Voter suppresion/"stealing the election" megathread

[HisGrace]

Trump is blatantly in Mussolini or Franco territory at this point. The fact that he will likely fail does not morally defend him from trying to seize power anyway after he lost a democratic election. I normally advocate a "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" standard when someone dies but I will have no issues with people celebrating or defacing his grave when he does. Unelected heads of state who just rule by force rather than the consent of the governed are human garbage and that
is what Trump is trying to be. This is the worst thing he has yet done.

I commented earlier that the fact that most conservatives are on board with this proves they would have actually been loyalists despite the "patriot" rhetoric. You want a king, move to Saudi Arabia.

[HisGrace]

I wonder if Republicans realize they're participating in the destruction of democracy, if they just don't care, or if they think the ends justify the means.

Imagine if Barack Obama had lost his bid for re-election to Romney across several states, and President Obama blamed his loss purely on fraud and said he actually won, and Democratic legislatures began talking about how to overturn the election results, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was publicly saying they will be ready for Obama's second term. Liberal media took his side, saying there was fraud despite no evidence. The entire Democratic base supported the halting of vote counting in conservative areas. Nearly every Democratic official refused to acknowledge defeat, and refused to support transition to the rightful winner.

It's horrifying, and this is how democracies fall.

No state has yet certified its election results.  The president will not be elected until the votes of the electoral college are transmitted to Congress on December 14.  This is what our system is.

Trump is 100% within his rights to call into question irregularities, weigh his legal options, and have his day in court.  This is not "stealing the election," "going Mussolini" or any of the other gross superlatives used in this thread.  This is the president using the legal avenues available to him (as they would be to anyone else) to challenge the results, which is something Democrats should know all about.

Twenty years ago, VP Gore exhausted his legal options before conceding the election 36 days after the final votes were cast.  After the media "called" the race for Bush in 2004, Democrats in Congress baselessly objected to the results in Ohio (first time since 1876 had this happened.)  In 2016, many states saw recounts and legal challenges concerning the presidential election.  Like that year, it looks like the decisive states in 2020 will be decided by less than 1%.

If any irregularities occurred of substantially-enough size to affect the national result, then any well-intentioned American should want them brought to light.  If Democrats feel like they have not occurred, then they should not fear the extra scrutiny.  The projections and commentary of the press are irrelevant here; we have the tools and institutions needed to address any concerns transparently.   

The 2000 election was decided by a few hundred votes and there were some very badly designed ballots in Florida that made it ambiguous who someone intended to vote for. For the record, I legally agree with the Bush v. Gore court decision but it was still a matter that was capable of dispute. This is not. Changing the outcome of the election would require nearly 100k votes to be swung by fraud, over several states, many of which are controlled by Republicans. Trump is suing in Michigan where he lost by more than 100k alone. These are extraordinary claims and doctored Project Veritas videos and randos with GoFundMe pages do not constitute extraordinary evidence.

The thing that prompted my comment was Trump's recent lawsuit in Pennsylvania for all mail in voting to be retroactively declared unconstitutional. If he and his campaign really thought that they could have sued before the election. The reason they didn't is that the mail in voter could have just shown up in person and voted for Biden. Trump wants to retroactively change the law to toss out votes that were legally cast according to the laws on election day. He knows he lost and is just trying to steal it, there is no genuine dispute about the count. On election night Trump demanded counting stop like 30% of the way in and wanted to be immediately declared the winner. Again, the fact that he tried and failed is not a defense. That makes it clear he's not interested in an accurate count, he just wants to do anything to win.

[HisGrace]

These lawsuits are completely pointless. They're just trying to protract the process so they can say "look how many lawsuits we filed!" and create fake doubt. Filing a lawsuit and then asking for it to be dismissed a few days later after it received some news coverage is as frivolous as it gets. Everyone should stop pretending the election result is "disputed" in any serious way.

[HisGrace]

Lawsuit filed in Green Bay to invalidate all votes in Milwaukee, Dane and Menominee counties due to fraud and the mail in votes “overwhelming” election officials. Supposedly a lot of secret witnesses. My eyes can’t roll back any further.

Just to clarify for everyone, this is not suing to toss out alleged fraudulent votes, he just want votes in entire counties to not be counted. This is outright trying to steal the election, there is no legitimate grievance here.

[HisGrace]

https://twitter.com/mateagold/status/1329573937995542536

We knew Shinkle would probably vote against certification. The other republican is a Rick Snyder appointment though, so I hope he's atleast somewhat less Trumpy.

