aubiefifty 16,697 Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 This is what an American coup looks like David Faris , The Week•September 24, 2020 President Trump's campaign is reportedly in discussion with state and national Republicans to "bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority." At least that's the report from a terrifying article written by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic. While this scenario is somewhat far-fetched, we should be clear that what Gellman describes here is tantamount to a coup, a complete break with the constitutional order that would unquestionably precipitate large-scale unrest and potentially the crackup of the United States. Could it actually happen? Trump has been clumsily telegraphing this plot for months — not generally the smartest way to overthrow a government, which is best done in secret. It would unfold like this: The election result is closer than expected, and the ultimate winner remains unknown on election night, with millions of mail-in ballots to be counted in the decisive swing states. Trump declares victory when the (incomplete) election night count favors him, and then launches legal maneuvering to force states to stop counting mail-in ballots, papered over with some feeble pretext about the fraud the president himself keeps encouraging his own supporters to commit. Thanks to post-2010 gerrymandering, Republicans control both houses of the state legislature in nearly every contested state, and the president would presumably direct them to pass laws certifying Trump's slate of electors, even if updated counts show Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead. Et voila, a second Trump term. Mail balloting procedures are fully legal in all states that use them, so asking Republican legislatures either to stop the counting of ballots cast under agreed-upon procedures, or to certify a totally different winner than the people chose, is nothing short of extra-judicial election theft. It should not ultimately be a legal question. And in a healthy democracy, these efforts would not come before the courts at all nor should they be casually floated by a sitting president as the plan. Any attempt to do so is no different than having Biden and his vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris, abducted and dropped out of a helicopter. A slightly better ending for the two of them, I suppose, but the functional outcome for the rest of us would be identical: an election stolen brazenly by unapologetic authoritarians who would no longer have any check whatsoever on their rule. But the invidious plot that Republicans are hatching in plain sight has multiple legal problems. The first and most obvious is that state legislatures play no clear post-election role in certifying slates of electors from the states. While state electoral laws and procedures are written by legislatures, they cannot simply change the law without the cooperation of the governor. The critical swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin have Democratic governors who would not sign any such legislation, and many key battlegrounds also have Democratic secretaries of state. It is that chief election officer, a Democrat in all four states above plus Arizona, who administers the election and prepares the paperwork for the governor to send to Congress. This is not to say that they might not try anyway, but they would have minimal legal basis for the effort. If Biden and Harris are ahead in the vote, or even if Republican saboteurs maliciously tie everything up in court until the "safe harbor" deadline six days before the electors are supposed to meet in their respective state capitals on December 14th, those Democratic governors can simply certify the Biden/Harris slate. On the other hand, any scenario that involves a close election in Florida, with its Republican legislature and governor, is one where state Republicans could potentially rewrite the law or certify Trump's slate of electors even if the election results show Biden and Harris ahead. But that's not the end of the story. America's election process has one more truly Byzantine step. On January 6th — three days after the new Congress is sworn in (but two weeks before the new president and vice president take office) — the House and Senate gather in a joint session to count and certify the results sent by the states. Let's say it all comes down to Wisconsin, which Biden has won by 13,000 votes, and Democratic Governor Tony Evers sends the Biden/Harris slate to Congress to be counted. But the GOP state legislature attempts to certify (again: with no legal basis whatsoever!) the Trump/Pence slate and send their own electors to D.C. Or perhaps the GOP-dominated state supreme court orders the Trump/Pence electors be certified, but Evers refuses to comply and sends his own. Vice President Mike Pence will still be the president of the Senate no matter who wins the chamber in November, and the law requires him to open all certificates during the joint session — even those "purporting" to be certificates. (Don't get any ideas). So what happens? That could depend on who wins the House and Senate on November 3rd. There might be Democratic majorities seated in both