The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. That’s what Sun Tzu said in “The Art of War.” Break the enemy’s resistance without fighting, he said.
I’ve thought often of “The Art of War” in recent weeks as we learn more and more about the hundreds of pages of classified documents seized by the FBI at the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump.
Among those pages, I’m guessing, is intelligence on what Russian President Vladimir Putin knows about our election systems and a playbook on how to take down our democracy. Trump, while in office, spoke privately with Putin at least 16 times and you can bet the subject of attacking the legitimacy of our nation’s electoral process came up.
I’ve studied extremism and violent ideologies as an information warfare specialist while on active duty, and I know for a fact that the Russians and Chinese are playing us. Deception and psychological warfare are their thing, and they understand us better than we do.
It’s no wonder Americans say the biggest threat to democracy comes from within. The most important issue to voters, according to recent public opinion, isn’t inflation or guns or abortion. It’s “threats to democracy.”
This Sunday is the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on our nation. Our nation came together after that infamous day and, for a time, we were unified in spirit, if not in purpose. Now, we’re more divided than ever before and we can’t even agree on the most basic of freedoms our veterans fought to defend — the right to vote and choose our representatives in government.
Part of our polarization is driven by GOP-fueled baseless claims of voting fraud that are now mainstream. With ongoing concerns about political violence and partisan extremism, it’s no wonder many poll workers are calling it quits.
A 2022 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice found one in six local elected officials nationwide personally experienced threats, with more than half of those officials saying they were threatened in person.
“Because that sort of venomous nature of American politics has amped up so much, people are just less and less willing to work the polls,” said Joshua Dyck, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in an interview with ABC News. He’s the director of the Center for Public Opinion at the UMass Lowell.
Knowing what’s at stake and with midterm elections just around the corner, a nonprofit organization, We the Veterans, is calling on veterans to volunteer as poll workers and election officials. Along with 30 partners, including more than 22 veteran organizations and military family organizations and the NFL, they’ve started a campaign called “Vet the Vote” to recruit veterans and their family members to work at polling places.
The organization estimates more than 130,000 poll workers have stopped serving over the past five years with the sharpest reduction coming during the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, most poll workers are 60 years or older and 25% are 70 and older. In 2018, 66% of election officials report they are having a difficult time to obtain enough poll workers. The organization believes that number is now much higher.
To face this crisis, they’ve put together www.vetthe.vote, a convenient and easy-to-follow website to help veterans and military family members sign up to become poll workers.
They have an ambitious goal: to recruit 100,000 veterans before November this year. The leadership skills veterans learn in the military will help them work elections, say organizers.
So far, more than 1,400 veterans, including me, have volunteered — enough to staff about 140 polling sites — but the biggest recruiting push is just starting with the NFL promoting the campaign at games.
“Poll workers are the unsung heroes of our democracy, but we are facing a national shortage that threatens the proper functioning of our elections,” says the organization.
By act of Congress, Sept. 11 is also “Patriot Day” and a National Day of Service and Remembrance. What could be more patriotic than helping our cities and towns fill much-needed poll worker positions this fall?
The enemies out there, both here and abroad, I can guarantee you, are watching, planting more distrust, and stoking fears. We can defeat them by actively participating in the election process and by validating and reaffirming our faith in the ballot box — our most cherished democratic institution.
Register to vote, then vote, and sign up to help others vote, too. That’s how we can counter the vicious cycle of decreasing confidence in our democracy and how we can secure our democratic future.
“Democracy runs on elections; elections run on poll workers,” says the organization.
That’s a strategy worthy of Sun Tzu. Or as he would say: prepare so well that an enemy will not engage you.
John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence and writes a monthly column. He can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.