If you're feeling angry, apathetic or lazy as Election Day approaches, just vote by mail

Donald J. Trump has claimed to be a self-made billionaire, but that's total fiction, according to a New York Times investigation, and cartoonist Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press Gazette in Wisconsin illustrates the fraud. 

IN HACKENSACK, YOU CAN REJECT

 $165M SCHOOL PLAN FROM HOME

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- If you are one of the Democrats angered by the bitter partisan battle that ended with Brett Kavanaugh getting a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, the solution is as close as your mailbox.

All you have to do to vote on Nov. 6 -- in a bid to move Congress to the left -- is apply for a mail-in ballot, fill it out in the comfort of your home and send it in.

The Bergen County clerk sent out forms to register to vote, as well as applications for a mail-in ballot, so you no longer have an excuse to remain on the sidelines, as millions of apathetic or lazy Democrats did in the 2016 presidential election.

If Democrats take control of Congress, there is a real possibility we could see the impeachments of both President Trump and Associate Justice Kavanaugh in 2019.

With a mail-in ballot, you can really procrastinate: 

"Mail-in ballots that bear a postmark date of November 6, 2018, which are received by the County Board of Elections by 8:00 p.m. on November 8, 2018, shall be considered timely submitted," according to an insert in my mail-in ballot.

By the way, you'll need two stamps to mail back the ballot, but you also can hand carry it to the Bergen County Administration Building in Hackensack. 

$165M referendum

Meanwhile, Hackensack's notoriously apathetic residents also can use a mail-in ballot to reject a Board of Education referendum to spend a total of $165.1 million on a new junior high school and existing schools.

If approved, local property taxes surely will go up; about 45% of your taxes already go to support the schools.

School board President Lara L. Rodriguez has mentioned Jan. 22, 2019, as a possible date for Hackensack residents to vote on the proposal -- clearly a strategy to use winter weather keep the vote down.

Well, don't let the school board get away with it: Vote against the plan by mail-in ballot.

Read: Enrollment hike of 120 students

 doesn't justify $165M plan

Ballot deadlines

The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot by mail is "not less than 7 days prior to an election."

In person, you can apply "up to 3 p.m. on the day before the election."

The voter-registration deadline is 21 days before the Nov. 6 election; this year that's Oct. 16.

And if you received a mail-in ballot in the 2016 presidential election, county election officials were obligated to send you a mail-in ballot for the 2018 General Election on Nov. 6.

And you'll get a mail-in ballot for all future elections, unless your notify the officials in writing you do not want to receive them.

The mail-in ballot, instructions and inserts for the mid-term elections for Congress -- less than a month away -- are in three languages, English, Spanish and Korean. Plus, the Nov. 6 ballot has statewide and Hackensack public questions.

Democrats must vote a straight party line, if they hope to gain control of Congress.

If approved, the first public question would authorize the state to issue $500 million in bonds to provide grants to schools, school districts and county colleges for technical education, school security and water infrastructure improvements. The second public question would set up a Municipal Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund in Hackensack.

Democrats must shed their apathy, get off the sidelines and vote out Trump loyalists

"The Big Lie" is from cartoonist Bill Day, who lampoons the false and misleading statements that have defined the presidency of Donald J. Trump, including his repeated claim there was "no collusion" with the Russians before the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Find more cartoons at Cagle.com. 

Bob Englehart, onetime cartoonist for the Hartford Courant, shows a Trump supporter handing out "VOTE DEMOCRAT" fliers because "I just love America more!" than "I love Trump."

IF YOU VOTE BY MAIL IN N.J, 

DECISION DAY IS HERE

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- My mail-in ballot for the Nov. 6 midterm elections for Congress has arrived, and I'll be voting a straight Democratic line.

My hope -- and the hope of millions of other Americans -- is that we can swing control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to the Democratic Party, and start fixing all the damage to our democracy and the division we've seen since President Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017.

"Since the beginning of the Trump administration, it seems there has been a new crisis roiling our nation nearly every day," Columnist Michelle Alexander writes in today's New York Times: 

"A new, jaw-dropping allegation of corruption, a new wave of repression at the border, another nod to white nationalism or blatant misogyny, another attack on basic civil rights, freedom of the press or truth itself.

"Invariably, these disturbing events are punctuated by Trump's predictable yet repugnant Twitter rants."

This is the illustration that ran with The Times' investigation, "The Plot to Subvert an Election." 

'The Russia story so far'

Last week, The Times published "The Plot to Subvert an Election," an investigation that unravels "the Russia story so far."

"For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 attack -- hacked emails, social media fraud, suspected spies -- and President Trump's claims that it's all a hoax. The Times explores what we know and what it means."

"The Russians carried out a landmark intervention that will be examined for decades to come," The Times said: 

"Acting on the personal animus of" Russian President Vladimir V. Putin..., "well-connected Russians worked aggressively to recruit or influence people inside the Trump campaign.

"And there is a plausible case that ... Putin succeeded in delivering the presidency to his admirer ... Trump, though it cannot be proved or disapproved."

Wear a wire?

The Times followed with another bombshell, reporting that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing the special counsel's investigation, suggested last year that he should secretly record Trump to expose the administration's chaos, and discussed invoking the 25th amendment to remove the president from office.

Predictably, Rosenstein denied the story, and competing newspapers quoted sources who claimed he was being sarcastic.

Lampooning President Trump's lack of empathy for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. cartoonist Bruce Plante of the Tulsa World has the insensitive lout telling two people in water up to their neck in the Carolinas to "have a good time."

Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons of the Arizona Daily Star examines how men on a U.S. Senate committee are treating Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accuses Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers. "Why should we believe any woman?" one says. "Why ruin a good man?" says another. "Speed it up," says a third. "We're on a schedule."