the House and the Senate. Or, Democrats could hold the House but fall short in the Senate. Any scenario where Democrats lose the House and Senate is one where Trump has won convincingly without having to stage a coup, making this whole scenario moot. There will also likely be two Republican Senate vacancies in Georgia after potential runoffs on January 5th, complicating Republican efforts to certify fake election results should they keep the Senate. An objection can be made to any state's results with one vote in the Senate and one vote in the House, triggering full votes in both chambers on which slate to accept. Democrats in the Senate and House could vote jointly to certify the Biden/Harris electors, and that's probably the end of the story. But if control of Congress is split, presumably the House and Senate would vote for different slates. The text of the Electoral Count Act reads, "if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted." In the event that, in our example, Evers certifies one slate and the GOP-led Wisconsin Supreme Court rules for another, it could end up before the Supreme Court no matter what Congress does. Suffice it to say there is legitimate disagreement about how some of these rules would be interpreted and very little case law to offer guidance. Instead of gaming out every possible wild scenario, let's step back from this constitutional maze for a moment and consider first how unlikely this all is. It would require another achingly close election in a tipping point state, or perhaps more than one. Based on today's polling, that seems remote: The Five Thirty Eight average has Biden up 7.3 points and ahead comfortably in enough states to get to 270 Electoral Votes. The Trump team's glee at the prospect of stealing the election likely means that many more Democrats will vote in person and reduce the salience of mail balloting. Some of them will contract coronavirus, some may even get sick and die, but I guess that's the cost of winning an election in Trump's America. It would further require state election officials to count the ballots so slowly that right-wing legal chicanery might work, even though there are now very clear incentives to do it as fast as possible. It would require multiple courts to endorse some pretty nakedly dictatorial maneuvering, and even with a 6-3 Supreme Court majority, it is not clear that Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts in particular would go along with such an outrageous plan. It requires Republican state legislators to be willing to overturn the will of the electorate — to announce, in effect, that they have suspended democracy. It then requires Republicans to, at minimum, hold the Senate and in some scenarios, to recapture the House to carry this plot to completion. Is it unthinkable? Absolutely not. But the cost would be stratospheric. It is one thing if Trump wins the Electoral College while once again losing the popular vote, a nightmare outcome that would further erode the legitimacy of democracy and would likely lead to some half-serious talk about secession. But if Republicans halt the counting of perfectly valid ballots and have their gerrymandered state legislatures try to illegally pick GOP electors when it is obvious that Biden has won, and if congressional Republicans go along with this despicable madness, it will break this rapidly unraveling country in two. There will be massive protests in every city. Those half-serious calls for secession will instead be actual bills passed by legislatures in blue states from coast to coast. There will be general strikes and tax strikes and debt strikes. It will make our long summer of discontent look like Sunday Funday. And as much as many of us might fantasize about a velvet divorce, the reality of this heavily armed country tearing itself apart after nearly a year of isolation and sickness and fear would be violent and disastrous. Is this how Republicans want to win? By retaining control of a country that their own selfishness and fear of the electorate has shattered? Is there no national Republican willing to take a stand and repudiate the president's scheming? I think I know the answer to that question, unfortunately. And it means that Joe Biden and the Democrats need to have more than lawyers on retainer to fight court battles. They need to wargame the aftermath of a stolen election, and their play better not be to roll over and take it. The rest of us, meanwhile, can do little more than our part to make sure the election isn't close at all. Want more essential commentary and analysis like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
