithful was swift and severe. Within a very short time Shaye and Ruby began fielding hate messages and threats on their Facebook pages. The oftentimes racist messages threatened physical violence. Suddenly people were knocking on their doors at all hours of the day including the overnight hours. Ruby immediately quit her job. Shaye took a leave of absence and tried to change her appearance. She quit shopping at her regular grocery store, afraid that an acquaintance might call her by her first name and that she would be identified. She began to move from house to house, never staying in the same structure two nights in a row.

Did Ruby and Shaye “go off the deep end”? Are their fears overblown? Maybe but I don’t think so. Have you ever been threatened by the most powerful man on the earth? You know, the guy who is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military in the world, and who oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies I don’t even know who could end your life in minutes if the order came down. This does not even take into account the legions who hang on former President Trump’s every word. But they wouldn’t resort to violence, would they? Oops, I guess having observed the events of January 6, maybe they would. If they would attempt to break into the nation’s Capital and hang the Vice President, I guess they might harm two innocent little ladies in Georgia.

I don’t think I can really understand the terror that these two ladies feel, but former President Trump’s words in his call to Secretary of State Raffensperger dredged up memories of a very unpleasant experience I once had that might be similar on a much smaller scale.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

In other words, I don’t care how you do it, just make it happen. In 1975 while I was working for the government of my hometown, as the assistant city engineer, the City Engineer resigned to take another job. Our city administrator (a man who could very incisively evaluate exceptional talent in my opinion) told me that he would suggest to our City Council that I be made the new City Engineer. This would be my dream job, serving as the chief engineer for the community in which I grew up, close to my family and friends. There was however a problem – state law required that a city engineer must be a state-licensed engineer. Obtaining a state license involves several steps all of which I had completed – except taking the Part 2 oral exam and finally the Part 2 national written exam. I would not be eligible to take the Part 2 exams for six months. Our city administrator figured out a way to get through that, he would contract with a licensed engineer to serve as my supervisor for the six months and once I passed the Part 2 exams, he would advocate for my appointment. My interim supervisor reviewed and approved all of my technical work during this period, but I was also in charge of non-technical work not needing technical review. One of those tasks was to formulate “special assessments” for public works projects. Special assessments in Minnesota are charges made to residents in addition to their normal taxes relating to public works projects felt to provide special benefit to their individual property. My duty was to identify the properties affected and to propose the amount of the special assessment for each property.

As luck would have it, a month or so before taking my exams, one of the special assessment projects included a property owned by a member of our city council. I dutifully prepared the assessment roll and readied it for presentation to the city council at their regular noon meeting. At 10:30 AM the affected property owner/council member, stopped into my office. He questioned my work and told me that I had misinterpreted the city policy and that there was no way his property should be subject to the charge. I carefully reviewed with him how we had applied the policy and how we had calculated the charges. The conversation grew more animated, and he ended it with this directive – “I don’t care how you do it, get my name off that assessment roll – make it happen” and he stormed out.

I sat in my little office, a bit stunned and uncertain what I should do. The city administrator was out of town and there was no one to consult. The meeting was in an hour. My thoughts ran wild.
• Is he right? Did I make an error? I reread the policy, looked at the supporting documents, and recalculated the numbers. Everything checked.
• This is not going to end well for me. I either need to knowingly do something wrong (probably even illegal) or this fellow is going to lead the charge to make sure that I am NOT the next city engineer.
• Maybe he just doesn’t understand. I didn’t explain things to him clearly enough.
• Maybe he is just testing me, verifying that I am honest and will always do my job without fear or favor.
• Maybe I should just go home and send someone else to go the meeting to tell the council that their action on the proposed assessments should be delayed (until I could get a chance to discuss this with the city administrator and have him take care of the problem).
With a lot of trepidation, I went to our noon meeting. With all of the resolve I could muster I looked the councilman in the eye and said – “These are the assessments I recommend”. The council studied the document and after a period of time there was a motion to adopt the list and a second. ALL of the Council voted in favor including my now least favorite who was berating me ninety minutes earlier. As I left the meeting still wondering what he would do to me in the future, it became clear to me. This wasn’t a misunderstanding – this wasn’t a disagreement about the city policy – this wasn’t a test of my honesty. This was about the damn $222 in cost that he was going to incur. Sometimes things are exactly what you think they are.

Brad Raffensperger and Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman and thousands of other dedicated public servants across the country have been going through hell, and still are, simply for doing their jobs. I have been around elections for much of my professional career. I have watched the training and the processes that are mandated by our state law. And without exception I will tell you that these people are as a pure as the driven snow. They are doing their jobs to the best of their ability and their job is incredibly important – I would argue that free and fair elections are the bedrock of our system of government. It’s time as former Attorney General Barr said, we call BS when it is BS.

NONE OF THE SO-CALLED ACCUSATIONS OF ELECTION FRAUD ARE REALLY ABOUT FRAUD – THEY ARE JUST WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE – A BALD FACED ATTEMPT BY THE FORMER PRESIDENT AND HIS INNER CIRCLE TO STAY IN POWER NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. JUST MAKE IT HAPPEN.