6 The Hampton Roads Messenger Get Ballot


FROM PAGE 1


not fund the postal service to facilitate the timely processing of mail ballots. He has continuously associated mail voting with fraud, although nine states have had universal mail voting for years. And finally, he just put it out there, plain and simple. mail


He thinks voting favors Democrats, and


he doesn’t want to do Democrats any favors. So instead, his postal chief is removing mailboxes and shutting down sorting machines. And now the USPS has warned election officials in most states that ballots mailed before election might not arrive in time to be counted.


The 45th President is setting up a situation where the November election can be contested. He’s doing it because he has already stacked the Supreme Court in his favor. He has no interest in maximizing the number of people voting but minimizing that number. He’s not interested in democracy, but in dictatorship. If someone told you they were to


planning rob you, you'd take


precautions. Trump has declared that he intends to steal this election. We can't let him do it.


Not only must


the Biden-Harris ticket beat him, but they must beat him like a drum, so decisively that there is no doubt that he has got to go. Here’s what you must do. 1. Voting procedures vary by city Make sure you know the


and state.


rules. Some places send all registered voters mail-in ballots, while others require you to request an absentee ballot. Find your local Bureau online, or call your favorite local elected to gt the information.


2. Return your ballot in the shortly


after you get it. If you put your ballot in the mail on election day November 3, it may not be counted. Some places will have drop boxes for ballots, and others will allow you to drop off your ballot.


Just get your ballot back by whatever means necessary.


3. If you prefer to vote in person, or if you've neglected to mail your absentee ballot, make sure you know where your polling place is. Because of the coronavirus, some cities are reducing the number of available polling places, and the site where you usually vote may be closed. 4. It is also possible to vote early


in person. Check with your Board of Elections about when and where you might vote early. 5. .Be patient.


Conducting an


election amidst a pandemic is new for us, and some election procedures have been unnecessarily politicized. You may encounter obstacles if you choose to vote in person. Document any hurdles you have to clear, get names of anyone who denied you the right to vote, and complain if the matter is not resolved.


for Civil Rights Under Law runs a hotline on election day. Their number is 866-OURVOTE, or 866-6878683. 6. Spread the word. Reach out to


your circle to share information about voting and encourage your friends and colleagues to vote. 7. Because of the coronavirus, to be gone by


which is not likely


November, there will be fewer gatherings to discuss the vote. Be on the lookout for zoom town halls and other meetings that civic organizations are holding.


Encourage your church,


your sorority, or your local NCNW section to consider virtual town halls. It is in some people's interest to suppress the vote, and we've seen enough of it these past few years. It is your absolute right


to exercise


the right to vote, even if some make it difficult. We don't have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar or translate a passage of the Constitution into Latin, as our foremothers did.


Volume 14 Number 12


Trump Speech of effective


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“We developed a wide array treatments, including a


powerful antibody treatment known as convalescent plasma,” he said. “You saw that on Sunday night when we announced it, that will save thousands and thousands of lives.”


In fact, there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs to treat COVID-19, although physicians can provide supportive care and two drugs have shown benefits in randomized controlled


trials in


particular patients. An antiviral


drug, remdesivir, The Lawyer's Committee


was found to reduce the recovery time, compared with a placebo, in patients who required supplemental oxygen but were not ventilated. The steroid dexamethasone was shown in a U.K. trial to improve survival, but only in patients who were sick enough to need supplemental oxygen.


Contrary to the president’s


claim, convalescent plasma has not yet been shown to be beneficial in a randomized controlled trial, although observational studies suggest it may reduce mortality.


As we have written, Trump


made the same error during an Aug. 23 briefing announcing that the FDA was issuing an emergency use authorization for the treatment. Citing the results from a Mayo Clinic study, Trump incorrectly


said that plasma


had been “proven to reduce mortality by 35%” — even though those results did not come from a randomized controlled trial and did not compare plasma against a placebo.


Mortality: It


is in their honor and the memory of Congressman John Lewis that we vote.


been preoccupied with the U.S.’s COVID-19 mortality


Trump has long statistics and


how they compare with other nations. But as he has done in the past, he overstated how well the U.S. has done to prevent deaths from the coronavirus.


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“The United States has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the world,” he said, referring to the proportion of people who die out of those who are known to be infected. “The European Union’s case fatality rate is nearly three times higher than ours. But you don’t hear that, they don’t write about that, they don’t want to write about that, they don’t want you to know those things.”


“Altogether, the nations of


Europe have experienced a 30% greater increase in excess mortality than the United States,” he continued. “Think of that.”


Our World in Data shows that the


European Union’s case fatality rate is 7.8%, which is about 2.5 times higher than the U.S.’s 3.1% rate. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. is leading the world.


Although it’s not known how


the president is defining a “major country,” the U.S. has the 11th highest case fatality rate out of the 20 countries currently most affected by COVID-19, and the 51st highest case fatality rate out of 169 countries, according to Johns Hopkins University.


That’s better than many European countries, but worse than Austria, Greece,


Norway, Australia, South


Africa, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and Israel.


Notably, the U.S. fares much worse on deaths per capita, since the case fatality rate depends on testing


and favors countries such as the U.S. that were hit later and have ongoing pandemics.


Trump is also wrong that Europe has 30% more excess mortality than the U.S. He has said this before using other percentages — first it was 40%, then 33% — but even with the further lowered number, it’s still groundless.


As we wrote, the latest figures


for estimates of excess mortality may show that Europe has more excess deaths in total, but when accounting for population or how much mortality is elevated above normal, it’s the U.S. — not Europe — that does worse.


In our analysis using data from the Human Mortality Database, we found U.S. mortality to be 13.3% higher than normal for the year, versus 10.1% for Europe.


Experts also told us that comparing the U.S. to Europe on excess mortality was both premature and misguided, given that the virus arrived in America later, the U.S. has a younger, less dense population and the U.S. epidemic is still ongoing.


University of Oxford economists


Janine Aron and John Muellbauer said a better comparison would be to pit the Northeastern U.S. against the worst-affected European countries. In their analysis of that matchup, they found the U.S. to be “substantially worse” than Europe on all plausible measures of excess mortality.


Military, Foreign Affairs


ISIS caliphate: Trump took too much credit for recapturing territory controlled by ISIS in Syria and Iraq when he said “we obliterated 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”


As we have written before,


the analytics and consultancy firm IHS Markit estimated that the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria covered about 35,000 square miles near its height in January 2015. By the time Trump took office in January 2017, ISIS-controlled territory had shrunk to about 23,300 square miles.


At the end of Trump’s first year in


office, Brett McGurk, who at the time was the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS, said that about 98% of the land had been recaptured by coalition forces. “And significantly,” McGurk said, “50 percent of all the territory that ISIS has lost, they have lost in the last 11 months, since January.”


So, the Trump administration was


clearly not responsible for taking back all of the ISIS-controlled territory.


Military spending rebuilding and pay:


As he has in the past, the president falsely claimed that his administration has “spent nearly $2.5 trillion on completely


our military,


which was very badly depleted when I took office.”


Trump’s $2.5 trillion figure roughly refers to the total amount of Defense Department budgets from 2017


to 2020 — which actually


totaled $2.9 trillion in inflation- adjusted dollars. Procurement of new equipment made up 20.3% of those 2017-2020 defense budgets, or $590.7 billion. That’s 5.8% lower than the 2009-2012 budgets, which covered President Barack Obama’s first term in office.


Trump also boasted, once again,


about providing “three separate pay raises for our great warriors” in


September 2020


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