Get Ready Now: Republicans Will Refuse to Certify a Harris Win | Trumpist county election officials are preparing to throw the process into chaos.
Get Ready Now: Republicans Will Refuse to Certify a Harris Win | Trumpist county election officials are preparing to throw the process into chaos.
Trumpist county election officials are preparing to throw the process into chaos.
A lot of what needs to be done is making sure that the Harris win is large enough that you can't easily claim that a handful of ballots should be tossed and change the outcome. That means:
- Check your voter registration — part of the Republican strategy has long been invalidating registrations so people can't vote
- Volunteer — nothing in the world quite like talking to people.
- Donate — money is used for everything from ads to voter turnout operations
- Organize; be prepared to turn out with others in your community to actively object to any effort to ignore your votes
Okay, now hear me out. What if we treat them like traitors?
America has rarely treated its traitors like traitors. That's how we got in this whole mess.
We should make examples of them to deter future coup attempts.
Bring back hanging as an execution method for sedition.
Eh, there's one additional way we can stop them. A landslide victory that puts her massively over the electoral college threshold would make a handful of compromised counties completely irrelevant.
It will cast doubt on the election process regardless. This is very dangerous rhetoric, and unfortunately there's about 20% of the country that wants this.
20% of the country are traitors and Trump put a good chunk of them in office.
Look at the supreme court. His appointees are going to fuck up our country for decades and there is no political will to deal with it.
Welp maybe it’s time then to drone the shit out of them.
40%...we have really devolved as a country.
I do think this is the only way. It's not 270towin this year, we need a margin.
Most people in America can’t do anything about that though. Only the people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
Nah. Even if you are in a safe state, vote. Even if you are in a state run by weirdos, vote. Literally vote.
It worked in 2020. trump had more votes than in 2016 and he lost by even more. January 6th had no chance of success because it was obvious who won. Taking the capitol building doesn't mean anything.
The supreme court doesn't even mean anything without the consent of the governed. The British won the War of 1812 and literally burned the White House to the ground. They still had to leave because the US is so big that it's literally ungovernable without consent of the population.
What's the electoral college threshold? I was wondering just recently if there's any percentage of popular that matters more than the electoral college.
The number to reach is 270 EC votes. However, it is very possible to reach that number while not winning the popular vote. That's why certain states (such as PA, GA, AZ) tend to be the "battleground" states as they have enough EC votes to shift the election and usually aren't reliably red or blue.
If I remember correctly, it's theoretically possible to win the Presidency of the US while only winning something like 25% of the popular vote (though in practice, if you're able to win the states to pull something like that off you're also going to be winning the bigger states as well so your victory would look more like Reagan's).
270 total electoral college votes. No, the popular does not matter, just the 50 individual states. They distribute their electoral college votes in different ways, each state gets to set its own rules.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College
That's not in the cards given the last 4 years. Remember we only won in the wake of a mass uprising, with most people thinking they were voting to defund the police, defend Roe, free healthcare, less war, legalization of pot, freeing the concentration camps on the border, etc.
We'll be lucky if Trump's campaign shitting itself and Biden dropping out are enough to compensate for the last 4 years of either inaction or making things worse.
they're neck-and-neck in the polls; how do you think that this will happen?
is it because you're one of those people who disregard polls?
HERE you go, buddy.
Everyone else, ignore polls, and just VOTE.
I think the UN should send in independent observers to the US to oversee their elections because boy oh boy are those Republicans working hard to cheat.
I hear you but that just seems like putting kerosene on a fire.
It does seem so in every third world democracy, but it is the duty of US... Oh now I see.
Watching Trump's press conference from Mar-a-lago the other day, and hearing his excuses for why he isn't out on the road campaigning, it struck me that the narrative that he's moping around depressed that he's losing isn't the whole story.
He's got Vance out pretending to campaign, while he and his buddies are sitting around coming up with plan B. He's probably had calls with dozens of Republican governors and is getting teams of "alternate electors" together (the Stephen Miller interview on Ari Melber's show made it pretty clear that they still see that as a perfectly legal strategy). Donald may know "it's over" but that just means he's going to get more desperate and we've already seen what desperate Trump can do with 2 months of prep, I'm not looking forward to seeing what he can do with 5 months.
I live in a mail in ballot state but I think people -especially in swing states with trump election officials- should call in sick to work on election day. Get some friends and be election observers. If you watch everything you'll at least catch them in the act of whatever they're planning. Bring water with you and help out. Even kids that can't vote can do some things to help. Be an election volunteer if you can.
Kids? Volunteering?
Headline: "ANTIFA openly recruits and grooms children in MIB States!"
Vance
obligatory couch joke
My crackpot theory is that he doesn't actually want to win. I think he's making so much money campaigning that he realized he could milk a couple more election cycles until the dummies get tired of him.
Nah. You're describing the DNC. The charges DJT is facing are real. He needs the immunity and the ability to shut down the prosecutions. Not to mention how much MORE grift is available for a sitting president.
This is correct. They are not planning to win with votes.
