Voter suppresion/"stealing the election" megathread

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I think this would have no chance to succeed in court. He'd have a better chance of success honestly if he ordered his thugs to march to the PA Convention Center in Philadelphia to kill everyone and destroy all the absentee ballots stored there.

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https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1329629701447573504

Thank you Romney for being a sane person!

Indeed. Romney has proven that he is an honorable Republican.

It actually could be important that Romney made this statement in the situation where MI/WI/PA submit competing slates of electors. When the electoral votes are counted on Jan. 6, if both the House and Senate can agree on which electors are valid, then those are counted. Dems have 48 Senators in the next Senate. Romney is 49. I'm not sure how the Georgia seats work in this calculation with the runoff elections happening the previous day, let's assume Loeffler is still sitting and Purdue's seat is vacant. Then Dems need just one more senator, probably Collins or Murkowski (Edit: maybe Sasse?), to side with them, and this would basically guarantee that the "state legislature coup" would fail.

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https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1329629701447573504

Thank you Romney for being a sane person!

Indeed. Romney has proven that he is an honorable Republican.

It actually could be important that Romney made this statement in the situation where MI/WI/PA submit competing slates of electors. When the electoral votes are counted on Jan. 6, if both the House and Senate can agree on which electors are valid, then those are counted. Dems have 48 Senators in the next Senate. Romney is 49. I'm not sure how the Georgia seats work in this calculation with the runoff elections happening the previous day, let's assume Loeffler is still sitting and Purdue's seat is vacant. Then Dems need just one more senator, probably Collins or Murkowski, to side with them, and this would basically guarantee that the "state legislature coup" would fail.

I think there's a small chance Collins is salty after Democrats spent so much money against her, but I have a hard time seeing Lisa Murkowski not voting with the Democrats in this case, especially if American Democracy is at stake.

In the best Dem case for the GA runoffs, Romney is enough by himself, even split and Romney and Sasse are enough, worst case (double loss with immediate seating) they need one more vote, probably Murkowsi.

The runoff election happens the day before the electoral vote counting though. So there's no way the result would be certified in time. Based on the fact that Perdue's term expired with the start of the new Congress and that Loeffler's term is still active, I guessed that Loeffler would have a seat and Perdue's seat would be vacant, but maybe Brian Kemp would appoint Perdue or some Republican placeholder to fill the vacancy until the runoff is certified. In that case the Dems would need two additional R defectors, two of Sasse, Collins, and Murkowski probably.

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https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/527067-biden-advisor-he-does-not-have-any-concern-about-trump-lawsuits

Kate Bedingfield, a top communications adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, said Sunday that Biden and his team are not concerned about President Trump’s bids to overturn the results of the presidential election in court.

“He does not have any concern,” Bedingfield said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think what we’ve seen over the course of the last few weeks are these lawsuits… have been laughed out of court after court after court throughout the country. They are getting no traction.”

I know we're prone to dooming and bedwetting, and Trump's chances of success minimal, but if Biden truly feels this way I think it's too cavalier an attitude to take. If I were him I would be carefully monitoring these lawsuits and beefing up my law team to fight them, organizing more "Honor the Vote" protests to counter the "Stop the Steal" protests, and establishing a back-channel to police forces and the military to be warned when Trump tries to launch a coup or in the worst case launch one himself.

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https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/527067-biden-advisor-he-does-not-have-any-concern-about-trump-lawsuits

Kate Bedingfield, a top communications adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, said Sunday that Biden and his team are not concerned about President Trump’s bids to overturn the results of the presidential election in court.

“He does not have any concern,” Bedingfield said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think what we’ve seen over the course of the last few weeks are these lawsuits… have been laughed out of court after court after court throughout the country. They are getting no traction.”

I know we're prone to dooming and bedwetting, and Trump's chances of success minimal, but if Biden truly feels this way I think it's too cavalier an attitude to take. If I were him I would be carefully monitoring these lawsuits and beefing up my law team to fight them, organizing more "Honor the Vote" protests to counter the "Stop the Steal" protests, and establishing a back-channel to police forces and the military to be warned when Trump tries to launch a coup or in the worst case launch one himself.

They are monitoring them.  But there is 0.00000000% chance Trump is going to overturn this election.  These frivolous lawsuits are getting more attention than they deserve.

The lawsuits are just one prong of the Trump strategy however. When that prong fails he will try to launch a coup, either legislative through the state legislatures, or physical using the police and the military. Biden can't be caught off guard there either and needs to prepare counters.

I honestly think the left needs to start organizing large scale "Honor The Vote" protests to counter the "Stop the Steal" protests. I read some articles saying there were small-scale ones in Michigan this week but one mistake Al Gore made in 2000 is that he "ceded the streets" during the election aftermath and only seeing MAGA protests creates a distorted perception of public opinion. If there were large Honor the Vote protests, it could both influence the state legislatures against overturning the election results and dissuade the military/police from launching a pro-Trump coup.

