Does it matter? You miss every shot you don’t take. They’re just this side of declaring martial law anyway. No one is getting out of this all in one piece to begin with. If you’re going to go down regardless, you might as well go down trying to make the biggest difference you have available to you, and that’s voting in such overwhelming numbers that it scares them.

We’re going to die on our feet or die on our knees, and living isn’t an option unless we win. If the cause is hopeless, so be it. My ancestors survived hopeless for a couple hundred thousand years and so did yours. Make them pay for every inch.

Yes. Don’t let pessimism stop you from voting.

Fingers are already on the scale in tons of ways, like gerrymandering, the electoral college, etc. But they can’t gerrymander away an overwhelming 1 sided victory. Votes still count. Even if fingers are on the scale.

A few points:

• no, I don’t think it’s paranoid to strongly suspect that the fix is in for the fascists. It is, after all, a rather fundamental part of their plan. And the regime’s first spin in office demonstrated that they are absolutely willing to (at least attempt to) use extralegal and/or stochastic means to force change outside of (small d) democratic electoral mechanisms.
• none of that means you should give up on voting.
• i am honestly not sure what will actually happen on the day of the midterms. But I am planning on getting some freelance press photography credentials, taking the day off, and bopping around to see if I can catch any ICEatzgruppen (or Proud Boys or 3%ers or NSC131 fuckheads or whatever other paramilitary group) acting up and disseminating that content. I’m not convinced that it’s going to be that much of a shit show, but I am definitely extremely suspicious that one or more of the aforementioned groups may try to pull something, and if they do (while I have no illusions whatsoever about my personal ability to physically stop or prevent them from doing anything), I will do my best to make sure they’re unable to hide while they’re doing it, and that it becomes a matter of public record.

Yes.