Sounds like MI is going down the "no certification, send to house/let state legislature decide" route.

Probably not. There are three ways this can go before the state legislature could possibly get involved.

Litigation - Force the state board to certify or face consequences.

Executive power - Whitmer has the authority to remove a State board member and replace them with a temporary pick.

Secretary of State - The Bureau of Elections, run by the SoS, can certify.

It's a Dem SOS, they should just do this immediately if these clowns pull any crap. There's a deadline to certify and there is absolutely no reason not to outside of baseless moon landing tier conspiracy theories on Twitter.

[HisGrace]

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1329490975266398210

This is the official GOP account....

If anyone was still doubting that the GOP is actually pursuing a civil war here.

People who keep thinking a civil war will result don't know what a war actually is.

Not a full scale war like our last one, but if Trump managed to seize power by force after losing the election I could absolutely imagine a California secession crisis and a Paris 68 type situation in DC plus general riots all over the country that would make the Floyd stuff this summer look like nothing. Not a road anybody should want to go down. 

[HisGrace]

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1329490975266398210

This is the official GOP account....

If anyone was still doubting that the GOP is actually pursuing a civil war here.

People who keep thinking a civil war will result don't know what a war actually is.

Not a full scale war like our last one, but if Trump managed to seize power by force after losing the election I could absolutely imagine a California secession crisis and a Paris 68 type situation in DC plus general riots all over the country that would make the Floyd stuff this summer look like nothing. Not a road anybody should want to go down. 

With the exception of Georgia, all the blue states in the last election are directly connected to Canada.  All three regions could secede, join Canada and leave Trump country in abject poverty (as they barely contribute to the economy).

Well, that's the kind of thing I think is a bit OTT. Secession is a big pill to swallow and while something like this would certainly generate some support for it the support for it now is basically nill so it's still going to be a minority of people. The reason I viewed California as a possibility is it's the only state that actually has a serious secession movement and some people who support it. I could imagine California secession becoming an issue in like 50 years even if things stay "normal" so something like this would obviously accelerate the time table.

Plus, Canada is not going to alienate the US and theoretically even risk war by taking in seceding states. They'd view it as a US internal conflict and stay out of it.

[HisGrace]

Trump retweet:

https://twitter.com/MattBraynard/status/1333912074741833728

Every lawsuit he's filed has been rejected and the main swing states have all been certified. These people are such babies.

[HisGrace]

Nobody (even Fox when I took a gander at their front page) is paying any attention to this Wisconsin lawsuit. The result has already been certified.

[HisGrace]

An election turning out differently than the prior one is not evidence of fraud and that's all their argument has been reduced to at this point. I don't recall any of these concerns being raised by anyone on the right last time when Clinton considerably underperformed Obama. You have to have some kind of diagnosable intellectual disability to actually take this seriously.

[HisGrace]

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1336711592700825600

Then get a new job if you can't take the heat. I'm so tired of these elected officials being so afraid of a bunch of stupid rednecks.

[HisGrace]

I've mostly been being snarky and talking about Trump's character, but let's review how ridiculous this whole thing was. The right makes a big deal about federalism/states rights and in recent years has put a lot of effort into defending the EC. States have the right to allocate their electors however they choose. The four states in the suit allocate them to the winner of the PV (Biden). That is absolutely none of Texas's business, one state can't dictate to another how to run its election any more than the federal government can (with a few exceptions for the Feds like the Voting Rights Act). States sitting their own electors is a fundamental characteristic of the EC dating all the way back to the Founding Fathers (which a lot of how the current EC works actually doesn't) and is a clear states rights issue if anything is. They'll jettison any purported "principle" they have just to prop Trump up, including basic support for democracy. The Republican party is an authoritarian personality cult at this point.

[HisGrace]

The real question is whether a jury anywhere would ever find him guilty. If there are any solid Trump supporters on it, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be swayed by Trump's inevitable whining about political persecution.

Well I'd think the prosecution would insist there not be any Trump supporters on the jury just as the defense would insist on no liberals/Trump haters. So you'd probably get a jury full of oddball apoliticals and moderate heroes, which is the kind of demographic who might be swayed by a political perecution argument.

[HisGrace]

Oh goodie.

https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1345935478860767234

Looking forward to more doctored videos from them or another embarrassing story about him trying and failing to score on a yacht.