President Trump's campaign is reportedly in discussion with state and national Republicans to "bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority." At least that's the report from a terrifying article written by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic. While this scenario is somewhat far-fetched, we should be clear that what Gellman describes here is tantamount to a coup, a complete break with the constitutional order that would unquestionably precipitate large-scale unrest and potentially the crackup of the United States. Could it actually happen? Trump has been clumsily telegraphing this plot for months — not generally the smartest way to overthrow a government, which is best done in secret. It would unfold like this: The election result is closer than expected, and the ultimate winner remains unknown on election night, with millions of mail-in ballots to be counted in the decisive swing states. Trump declares victory when the (incomplete) election night count favors him, and then launches legal maneuvering to force states to stop counting mail-in ballots, papered over with some feeble pretext about the fraud the president himself keeps encouraging his own supporters to commit. Thanks to post-2010 gerrymandering, Republicans control both houses of the state legislature in nearly every contested state, and the president would presumably direct them to pass laws certifying Trump's slate of electors, even if updated counts show Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead. Et voila, a second Trump term. Mail balloting procedures are fully legal in all states that use them, so asking Republican legislatures either to stop the counting of ballots cast under agreed-upon procedures, or to certify a totally different winner than the people chose, is nothing short of extra-judicial election theft. It should not ultimately be a legal question. And in a healthy democracy, these efforts would not come before the courts at all nor should they be casually floated by a sitting president as the plan. Any attempt to do so is no different than having Biden and his vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris, abducted and dropped out of a helicopter. A slightly better ending for the two of them, I suppose, but the functional outcome for the rest of us would be identical: an election stolen brazenly by unapologetic authoritarians who would no longer have any check whatsoever on their rule. But the invidious plot that Republicans are hatching in plain sight has multiple legal problems. The first and most obvious is that state legislatures play no clear post-election role in certifying slates of electors from the states. While state electoral laws and procedures are written by legislatures, they cannot simply change the law without the cooperation of the governor. The critical swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin have Democratic governors who would not sign any such legislation, and many key battlegrounds also have Democratic secretaries of state. It is that chief election officer, a Democrat in all four states above plus Arizona, who administers the election and prepares the paperwork for the governor to send to Congress. This is not to say that they might not try anyway, but they would have minimal legal basis for the effort. If Biden and Harris are ahead in the vote, or even if Republican saboteurs maliciously tie everything up in court until the "safe harbor" deadline six days before the electors are supposed to meet in their respective state capitals on December 14th, those Democratic governors can simply certify the Biden/Harris slate. On the other hand, any scenario that involves a close election in Florida, with its Republican legislature and governor, is one where state Republicans could potentially rewrite the law or certify Trump's slate of electors even if the election results show Biden and Harris ahead. But that's not the end of the story. America's election process has one more truly Byzantine step. On January 6th — three days after the new Congress is sworn in (but two weeks before the new president and vice president take office) — the House and Senate gather in a joint session to count and certify the results sent by the states. Let's say it all comes down to Wisconsin, which Biden has won by 13,000 votes, and Democratic Governor Tony Evers sends the Biden/Harris slate to Congress to be counted. But the GOP state legislature attempts to certify (again: with no legal basis whatsoever!) the Trump/Pence slate and send their own electors to D.C. Or perhaps the GOP-dominated state supreme court orders the Trump/Pence electors be certified, but Evers refuses to comply and sends his own. Vice President Mike Pence will still be the president of the Senate no matter who wins the chamber in November, and the law requires him to open all certificates during the joint session — even those "purporting" to be certificates. (Don't get any ideas). So what happens? That could depend on who wins the House and Senate on November 3rd. There might be Democratic majorities seated in both the House and the Senate. Or, Democrats could hold the House but fall short in the Senate. Any scenario where Democrats lose the House and Senate is one where Trump has won convincingly without having to stage a coup, making this whole scenario moot. There will also likely be two Republican Senate vacancies in Georgia after potential runoffs on January 5th, complicating Republican efforts to certify fake election results should they keep the Senate. An objection can be made to any state's results with one vote in the Senate and one vote in the House, triggering full votes in both chambers on which slate to accept. Democrats in the Senate and House could vote jointly to certify the Biden/Harris electors, and that's probably the end of the story. But if control of Congress is split, presumably the House and Senate would vote for different slates. The text of the Electoral Count Act reads, "if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted." In the event that, in our example, Evers certifies one slate and the GOP-led Wisconsin Supreme Court rules for another, it could end up before the Supreme Court no matter what Congress does. Suffice it to say there is legitimate disagreement about how some of these rules would be interpreted and very little case law to offer guidance. Instead of gaming out every possible wild scenario, let's step back from this constitutional maze for a moment and consider first how unlikely this all is. It would require another achingly close election in a tipping point state, or perhaps more than one. Based on today's polling, that seems remote: The Five Thirty Eight average has Biden up 7.3 points and ahead comfortably in enough states to get to 270 Electoral Votes. The Trump team's glee at the prospect of stealing the election likely means that many more Democrats will vote in person and reduce the salience of mail balloting. Some of them will contract coronavirus, some may even get sick and die, but I guess that's the cost of winning an election in Trump's America. It would further require state election officials to count the ballots so slowly that right-wing legal chicanery might work, even though there are now very clear incentives to do it as fast as possible. It would require multiple courts to endorse some pretty nakedly dictatorial maneuvering, and even with a 6-3 Supreme Court majority, it is not clear that Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts in particular would go along with such an outrageous plan. It requires Republican state legislators to be willing to overturn the will of the electorate — to announce, in effect, that they have suspended democracy. It then requires Republicans to, at minimum, hold the Senate and in some scenarios, to recapture the House to carry this plot to completion. Is it unthinkable? Absolutely not. But the cost would be stratospheric. It is one thing if Trump wins the Electoral College while once again losing the popular vote, a nightmare outcome that would further erode the legitimacy of democracy and would likely lead to some half-serious talk about secession. But if Republicans halt the counting of perfectly valid ballots and have their gerrymandered state legislatures try to illegally pick GOP electors when it is obvious that Biden has won, and if congressional Republicans go along with this despicable madness, it will break this rapidly unraveling country in two. There will be massive protests in every city. Those half-serious calls for secession will instead be actual bills passed by legislatures in blue states from coast to coast. There will be general strikes and tax strikes and debt strikes. It will make our long summer of discontent look like Sunday Funday. And as much as many of us might fantasize about a velvet divorce, the reality of this heavily armed country tearing itself apart after nearly a year of isolation and sickness and fear would be violent and disastrous. Is this how Republicans want to win? By retaining control of a country that their own selfishness and fear of the electorate has shattered? Is there no national Republican willing to take a stand and repudiate the president's scheming? I think I know the answer to that question, unfortunately. And it means that Joe Biden and the Democrats need to have more than lawyers on retainer to fight court battles. They need to wargame the aftermath of a stolen election, and their play better not be to roll over and take it. The rest of us, meanwhile, can do little more than our part to make sure the election isn't close at all. Want more essential commentary and analysis like
President Trump's campaign is reportedly in discussion with state and national Republicans to "bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority." At least that's the report from a terrifying article written by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic. While this scenario is somewhat far-fetched, we should be clear that what Gellman describes here is tantamount to a coup, a complete break with the constitutional order that would unquestionably precipitate large-scale unrest and potentially the crackup of the United States. Could it actually happen? Trump has been clumsily telegraphing this plot for months — not generally the smartest way to overthrow a government, which is best done in secret. It would unfold like this: The election result is closer than expected, and the ultimate winner remains unknown on election night, with millions of mail-in ballots to be counted in the decisive swing states. Trump declares victory when the (incomplete) election night count favors him, and then launches legal maneuvering to force states to stop counting mail-in ballots, papered over with some feeble pretext about the fraud the president himself keeps encouraging his own supporters to commit. Thanks to post-2010 gerrymandering, Republicans control both houses of the state legislature in nearly every contested state, and the president would presumably direct them to pass laws certifying Trump's slate of electors, even if updated counts show Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead. Et voila, a second Trump term. Mail balloting procedures are fully legal in all states that use them, so asking Republican legislatures either to stop the counting of ballots cast under agreed-upon procedures, or to certify a totally different winner than the people chose, is nothing short of extra-judicial election theft. It should not ultimately be a legal question. And in a healthy democracy, these efforts would not come before the courts at all nor should they be casually floated by a sitting president as the plan. Any attempt to do so is no different than having Biden and his vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris, abducted and dropped out of a helicopter. A slightly better ending for the two of them, I suppose, but the functional outcome for the rest of us would be identical: an election stolen brazenly by unapologetic authoritarians who would no longer have any check whatsoever on their rule. But the invidious plot that Republicans are hatching in plain sight has multiple legal problems. The first and most obvious is that state legislatures play no clear post-election role in certifying slates of electors from the states. While state electoral laws and procedures are written by legislatures, they cannot simply change the law without the cooperation of the governor. The critical swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin have Democratic governors who would not sign any such legislation, and many key battlegrounds also have Democratic secretaries of state. It is that chief election officer, a Democrat in all four states above plus Arizona, who administers the election and prepares the paperwork for the governor to send to Congress. This is not to say that they might not try anyway, but they would have minimal legal basis for the effort. If Biden and Harris are ahead in the vote, or even if Republican saboteurs maliciously tie everything up in court until the "safe harbor" deadline six days before the electors are supposed to meet in their respective state capitals on December 14th, those Democratic governors can simply certify the Biden/Harris slate. On the other hand, any scenario that involves a close election in Florida, with its Republican legislature and governor, is one where state Republicans could potentially rewrite the law or certify Trump's slate of electors even if the election results show Biden and Harris ahead. But that's not the end of the story. America's election process has one more truly Byzantine step. On January 6th — three days after the new Congress is sworn in (but two weeks before the new president and vice president take office) — the House and Senate gather in a joint session to count and certify the results sent by the states. Let's say it all comes down to Wisconsin, which Biden has won by 13,000 votes, and Democratic Governor Tony Evers sends the Biden/Harris slate to Congress to be counted. But the GOP state legislature attempts to certify (again: with no legal basis whatsoever!) the Trump/Pence slate and send their own electors to D.C. Or perhaps the GOP-dominated state supreme court orders the Trump/Pence electors be certified, but Evers refuses to comply and sends his own. Vice President Mike Pence will still be the president of the Senate no matter who wins the chamber in November, and the law requires him to open all certificates during the joint session — even those "purporting" to be certificates. (Don't get any ideas). So what happens? That could depend on who wins the House and Senate on November 3rd. There might be Democratic majorities seated in both the House and the Senate. Or, Democrats could hold the House but fall short in the Senate. Any scenario where Democrats lose the House and Senate is one where Trump has won convincingly without having to stage a coup, making this whole scenario moot. There will also likely be two Republican Senate vacancies in Georgia after potential runoffs on January 5th, complicating Republican efforts to certify fake election results should they keep the Senate. An objection can be made to any state's results with one vote in the Senate and one vote in the House, triggering full votes in both chambers on which slate to accept. Democrats in the Senate and House could vote jointly to certify the Biden/Harris electors, and that's probably the end of the story. But if control of Congress is split, presumably the House and Senate would vote for different slates. The text of the Electoral Count Act reads, "if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted." In the event that, in our example, Evers certifies one slate and the GOP-led Wisconsin Supreme Court rules for another, it could end up before the Supreme Court no matter what Congress does. Suffice it to say there is legitimate disagreement about how some of these rules would be interpreted and very little case law to offer guidance. Instead of gaming out every possible wild scenario, let's step back from this constitutional maze for a moment and consider first how unlikely this all is. It would require another achingly close election in a tipping point state, or perhaps more than one. Based on today's polling, that seems remote: The Five Thirty Eight average has Biden up 7.3 points and ahead comfortably in enough states to get to 270 Electoral Votes. The Trump team's glee at the prospect of stealing the election likely means that many more Democrats will vote in person and reduce the salience of mail balloting. Some of them will contract coronavirus, some may even get sick and die, but I guess that's the cost of winning an election in Trump's America. It would further require state election officials to count the ballots so slowly that right-wing legal chicanery might work, even though there are now very clear incentives to do it as fast as possible. It would require multiple courts to endorse some pretty nakedly dictatorial maneuvering, and even with a 6-3 Supreme Court majority, it is not clear that Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts in particular would go along with such an outrageous plan. It requires Republican state legislators to be willing to overturn the will of the electorate — to announce, in effect, that they have suspended democracy. It then requires Republicans to, at minimum, hold the Senate and in some scenarios, to recapture the House to carry this plot to completion. Is it unthinkable? Absolutely not. But the cost would be stratospheric. It is one thing if Trump wins the Electoral College while once again losing the popular vote, a nightmare outcome that would further erode the legitimacy of democracy and would likely lead to some half-serious talk about secession. But if Republicans halt the counting of perfectly valid ballots and have their gerrymandered state legislatures try to illegally pick GOP electors when it is obvious that Biden has won, and if congressional Republicans go along with this despicable madness, it will break this rapidly unraveling country in two. There will be massive protests in every city. Those half-serious calls for secession will instead be actual bills passed by legislatures in blue states from coast to coast. There will be general strikes and tax strikes and debt strikes. It will make our long summer of discontent look like Sunday Funday. And as much as many of us might fantasize about a velvet divorce, the reality of this heavily armed country tearing itself apart after nearly a year of isolation and sickness and fear would be violent and disastrous. Is this how Republicans want to win? By retaining control of a country that their own selfishness and fear of the electorate has shattered? Is there no national Republican willing to take a stand and repudiate the president's scheming? I think I know the answer to that question, unfortunately. And it means that Joe Biden and the Democrats need to have more than lawyers on retainer to fight court battles. They need to wargame the aftermath of a stolen election, and their play better not be to roll over and take it. The rest of us, meanwhile, can do little more than our part to make sure the election isn't close at all. Want more essential commentary and analysis like
Mikey 16,546 Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 4 minutes ago, aubiefifty said: This is what an American coup looks like Just how gullible are you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aubiefifty 16,697 Posted September 25, 2020 Author Share Posted September 25, 2020 2 minutes ago, Mikey said: Just how gullible are you? not as gullible......you voted for him. and knowing he is a piece of trash you still take up for him. and will vote for him again. you people are putting trump ahead of the country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey 16,546 Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 3 minutes ago, aubiefifty said: not as gullible......you voted for him. and knowing he is a piece of trash you still take up for him. and will vote for him again. you people are putting trump ahead of the country. I would argue that you anti-Trumpers are putting your hatred ahead of the country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,352 Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 Intercepted GOP robocalls expose how Trump hopes to corrupt the election Opinion by Greg Sargent Columnist September 25, 2020 At first glance, this might look like a glaring disconnect: We’re now learning that two of President Trump’s most devoted propagandists are making new efforts to encourage his supporters to vote by mail — even as Trump continues to push the line that mail balloting is irredeemably riddled with fraud. But in this disconnect you can see exactly how Trump hopes his endgame plays out. Indeed, it exposes Trump’s strategy for corrupting the election with unsettling clarity. Republicans have unleashed a new wave of robocalls that urge Trump voters to vote by absentee ballot in the election, and CNN obtained audio. They were recorded by Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law. In the calls, they tell voters that vote-by-mail may be fraudulent, but absentee voting is not. “President Trump needs you to join him in voting absentee this year,” says Guilfoyle, adding that “absentee voting is safe, secure and supported by President Trump.” But, she adds, vote-by-mail is “filled with fraud, abuse and mistakes.” Similarly, on her robocall, Lara Trump claims that vote-by-mail is rife with fraud, but also stresses that Trump supports absentee voting, because it is “safe and secure.” The distinction between absentee voting and vote-by-mail is a fiction. The idea is supposed to be that the latter has far fewer protections, but the two modes of voting are the same, and mail voting in general benefits from an array of safeguards against fraud. For comic relief, note that this shows Trump’s strategy of attacking vote-by-mail is in one sense backfiring — as Republicans worried might happen — by dissuading his own voters from using it. Guilfoyle deals with this by claiming on her robocall that the “radical left” doesn’t want Trump voters to use absentee balloting. “Democrats want to scare you away from voting absentee," Guilfoyle says. Never mind all that stuff Trump keeps saying. You should vote by mail anyway, because we’re telling you the left and Democrats oppose it! But this raises the bigger question: If Trump keeps saying that vote-by-mail is fraudulent, even as his operatives urge supporters to use it by relying on this fake distinction with absentee voting, doesn’t this mean any efforts to contest and invalidate mail ballots could end up tossing out some of his own votes? This is where Trump’s corrupt scheme comes into full view. How this scheme will work It turns on a basic trick: In the post-Election Day endgame, the Trump campaign and GOP lawyers will only contest mail ballots in states where he’s on track to lose, pending the counting of large numbers of mail ballots, and where invalidating them would make it more likely that he prevails. Meanwhile, in states that are called for Trump, or where it’s obvious he’s on track to winning comfortably, any such efforts will be irrelevant. Imagine that in Pennsylvania, Trump is very narrowly ahead in the Election Day count, with large numbers of mail ballots left to be counted over coming days or weeks. This is plausible — the new Fox News poll of Pennsylvania finds far larger percentages of Joe Biden supporters plan to vote by mail there. Here, Trump will already be ahead in the count, so invalidating mail votes can only preserve his lead, because far larger percentages of those outstanding votes will be for Biden. So even if some Trump supporters’ mail ballots get tossed along with Biden votes, it’s unlikely to harm him. And so, in a scenario like this, you’ll see the Trump campaign and Republicans vigorously contest those outstanding ballots in court, in numerous ways. As election law expert Rick Hasen notes, Republicans can try to get large classes of mailed ballots tossed out after the election on numerous procedural grounds, potentially taking one of these challenges all the way to the Supreme Court. Trump has openly declared he’s expecting the court — and his new nominee — to rule his way. Any such effort will not matter in states where Trump wins. So telling his supporters to vote by mail in them can only help him. “Trump and Republicans are likely to only attack mail voting in court in places where it could tip the results to Trump,” Hasen tells me, “while leaving the results in other states with their mail-in counts standing.” No end to the corruption It’s true that Republicans are working right now in many states both to get rid of measures that will make mail voting easier and to install changes that will make it easier to invalidate ballots. Those theoretically could impact Trump supporters who want to vote by mail, too. But because we already know that nationally, Democrats are going to vote by mail in far larger numbers, such efforts will disproportionately harm them, helping Trump’s chances. Here’s the big point that really matters: By telling Trump voters to vote absentee, and by telling them that it’s “safe” and “secure,” Trump’s propagandists are badly undercutting his ongoing claim that such voting is irredeemably riddled with fraud and cannot render a legitimate outcome. Yet they are simultaneously using those same claims about fraud to lay the groundwork to contest enormous numbers of mail ballots in places where invalidating as many legally cast votes as possible might tip close states to Trump. You can’t ask for a clearer picture than that of how corrupt this whole enterprise is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/25/intercepted-gop-robocalls-expose-how-trump-hopes-corrupt-election/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronMan70 3,277 Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 2 hours ago, Mikey said: Just how gullible are you? 2 hours ago, aubiefifty said: not as gullible......you voted for him. and knowing he is a piece of trash you still take up for him. and will vote for him again. you people are putting trump ahead of the country. You and your side have aligned yourselves with anarchists, mobs, looters, arsonists, left wing brown shirts, corrupt former DOJ/FBI officials as you echoed one baseless charge after another from them. You and your side have been bitching, whining, moaning for 4 years because you didn't get your way and you think the other side is the one not putting the country first ? You have to be kidding with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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