Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #17 Early Voting, Mail-in Voting, Dropbox Voting — These Were Made for Libs, Hard Workers, Book Readers, Artists, Busy Parents, Slackers, and Progressives like us! In other words, The Majority! Michael Moore Oct 13 A Michigan sunrise to enjoy while early voting. (Photo by Jeff Gibbs) This is today’s reason why we will win in Roevember: in spite of successful Republican attempts to make it harder to vote — especially for students, the poor, working moms, Black and Brown people — we still have more days and ways now to vote than we did before the pandemic. In fact, if you live in Ohio, you can go vote today! In Michigan, we’ve been voting since it was 90 degrees and sweltering in September! In fact, in Michigan and a few other states, you can register to vote right up until what we still call “Election Day!” Republicans — aka, the anti-Democracy Party of Trump — hate this. Because of Covid, everyone agreed back in 2020 that we had to make it easy for people to vote safely without contracting the virus. Turns out, all kinds of people loved voting in these new ways.  Despite a deadly pandemic, we not only had the highest voter turnout of the 21st century with 67% of Americans voting, we also shattered the record of nontraditional voting with 69% of those who voted doing so early — either in-person or by mail. And PEW found the country, for once, was in agreement — the majority of both Biden voters (82%) and Trump voters (62%) cast their ballots before election day. And this year, they didn’t want to go back to the old way.  Yet for the past two years we’ve faced attempts by Republican-led state legislatures to get rid of all the new ways people like to vote. And now there are, in many red states, fewer early voting days, fewer polling places — and in some cities with large populations, there’s only one Dropbox. Ha!  Why don’t they want to make it easy for the citizens to vote? Because they know and agree with me on what I’ve been telling you since Midterm Tsunami Truth #1 — that there are more, many more, of us than them! And that means they can’t win unless they try to prevent some of the majority — us! —from voting. Take this as a compliment. They are so scared of us and the power of our multi-million majority, they have literally lost their minds. Gone bonkers. Cuckoo for Cocco Puffs crazy! I mean, in just the past decade, they’ve been forced to endure a Black President, the gays all getting married, and hysterical women now making up the majority of both our medical schools AND law schools!  “How in sweet Jesus’ name did this happen?! Marijuana everywhere! The churches are empty, young people don’t want to kill deer or ducks, you can’t bum a cigarette anymore because so few people smoke now! Vegans roaming everywhere, pronouns, so many pronouns, you don’t know who is who or what is they! Madness! Quick — close the borders! They’re trying to replace us! Mommy! Mommy! I‘M SCARED!!!” Phew. It’s exhausting. But just like those who swore they’d never get in a horseless carriage or allow dangerous electrical wires into the walls of their homes, they will sooner or later get used to gays and their wedding cakes, and their very own kids teaching them about race and anti-racism. They will, in the next decade, learn to accept the free universal health care and day care we’re going to give them. They’re going to get a guaranteed vacation by law and paid time off when they have a baby or their parents take ill. These will be bitter pills for them to swallow, but eventually they’ll see that we meant well and we did this for them even though they didn’t vote for our candidates or listen to hip-hop or believe in Beyoncé or Buddha. We’ve always loved Uncle Bob, even though he drives us crazy.  And on November 8th, their efforts to suppress the majority will fail — but not only because we will rise up, but because in their race to remain in power, they outmaneuvered themselves, and forgot to check their blind spot. This election year, they’ve spent so much time convincing their side not to trust elections or ballots or voting machines or (black) election workers that now millions of Republicans are going to sit these Midterms out — “Because it’s all rigged!“ “Hunter Biden is controlling the punch card counters brought in from Venezuela!” “Look — there’s JFK, Jr.!”  Talk about an underreported story!  So all we have to do is show up with a few of our friends from those Central American caravans and vote! If you can, bring a few neighbors, a cousin or two, a boy from school you're sweet on. And do it on an early voting day when the lines are shorter and snow hasn’t started to fall. Make it a Dropbox Date Night! Help your parents fill out their mail-in ballot! Order in the pizza, crack open a Stroh’s and toast this weird and wacky Democracy.  It’s the only one we’ve got, and the only hope you have.