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https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1332380180065738754?s=19
The judge who wrote the opinion was appointed by Trump himself. And the other two were appointed by George W. Bush.

Still sad that the fate of the country essentially rests on Brett Kavanaugh now.

This is over-the-top dooming; every case has been dismissed out of hand with the legal language equivalent of "GTFO", even by judges appointed by Trump. Extremely unlikely the Supreme Court takes up the case. It's good to see that judges still see themselves as stewards of the Constitution and democracy and not as the lackeys of one party or the other.

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https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1332380180065738754?s=19
The judge who wrote the opinion was appointed by Trump himself. And the other two were appointed by George W. Bush.

Still sad that the fate of the country essentially rests on Brett Kavanaugh now.

This is over-the-top dooming; every case has been dismissed out of hand with the legal language equivalent of "GTFO", even by judges appointed by Trump. Extremely unlikely the Supreme Court takes up the case. It's good to see that judges still see themselves as stewards of the Constitution and democracy and not as the lackeys of one party or the other.

I'm not saying they'll win, but as far as I know, SCOTUS only requires four votes to take up a case--so my point stands. Merely taking up the case at all would set a damaging precedent.

I'll add that decisions will not necessarily be the same from people with a higher profile than the judges that have so far been put on cases.

You're definitely dooming here, making it sound like the decision could go either way on the Supreme Court. Alito and Thomas might take up the case, but I doubt Barrett, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh want to touch it. These guys are not Eric, Don Jr, and Ivanka.

As to your second point, that should make it even less likely the Supreme Court will actually support Trump; a lower level no-name judge can do his MAGA virtue signaling without much repercussions because he knows a higher court will overturn it and it will be forgotten because he's not high enough, while Supreme Court justices for sure know that their decisions are final and they will have to live with the consequences.

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https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1332380180065738754?s=19
The judge who wrote the opinion was appointed by Trump himself. And the other two were appointed by George W. Bush.

Still sad that the fate of the country essentially rests on Brett Kavanaugh now.

This is over-the-top dooming; every case has been dismissed out of hand with the legal language equivalent of "GTFO", even by judges appointed by Trump. Extremely unlikely the Supreme Court takes up the case. It's good to see that judges still see themselves as stewards of the Constitution and democracy and not as the lackeys of one party or the other.

I'm not saying they'll win, but as far as I know, SCOTUS only requires four votes to take up a case--so my point stands. Merely taking up the case at all would set a damaging precedent.

I'll add that decisions will not necessarily be the same from people with a higher profile than the judges that have so far been put on cases.

You're definitely dooming here, making it sound like the decision could go either way on the Supreme Court. Alito and Thomas might take up the case, but I doubt Barrett, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh want to touch it. These guys are not Eric, Don Jr, and Ivanka.

As to your second point, that should make it even less likely the Supreme Court will actually support Trump; a lower level no-name judge can do his MAGA virtue signaling without much repercussions because he knows a higher court will overturn it and it will be forgotten because he's not high enough, while Supreme Court justices for sure know that their decisions are final and they will have to live with the consequences.

I'm all but certain Barrett will agree to take it up. And I'll reiterate what I've been saying for months--it's not that I think this will happen, but it shouldn't have anything beyond a non-zero chance of happening. Even if the chances are 1%, the fact that it's even a remote possibility really says something about the point we've come to.

I totally disagree with you. Agreeing to taking up this case requires a justice to not only be a partisan hack, but a corrupt partisan hack. Thomas and Alito have shown signs of that, but I've seen no indication nor aware of any such history from Barrett.

Let's not forget that this is a case where the plaintiffs have brought no specific claims, no evidence, and in the courtroom the main plaintiff even denied that the case was alleging fraud. It's a complete dumpster fire. It might even be too much for Alito and Thomas to take up.

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I'm sure dooming about the Wisconsin lawsuit will begin si here's a great thread.

https://twitter.com/AkivaMCohen/status/1333858999993831431?s=19

What's the tl;dr here? I don't really have the energy for the legalese this early in the morning. Is this a competently filed and theoretically sound case whose factual claims are unsupported?

It's a few things:

*this case isn't being run by grifting idiots
*the WI  Supreme Court is pretty partisan
*WI absentee ballot law is more draconian than many other states
*Republicans are alleging several major procedural violations that would invalidating thousand to over a hundred thousand ballots from two heavily Democratic counties
*the case in unlikely to succeed on its merits - most of the alleged violations are are not, the Republicans just don't like the way they were handled (i.e. using a different form that usual to apply for and certify absentee ballots, but the form is an official one issued by the state for that purpose)

Thanks. Seems like this court case is designed to win in a court of law, and on the surface it could have a chance, unlike Trump's allegations of massive fraud and Hugo Chavez's interference (lol), which have no chance in a court of law but does have a chance in the court of public opinion. Nobody is going to get riled up about using the wrong form to apply for absentee ballots.

It's almost as if instead of really trying to overturn the election in the courts, Trump is actually looking to gather public support for a coup or to delegitimize Biden in the eyes of the public to set up a rematch in 2024.

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Now Michael Flynn has called for a (real) coup. I wonder if Trump has already tried to get military support for such a move and was told to pound sand.

With a fresh presidential pardon still warm, former national security advisor Michael Flynn has called on Donald Trump to suspend the constitution and declare martial law for the military to run a new election.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/michael-flynn-suspend-constitution-martial-law-trump-reelection-b1765467.html

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I wonder if Trump has already tried to get military support for such a move and was told to pound sand.

Honestly, I would be surprised if the past month has been the first time in his administration that that has happened.

It would be true justice if Trump, in pure desperation, issues a formal order to the Army to impose martial law and arrest Biden and Dem members of Congress, except the Army remembers that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution and arrest Trump instead. That's a coup we could all get behind.

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Trump's feed has dozens of retweets this morning suggesting the election was stolen in GA/AZ/PA and that the legislatures need to appoint their own Trump electors.

I think the ship on the "state legislator coup" has sailed. Multiple R leaders of state houses (MI, PA, AZ at least) have disavowed the tactic, the D governors will not call special sessions, and Kemp refused to call one. Also the move would likely be struck down by the courts because the state election results were certified according to the states' election laws, so the state legislator coup would amount to changing the terms of the election after it is held, something that is almost always prohibited.

However, I am a bit concerned about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, not for this year, but in the hypothetical that Republicans had won both houses of Congress. Couldn't they reject all of Biden's electors? Then Trump would win the contingent House election by default because the EV would be 232-0. This would surely end up before the Supreme Court but they could plausibly uphold the move under the logic that Congress is responsible for certifying the Electoral College vote, they followed the law (the Electoral Count Act), and this is a political process so the Supreme Court won't intervene. Would Dems have any recourse at that point other than to secede from the USA or to organize an army and march on Washington?

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If Congress throws out enough Biden electors to send it to the House I don't think there's any legal recourse. In theory it could happen this year too since they'll control the Senate vote (regardless of GA runoffs) when the counting happens. I think it's really unlikely though. The vote can't be filibrustered and there are at least a handful of Republican Senators that will vote to uphold. In fact, if a vote occurs it would  probably pass over 80% I think.

They need both houses to agree to throw out electoral votes when there aren't multiple slates of electors from a state (which was the point of the state legislator coup). So it's a longshot this year hoping for a new interpretation of the Electoral Count Act by some court.

But now that all these plots have been brought into the open and "normalized", it might just be a matter of time before a Republican Congress rejects a Democratic president-elect using the Electoral Count Act, causing mass unrest and likely civil war.

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https://twitter.com/mateagold/status/1336110519997116416

“The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’ ” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “ ‘What can we do to fix it?’ ”

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said.

It's at least a bit reassuring that so far, exactly zero state legislators have taken any official action to satisfy Trump's demands. No special sessions, no joint resolutions declaring the elections fraudulent and appointing alternate electors, nothing. Just grandstanding via hotel ballroom "hearings" and urging Electoral Count Act challenges.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/08/texas-sues-four-battleground-states-in-supreme-court-over-unlawful-election-results.html

Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday announced a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the presidential election results in four key swing states that helped secure Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit, which was filed directly to the Supreme Court, asserts that “unlawful election results” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan — all of which Biden won — should be declared unconstitutional.

The article notes that this challenge is very unlikely to succeed in the Supreme Court, but this does set the groundwork for Texas to secede from the USA (again). Out of all the stolen election and coup scenarios, I honestly did not expect 1860 redux to come up.

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What are the chances MAGA people start to claim the ICC will rule on this case?

That would go against the core principles of MAGA and America First. Much more likely they will now start openly calling for a coup or martial law.

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I've said this before, but Democrats really should have been organizing large scale "Honor the Vote" protests. We only hear the MAGA voices and Trump insisting the election was stolen and it could easily reach (maybe already reached?) a point where it distorts public opinion. There needs to be a public reminder that Biden won the freaking election and that the will of the American people must be respected.

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I've said this before, but Democrats really should have been organizing large scale "Honor the Vote" protests. We only hear the MAGA voices and Trump insisting the election was stolen and it could easily reach (maybe already reached?) a point where it distorts public opinion. There needs to be a public reminder that Biden won the freaking election and that the will of the American people must be respected.