Chaos is just the first part of their plan. The whole purpose is for generating lawsuits that make their way to the Supreme Court.
The weirdo Republican's entire plan is to have the SC hand the dictatorship to Trump, irrespective of the Electoral results. Harris could win Texas and be over 300 Electoral votes and the SC will still hand it to Trump.
Do you really think those 6 idiots handed the office of the President immunity? HAH! They handed TRUMP immunity. They absolutely will NOT see a Democrat with that immunity in the Presidency after the election.
It has to stay out of the Supreme Court's claws. At this point, I really don't see how it WON'T end up at the SC.
Exactly. Reminder for those who still don't fully appreciate the scope of the problem: fully one third of SCOTUS were lawyers for Bush in Bush v. Gore. This is their endgame and their purpose: invalidating the vote to coronate a Republican dictator is what they were put on the court to do.
I would hope that a blatantly corrupt ruling by the Supreme Court that hands power to Trump would be enough to get Biden to just disregard their ruling as illegal, put down the coup attempt and arrest anyone found to have been conspiring to overthrow the government. It would be horrible for it to get to that point, but in that nightmare scenario it would be the least bad option.
If the Court blatantly rejects a valid election and throws their support behind a coup attempt, they will have already abandoned the institutional norms that the system relies on in order to function. Going along with it would only do more damage. The only way to repair the damage at that point is by stopping the plot, preserving the proper outcome of the election and removing insurrectionists from positions of power.
OMG... I so completely agree with you and that terrifies me.
If the Supreme Court throws out a legitimate win by Harris, then they need to be removed and tried for treason. Because that is EXACTLY what it would be.
Chaos is a ladder
I mean they already admitted it out loud. The smart thing to do now is to prep their countersuits. What we really need are federal voting laws, but good luck with that. "The States shall decide" is one of the dumbest things in the Constitution. They need stronger federal laws to protect and cover elections for federal office, if nothing else.
This could be what leads to abolishing the electoral college
Everyone involved should be charged with treason.
Yup, no excuse after Jan.6, they know what they are doing...
Alternative Headline: "Conservatives Fuck Around, Insist on Finding Out"
Can we just hand out "I'm with Stupid" shirts as they vote with arrows pointing to themselves?
Hey so... Being non American, I only learned about the electoral college during the last election, or was it in 2016? I forget.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
And doesn't that mean that a president can be elected against the will of the majority?
I want to say every republican president since W in 2004 (and I think even that is somewhat questionable?) has lost the popular vote and only won because of gerrymandering and the electoral college. We already are electing presidents against the will of the majority.
As for electors going rogue? Welcome to the US government (and a shocking other number of governments but...) where basically every bit of our constitution depends on good faith actors.
When you think about it, democracy at it's core depends on good faith actors. Democracy IS good faith
W lost the popular vote in 2000 but won it in 2004.
Gerrymandering doesn't apply to statewide races like the electoral college.
However it does affect state legislatures and they're the ones that make election laws.
Yes. Yes it does.
Due to the way the Electoral College works (even when not being undermined by bad-faith actors) it is possible for a candidate to win the popular vote (i.e., get more raw votes than his opponent) and yet end up with fewer Electoral College votes thereby losing the election. This has happened many times, and I believe no recent Republican president has won the popular vote with the exception of Bush Jr.'s second run.
The EC isn't really that complicated. It means that the election is not settled by a national popular vote, but rather with the result of a weighted average of 50 State elections + Washington, DC. This weighted average is based on the number of seats each state has in the House (which is roughly proportional) plus the Senate (where each State has two seats). The net result is that the weighted average overweights smaller states.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
The way it works now, each campaign pre-selects a slate of electors who would get to vote in the EC if their candidate wins that state. So the likelihood that an elector casts a different vote is slim, because they are supporters of the candidate who won the election.
And doesn't that mean that a president can be elected against the will of the majority?
Absolutely, and it has happened twice since 2000. Both times the Republican won the EC while losing the popular vote. It happened because they did better in the smaller states than the competition did, and we already established the EC purposely overweights smaller states.
It all works this way because, historically, there was no requirement that EC slates be chosen by popular vote at all. The State Legislatures themselves picked who they would send to the EC. And while they were sent with a directive on who to vote for, they didn't have to comply, and there were Presidential elections that weren't decided until the EC actually made their votes, as any one who has watched Hamilton knows. But over the years, several states decided to have the EC slates chosen by popular vote, until it became the norm.
So one possible problem is that because of this vestigial alignment with the will of the Legislature, the Legislature has the last word on the EC slates, and had the power to totally ignore the election if it wants. State Legislatures haven't done this to date. It hasn't been done since 1960 in Hawaii, when there were serious irregularities with the vote, acknowledged by both parties, and the Legislature acted to make sure they got the result right, by certifying both slates and then withdrawing the one that lost after the recounts.
(Fun fact for that 1960 election: the losing candidate was Nixon, who happened to be VP at the time, and had the job to preside over the counting of his loss in HI even though technically both slates of votes were sent by HI.)
