Donald Trump and the Republican Party are working hard and are focused on several more than likely illegal but effective voter suppression techniques just 2-1/2 months before the November elections. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem to be acting as though this is just a difficult election, against an  abnormal opponent and opposition party. As though removing more than 500 high speed mail processing units from USPS facilities to slow mail voting to a crawl or sending a number of lawyers to courts across the country to stop the Democrat’s major push for mail voting are simply difficulties to be complained about this election year. Also not just a difficulty, is throwing away the ballots of perhaps millions of voters because of changes in voter registration and ID procedures that are being introduced and being enforced by Republican state governments, that most effect low income and immigrant populations   Even California has a challenging problem.  The State will send out mail-in-ballots in October, which may not be back before the Nov 3 election because of the massive slow down efforts imposed by Trump on the USPS.  The Governors need to use whatever legal means they have to distribute, collect and count their voters’ ballots before the required legal deadlines [1]

The US National Guard can be activated for service in their respective states upon declaration of a state of emergency by the Governor of the State or territory where they serve [2].  In the US, a state government can declare such a state of emergency during a natural disaster, civil unrest, armed conflict, and most importantly, for the purposes of this article, during a medical pandemic  or other biosecurity risk [3].  A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people. The Covid19 virus is certainly characterized as a pandemic and it is easy to make the case that asking US voters to vote in person on November 3, 2020, at local polling booths, poses significant risks to everyone when compared to “mail in voting.”  In fact, so many massive gatherings on a single day at polling stations nationwide is liable to facilitate another peak spreading episode leading to tens and even hundreds of thousands more deaths in the US...as of August 16, 2020, the number of deaths attributed to the Covid19 virus is more than a likely understated 160,000.

We urge the Democratic and Swing State Governors to use their legal powers to declare  states of emergency in their states and activate enough members of their National Guard to supplement the efforts of the State’s USPS workers to provide an expanded, temporary workforce for  distribution and collection of mail-in-ballot applications and the actual ballots at numerous locations, including statewide polling stations, every county election office, and new legally created drive through polling stations.  The National Guard in each state can provide a workforce that is about the size of the USPS workers in the state, for temporary, short term, safe ballot distribution and collection.  The following table illustrates the potential size of the “National Guard Supplemental Election Workforce.”  The National Guard is a group of highly patriotic Americans that we can rely on to fulfill their duty when called upon to serve.

If Trump creates massive delays in the USPS to eliminate the people’s right to vote, we must find ways to circumvent his illegal, unethical and immoral actions to kill our democracy, besides the slow judicial processes through the courts.  The National Guard is only one US asset that can be called upon to take some of the workload that the USPS is unable to complete in a timely manner because of the continuing unethical actions of one of the most immoral individuals to ever serve as President of the United States of America. Because the National Guard will only be called upon on a temporary basis to distribute and collect mail-in-ballots and ballot applications, the number of available members of the Guard seems more than adequate to carry forward those functions and relieve the USPS of several  very  time consuming tasks.

[1] https://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/64574-the-states-will-need-more-locations-and-a-volunteer-vote-corp-asap-to-help-with-ballot-distribution-and-collection-to-guarantee-a-fair-2020-election

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Guard#State_and_territory_duty

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency