Stealing The Election 101

Huntn

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Alternate Title: How the GOP Broke Bad and Abandoned the Oathes They Swore To Uphold, Serving The Corrupt Don of Their Party.

Republicans, I want to know how can you live with this? Are you still proud to be a Republican?

In reversal, GOP officials in key Michigan county certify ballot count after striking a compromise with Democrats


Trump supporters had urged Michigan’s majority-Republican state legislature to try to appoint its own electors if the state canvassing board, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, failed to certify the vote before the electoral college meets in December.
“If the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislator will select the electors. Huge win for @realDonaldTrump,” Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis tweeted Tuesday night after the initial Wayne County deadlock.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I feel the longer Trump keeps this up the less likely he would win reelection in 2024 if he decides to run. All somebody would have to do is point out how many people died, how many people lost their job, how many people lost their housing, and how many businesses went under in the months he did and said nothing other than he was the biggest suffering victim at that time.
 

Huntn

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Do you remember when politicians swore on the Bible to uphold our Constitution and actually meant it? Ladies and gentlemen those days are over as I present to you the Grand Old and Corrupt Party 2016. Think about this, the Republican party has elected enough crooks with distain for the Constitution to almost overthrow the Nation. They have already blocked a justified impeachment and multiple investigations.

And have you ever wondered why it is important who is appointing judges to the bench? Because for every honest judge, a secret partisan zealot can be dug up, and then when the crooks go to court, they’ll have backup from the bench. Just think of all these Trump lawsuit based on zero evidence were admitted and argued as events minus evidence. Would it really matter at that point?

Because as far as the Republican Party is concerned Democracy is dead in the USA, a system that can’t sustain their political agenda. Donny said it out loud, ease of voting means Republicans lose. The Head Conman may be stupid, but he’s an expert at cheating. Believe him and since 2016, a vote for the GOP is a vote to put a nail in the coffin of our Republic/Democracy.

And depending on how successful they are today, our democratic system is at some level of jeopardy at the hands of the Republican Party. First it was voter suppression using a variety of schemes, spreading voter disinformation. Then it was hypocritically changing rules so only they could place crony judges to the High Court. And now they have turned to disenfranchising entire cities, by wholesale throwing out votes for entire areas, just because they can, if we let them. Read about Wayne County, Michigan, and believe it! This is the first step towards turning the US into Russia’s Annex West.

What I mean by this is a country where laws are just window dressing to give the illusion of a democracy with order, where corruption is rampant, and really those laws have become vehicles for twisting any adverse situation to disenfranchise and dismiss hostile voters and maintain power.

Remember Russia used to be the GOP’s Enemy Number 1 until they were assimilated by Thump’s minions. Now, you don’t hear a peep about Russia from them. This is no coincidence.

At this point, the only thing that will matter to them, is when they or their fellow henchmen actually start losing their seats, their grasp on power which incidentally started in 2018 during the midterms.

Expect them to scream and shout at the sky about voter fraud, and course they will continue to pull every trick taught to them by Master to try to steal their seats back. A warning to stay vigilant and pay attention. Thank goodness election commissions are bipartisan. Can you imagine if the party in control of a State had exclusive access to the voting infastructure? If it was the GOP, and you’re not, you’d be fucked six ways to Sunday and I’ll argue even as a minion, you’ll be fucked when your civil rights go bye bye. 😬
 
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Mark

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i think there is still a huge story just waiting to be pieced together about the ideological strategy of linking:

R party platform + white nationalist agenda + Russia + National Rifle Association

i don't mean this in the context of the 2016 election.

i don't think that it was a trump specific aberration to use russian influence. he has been just the real estate developer waiting to build Trump Moscow.

i think it is clear that there is a more broadly based ideological alignment between all of the above pieces.

the result will be:

- the R party will continue to use foreign money and power to exert domestic influence. they have said repeatedly that there is nothing wrong in it.

- continued racist dogwhistles - but this time without trump to blame - coming from people like McCarthy & Scalise & Moscow Mitch making increasingly clearer and strident calls for Amerika for White Amerikans

- more and more attempts to go back to Jim Crow segregationist policies (don't say It can't happen here- remember that the newly appointed Three-Name-Supreme refused to say if Brown vs. Board of Eduction was correctly decided or not)

i think that recent good, factual narrative looks at modern current Russian religio-political society give an accurate compass direction the R party will use.

they don't see Russia as as failed state - they see it as a society that has god + white people in control, adding in USAmerican guns

America's evangelicals will love it !
 

Huntn

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i think there is still a huge story just waiting to be pieced together about the ideological strategy of linking:

R party platform + white nationalist agenda + Russia + National Rifle Association

i don't mean this in the context of the 2016 election.

i don't think that it was a trump specific aberration to use russian influence. he has been just the real estate developer waiting to build Trump Moscow.

i think it is clear that there is a more broadly based ideological alignment between all of the above pieces.

the result will be:

- the R party will continue to use foreign money and power to exert domestic influence. they have said repeatedly that there is nothing wrong in it.

- continued racist dogwhistles - but this time without trump to blame - coming from people like McCarthy & Scalise & Moscow Mitch making increasingly clearer and strident calls for Amerika for White Amerikans

- more and more attempts to go back to Jim Crow segregationist policies (don't say It can't happen here- remember that the newly appointed Three-Name-Supreme refused to say if Brown vs. Board of Eduction was correctly decided or not)

i think that recent good, factual narrative looks at modern current Russian religio-political society give an accurate compass direction the R party will use.

they don't see Russia as as failed state - they see it as a society that has god + white people in control, adding in USAmerican guns

America's evangelicals will love it !
As I recall a documented case of an Russia foreign intelligence officer infiltrating the NRA. 👀 And it’s too kind to say a choice to disenfranchise groups of voters not voting for you is just pragmatic. It’s racist, illegal, un-patriotic, and killing democracy and the Constitution, a document they swore to protect and defend. So they are oath breakers before the God they tell you they fear, but that’s just another sham, a con, to fool their suckers, isn't it?

Of note, the suckers are not much better as they cheer, while rationalizing every malfeasance, every slimy deed they support, and many tell you they are God fearing Christians who can’t seem to get that they just happened to fall in love with Beelzebub. We can pity them after their Political Party of choice has been neutered and is no longer threatening to dismantle our Republic as we know it,
 

SuperMatt

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If Jesus came to earth today, it would be a repeat of 2000 years ago. Evangelicals would be the Pharisees 2.0, crucifying him. They’d attack him for being an Arab, bleeding-heart liberal, communist. Just read the gospels and see if evangelicals bear ANY resemblance to the ideals Jesus put forward within.
 

lizkat

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I feel the longer Trump keeps this up the less likely he would win reelection in 2024 if he decides to run. All somebody would have to do is point out how many people died, how many people lost their job, how many people lost their housing, and how many businesses went under in the months he did and said nothing other than he was the biggest suffering victim at that time.


This little remark quoted below has been circulating around assorted social media circles from around November 6 and 7th, 2020... but it seems ever more pertinent the longer Trump and the GOP carry on the unconscionable balk at launching the formal transition period of an American president-elect.

"Tonight I finally understand why in many companies, when a manager fires an employee, HR or security escorts the terminated employee out of the building immediately."​

When an outgoing president does not observe norms of an outgoing administration, such as refraining from changes in policy or staffing assignments during a "transition" period, one begins to think more about some legislation to replace mere tradition that might be in the people's interest.

As for lame duck sessions of Congress, and lame duck agency maneuvers, I don't know what to think. These days the gridlock is pretty substantial yet still there can be mischief made if some crisis should occur, or when one is actually ongoing, which happens to be the case with at least covid-19 right now. Treasury chief Mnuchin's request to the Federal Reserve to "return unused portions" of a previous allocation by congress for purposes related to the ongoing covid recovery does come to mind.

I know the whole process including distribution of power is different in countries with a prime minister and parliamentary systems, but sometimes lately one can appreciate the swiftness with which such elections produce a more immediate change of government than we in the US experience...at least in 2020!
 

lizkat

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Good piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Pennsylvania election breakouts of mailed-in and in-person ballots, by party preference for one or the other method, overall for the state, and by county. Apologies if it's paywalled... some papers give a number of free reads and some don't. I put a few salient quotes.


Despite Trump’s baseless claims of fraud, the state GOP and Trump’s own campaign encouraged voting by mail. State Republicans are considering whether and how to better utilize mail voting in future elections.

“Republicans were caught napping with mail-in ballots,” said former state GOP chair Bob Gleason.

The partisan divide was so strong that it in some ways created parallel elections.

There was the in-person vote, with more than 4.1 million votes cast for Biden or Trump at polling places on Election Day. Trump won the majority of those ballots in every county except deep-blue Philadelphia, the most Democratic of the 67 counties. In all, he captured two-thirds of these in-person votes.

But then there were the mail ballots, with which nearly 2.6 million Pennsylvanians cast votes for Biden or Trump. Biden’s campaign specifically set out to capture the mail vote and ultimately won it in 63 counties, with Trump winning only in four very small, heavily Republican counties. And Biden’s margin was notably larger — roughly three-quarters of all mail ballots — and that helped contribute to his overall victory.

This chart shows how the in-person and mail vote was split between Biden and Trump statewide in Pennsylvania, where Trump won 66% of the in-person votes cast on Election Day but Biden won 77% of the mail ballots.

PA statewide results - a party split on mail-in v in person voting.jpg



Here's how Philadelphia turned out or mailed in their votes (the county is coterminous with the city).

PA election -  Philadelphia breakout of mail-in v in-person voting.jpg



Here's a snapshot of some of the rest of the counties. Really like that charting format.


PA vote 2020 partial by-county presentation.jpg
 

SuperMatt

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Trump won handily among people too dumb to protect themselves from a pandemic. As if the GOP didn’t already have enough of a problem with shrinking demographics.... The best way to prevent another Trump is to greatly improve education. Uneducated people who believe conspiracy theories over science, facts, and evidence LOVE a conspiracy theorist like Trump.
 

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For your amusement,

Far-right attorney L. Lin Wood, who represents right-wing accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and President Donald Trump, threatened on Saturday to sit out the two runoff elections in Georgia that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.

I think this is a Republiopathic strategery we can all support.
 

lizkat

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The two-county selective recount Trump is paying for in Wisconsin appears to be raising ire of election supervisors... because Trump campaign observers are being obstreperous in some cases and disruptive in others, possibly intending to slow the process and cause it to be thrown into a new round of lawsuits.


Tim Posnanski, a county election commissioner, told his fellow commissioners there appeared to be two Trump representatives at some tables where tabulators were counting ballots, violating rules that call for one observer from each campaign per table. Posnanski said some Trump representatives seemed to be posing as independents.

At one recount table, a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag simply because they were folded, election officials told the panel.

Posnanski called it “prima facie evidence of bad faith by the Trump campaign.” He added later: “I want to know what is going on and why there continues to be obstruction.”
 

Mark

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@lizkat

thanks for the link to the Pennsylvania election analysis of mail-in vs. in-person, by party and county.

the results show that biden won 3 out of every 4 of mail-in ballots in the state.
the article also mentions that trump may have soured his followers, for at least for the next few elections, on mail-in voting.

it strikes me that the above may be applicable for many other states as well.

that means that to reproduce in other states the remarkable result that Stacey Abrams achieved in Georgia, the future is mail-in ballots for the D party.

unrelated to the above is a quote from the Fintan O'Toole article you gave us the link for.

The election has shattered the Democratic illusion that demography is destiny. A far-right nativism can appeal to many voters (including those of Hispanic and African-American ethnicity) who were assumed to be part of an emerging left-of-center consensus.
 
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Huntn

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The two-county selective recount Trump is paying for in Wisconsin appears to be raising ire of election supervisors... because Trump campaign observers are being obstreperous in some cases and disruptive in others, possibly intending to slow the process and cause it to be thrown into a new round of lawsuits.


@lizkat

thanks for the link to the Pennsylvania election analysis of mail-in vs. in-person, by party and county.

the results show that biden won 3 outs of every 4 of mail-in ballots in the state.
the article also mentions that trump may have soured his followers, for at least for the next few elections, on mail-in voting.

it strikes me that the above may be applicable for many other states as well.

that means that to reproduce in other states the remarkable result that Stacey Abrams achieved in Georgia, the future is mail-in ballots for the D party.

unrelate to the above is a quote from the Fintan O'Toole article you gave us the link for.
Donald J Trump has brought his toilet to baptize as many as he can with his own special brand of Trump E. Coli.
 

lizkat

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the article also mentions that trump may have soured his followers, for at least for the next few elections, on mail-in voting.

Thanks for mentioning that... it has struck me as so typical of Trump's self-absorption. Certainly there are and were red-leaning states and Republican party officials within them who realized that extending absentee voting options during the coronavirus epidemic was above all a sensible thing to consider. But getting GOP-led legislatures to act upon it within time frames for the 2020 general election in November became extremely difficult once Trump seized upon and began braying on Twitter that making voting simpler would mean more Democrats would vote. Can't have that, eh?! Trump was trying to shift public focus: from making sure people could vote, to spreading the idea that honest Republicans vote in person and lying Democrats vote by mail...

The unfortunate thing for all of us, and so of course also for Republican candidates and their supporters: no matter if more Republicans might also have voted by mail than ever would have turned out in person to do so in 2020 --if they had all had the opportunity and encouragement to do so!-- Trump's allegations served his secondary (or perhaps primary) purpose in casting doubt ahead of time about the integrity of US elections. So he could cast himself as having overcome fraudulent efforts on the part of his enemies, had he won, or else he could do as he has been doing in event of a loss: fall back on saying "I told you so" regarding his false allegations that improving access to vote-by-mail translates to fraud... and that only Dems commit fraud.

Now the Republican Party is stuck with an uphill effort in red-leaning states to improve their own chances to raise voter turnout by making vote-by-mail a regularized option for more than citizens who are disabled or will be out of town or country on Election Day. Trump will be long gone and they'll be struggling with that project for decades.

And regardless of political affiliation, we'll all be struggling to regard our USA elections -- the vote-counting of which is decentralized, demonstrably well supervised and largely free of significant errors, never mind fraud-- as having integrity, despite built-in requirements and options for audits and recounts.

No winners at all on that score, thanks to a monumentally selfish loser, Donald Trump. Another footnote in his dismal official record.
 

lizkat

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And make no mistake, it is absolutely an attempted coup.


It strikes me as less an attempted coup than a sideshow for Trump's die-hard supporters, an attempt by him and by the GOP to maintain a polarized electorate in the run-up to a critical pair of Senate seat runoff elections in January.

So far seems to me Biden is playing it with a good ear to avoid overreaction. He's going ahead with his vetting of prospective Cabinet members to extent he can, and obtaining what he can in terms of briefings from former officials in those agencies, plus (possibly) some off-record more official current info... "there are ways"... and some of them might even be countenanced by current Republican officials.

Not sure why it's necessary for senior Republican leadership to play Trump now like he's half-God, half-toddler, but also not sure it's just a calculus based in sheer politics. There could be a fair bit the public does not yet know about how Trump and his circles of advisors and congressional overseers have actually governed during the past four years.

As for us out here: no need (yet) to play into Trump's desire to have massive demonstrations against him rise up all over metro areas in the US, with inevitable provocations to violence then possibly enabling his desire to declare a state of emergency and suspend a lot of the rights that currently remain in hand to defeat the staging of a soft coup under guise of court actions. The courts are not inclined to go along. It remains to be seen if the high court would play the game as Trump has figured. I see nothing to indicate that it would operate as a rubber stamp, starting with perfectly human resentment of such an assumption. Those recent appointments by Trump have all more than just "read" the constitution. There's less leeway in its texts for a "coup" than the Don imagines.

What Trump is trying to do now is so far past the idea of Americans consenting to their own governance that it makes him look not only pathetic but more ignorant than most of us observers may have imagined. On the other hand, it's entirely possible Trump is now mostly consumed about saving his ass and that of his family and certain enablers from legal troubles. T'is the season of expected pardons. As to his own, well, a dramatic chapter about that could yet be in the offing, who knows. But none of that changes outcome of this election. Biden will get sworn in on Jan 20, whether as #46 or #47 depending on the usefulness of an interim Prez Pence to Donald Trump.

Graham has overstepped the law in suggesting whole rafts of votes could just be thrown out to effectively install Trump as the winner of the 2020 election (and he should be at least censured if not charged with election interference in Georgia). At the very least he has outraged county and precinct level election workers all around the USA. That counts for something in terms of upward grass roots pressure on state lawmakers to keep their noses out of the upcoming electoral college vote. The legislature has no part in that unless a popular vote-count for President is literally tied, which is not the case in any state.

McConnell has led the GOP's more typically needle-threading way though the daylight between factions of the Republican base with his wordsmithed statements about a timely inauguration and peaceful transfer of power. I don't doubt for a moment that he means it, despite his clear avoidance of taking a stance on "who won" for as long as possible. Again, he doesn't care who lands in the oval office as long as he can maintain even a razor-thin margin in the Senate and so his majority leadership. In the end it's not going to be good optics that he didn't step up to tell Trump the GSA administrator needed to launch the transition. He's forgetting he might need Biden to help tamp down what McConnell sees as a threat by the progressive wing of the Dems in the House. Every day the delay of transition continues, the good will dwindles from what it was in the past peer and at least minimally collegial relationships of Biden and McConnell.

Timothy Snyder's right to point out concerns for both Dems and Republicans in that series of tweets. But again, I don't think an appropriate response to even a soft coup at the moment is massive demonstrations.

Trump hasn't even managed dictatorship 101's Rule One (despite his efforts to decry media as "fake news"): a would-be dictator must first effectively squash the free press. But in the USA, even conservative leaning mainstream outlets assume Biden has won and are on to talking about policy expectations, what should get baked into the market as Biden's Cabinet picks emerge and so forth. When media outlets openly and properly portray Kayleigh McEnany as a discredited propaganda artist not unlike "Baghdad Bob", well...

Start worrying when Trump brings a successful "prior restraint" order on the Fourth Estate's ongoing demonstration that the way to assert a right to publish is... well, to publish.
 

Mark

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i think that trump/steven miller/steve bannon/bill bar/moscow mitch have written the preliminary first draft edition of Dictatorship for Dummies which is still now only in pre-publication, while it is being refined by the Republican Party and the Supreme Court.
 
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