It means that the election is not settled by a national popular vote, but rather with the result of a weighted average of 50 State elections + Washington, DC.
You missed an important detail: most states give all their electoral votes to whoever won that state, so for example whoever gets 51% of the votes in Texas gets 100% Texas's electoral votes. The result is that most states' electoral votes are easily predicted by post elections, leading presidential candidates to focus on a handful of "swing" states where the outcome of that state's election is in question. Another result is that it suppresses voter turnout in non-swing states because people their feel like the outcome of their state's election is predetermined.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
It is the case that electors are required to vote for the nominee that they pledged to vote for. If you pledged to vote A as an elector you are obligated to vote A. However, as I understand from skimming CHIAFALO ET AL. v. WASHINGTON (2019), it is on pain of penalty...
There might be more to it but I don't have time to read it all.
Also, it doesn't really matter what the rules say. The current right wing majority of the SCOTUS doesn't give a flying fuck about laws, rules, or precedents if they don't support their views so who the fuck knows.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
So the term for this is "faithless elector" and the answer is, it depends.
For some states if an elector promises to vote for X, and then they vote for Y, they are immediately replaced and their vote does not count. In other states the vote stands as is.
Most commonly a faithless elector isn't used to vote for one of the major parties, but for a third party or someone who didn't run for president. For example if Trump won a given state, but an elector refused to vote for Trump, they will likely vote for another Republican.
AFAIK the Electoral College can ignore their constituents.
However this should look very bad on the specific members ignoring their constituents.
Bad enough to prompt them to not be reelected.
It's called a "faithless elector" and what happens depends on the law of the state the elector is representing. Some states void the vote without penalty, some void it with some penalty, some allow the vote but with penalty, some allow the vote with no penalty, and some have no law at all (which seems like no difference from allowing with no penalty).
It's entirely conceivable that enough faithless electors from states that do not void the vote could swing an election, though there's never been enough to do so before.
Some states have laws to force a correct EC vote according to the popular vote. Not all do
The College is structured in a way that allows a candidate to win against the majority of the population, without even needing individual electors to be corrupt. But yes—corrupt electors can also switch their votes independently; there are laws penalizing them for doing so, but their votes are still counted.
Defeat Trump soundly. As soon as election officials refuse to certify, slap them in jail and charge them with serious crimes IMMEDIATELY instead of fucking around for 4 goddamn years like the last time. Long prison terms and huge fines, or preferably, extraordinary rendition to Afghanistan and revoke their passport.
Biden can seal-team-6 them.
He's pretty well committed to not doing that, and it's very much unclear to me if the military would actually go ahead with following that kind of order.
It's too late to "get ready". They aren't planning to win with votes.
If we get that far. The voters have to make it past Local Sheriffs on the ground.
There's also a Coalition of Right Wing Sheriffs wandering around somewhere.
It's a good thing then that the sitting VP is bestowed the power to unilaterally decide who wins the presidency.
Except they don’t. Didn’t we learn that from 1/6/21?
If you think your county or state won't certify election results, make sure to call them and tell them exactly how you feel about it.
So they'll know how to not hurt your feelings?
Pretty weird thing to say, bucko
This is why you should track your local fascists! Check out https://magatmap.com and help out!
EDIT - I'm curious why the down voting.
Lol the maga map could use the same format as the Christian surveillance app that they use to harass people..
No surprise for most of us here. The big surprise for the enablers would be when the leopards eat their faces.
At the very least, begin relocating or developing redundancies to federal agencies located in states likely to do so, specially Texas which has been made the host of too many key international federal agencies.
So we setup police on certification day to arrest anyone working the polls who breaks the laws concerning transition of power.
Simple as.
There's a higher percentage of police in the MAGAt crowd than the general populous. I'm not sure that's the best idea.
If electors can be compromised, so can police though.
Congress is responsible for certifying the election, not local voting precincts. The local precincts simply collect the ballots, counties/parishes tally the totals, who then forward those totals to their respective states, which are then sent to Congress via the electoral college. It is up to Congress to receive them, and then certify the results.
This is actually fine. Let them do it. They won't change anything, but they will look silly and the entire world will see it.
There's something of a history of racist groups overthrowing elections in the US.
I don't know how it's done in your country, but it possible also volunteer to man the voting stations and count votes
I don't see SCOTUS ruling against themselves.
I can't wait for the US to crack and face the consequences of their own idiocy.
How very charitable of you.
Thanks for the feedback!
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I wonder how much the kids get paid for the pass through clicks on this.
What a waste of processing power.
If this comes to pass it is only karma, chicken of America's bloody past coming home to roost. You reap what you sow even if it is done on foreign soil.
I suppose then you would enjoy the resurgence in foreign blood when Trump ascends the throne and begins launching nukes into Gaza and the West Bank?
This is the same excuse given when big corporations fail due to their own bad decisions. What is happening in US are its foreign policies getting implemented on its own soil. You shouldnt have made such decisions if you didnt want its consequences.
If Israel wants to nuke Gaza and West Bank it will, it won't matter who is at White House.