There were 600 people arrested in Minneapolis on election night when it looked like Trump would be re-elected.

Where's the proof?
 

600+ arrested on I-94 in Minneapolis while protesting Trump’s election threats

More misinformation, posted on Nov. 4 at 10:13pm when it was clear that Biden was on track to win. They were protesting Trump's threats to challenge the election. Try again.

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snipped Trump tweets

What will Trump say when the Supreme Court smacks him down again? Will he give up and stop his "election fraud" ranting? Will he switch to pressuring electors or asking Congress to use the Electoral Count Act to overturn the election? Or will he start calling for a (real) coup, possibly demanding that his militias rise up and overthrow the corrupt deep state? Perhaps he might call for the 18 states that supported the lawsuit to declare their independence, upon which he will gladly serve as their God-Emperor for Life?

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snipped Trump tweets

What will Trump say when the Supreme Court smacks him down again? Will he give up and stop his "election fraud" ranting? Will he switch to pressuring electors or asking Congress to use the Electoral Count Act to overturn the election? Or will he start calling for a (real) coup, possibly demanding that his militias rise up and overthrow the corrupt deep state? Perhaps he might call for the 18 states that supported the lawsuit to declare their independence, upon which he will gladly serve as their God-Emperor for Life?

He will pressure electors and state legislatures.

The ship on that will soon sail and will be out of the harbor next Monday when the electors vote. What then?

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snipped Trump tweets

What will Trump say when the Supreme Court smacks him down again? Will he give up and stop his "election fraud" ranting? Will he switch to pressuring electors or asking Congress to use the Electoral Count Act to overturn the election? Or will he start calling for a (real) coup, possibly demanding that his militias rise up and overthrow the corrupt deep state? Perhaps he might call for the 18 states that supported the lawsuit to declare their independence, upon which he will gladly serve as their God-Emperor for Life?

He will pressure electors and state legislatures.

The ship on that will soon sail and will be out of the harbor next Monday when the electors vote. What then?

Electoral Count Act funny business.

On its face that wouldn't faze me at all because there is zero chance any House Democrat would vote to reject Biden electors. However, at this stage, who knows if the "funny business" means that suddenly 11 Democratic Congressmen-elect will "commit suicide" having "shot themselves in the back of the head 3 times"...

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For all the ill intentions of overturning the election and dismantling democracy, the fact that MAGA has put all its hopes on this Texas lawsuit at least means they are still hoping that the Supreme Court, an American institution, does their bidding. But all indications are that it will be rejected by the SCOTUS. I think we need to carefully observe how the Republicans react once that happens. What I hope for, but am not very optimistic about, is that their support for Trump will fall off and they will talking about president-elect Biden, a peaceful transition of power, etc. More likely is that instead the Republicans show their true colors and we will start hearing calls for suspending the Constitution/martial law or ordinances of secession.

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Keep in mind that even if the WI Supreme Court rules with Trump, Biden still gets 296 EV’s

They won't. The bigger question is will they rule in time for the electors to vote.

Best bet is a ruling first thing tomorrow. I think they are going to make changes, perhaps substantial to future elections which is why the opinion is taking some time. Obviously last months results are final.

It seems plausible that some election practices in WI this year, like "Democracy in the Park" and staff filling in missing address information on absentee ballots, are legally dubious. I'm not an expert on it and that's a legitimate thing for the WI Supreme Court to decide.

Obviously the Republicans/Trump don't deserve to have votes thrown out post-election to turn a loss into a win, and that's the point of the doctrine of laches. But clarifying for future elections what practices are allowed under the law and what practices are not, that seems like a reasonable thing for the court to do.

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Trump rant

I've been waiting for Trump to openly call for a military takeover/invoke the Insurrection Act/whatever on Twitter since Friday. So far he has not crossed that line. His tweets are full of lies as usual but at this point if this is all he's going to do, it's not going to have any actual effect so he's basically just abusing the First Amendment.

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https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/530420-republican-nc-state-senator-trump-should-invoke-the-insurrection-act

A Republican state senator in North Carolina is doubling down after making comments on social media paraphrasing a retired general who called on President Trump to invoke the rarely-used Insurrection Act and suspend civil liberties such as habeas corpus.

State Sen. Bob Steinburg (R) reportedly called for the president to invoke the act and declare the results of the 2020 election invalid in a Facebook post paraphrasing Air Force lieutenant general Thomas McInerney (ret.), writing: “President Trump must declare a national emergency,” adding that “Trump should also invoke the Insurrection Act.”

So far these calls for martial law/Insurrection Act/military coup have been limited to fringe wingnuts and random R state legislators. But I'm sure these are getting in Trump's ear and who knows what he will try when he gets this idea in his head...