You’re talking about being prepared to fight back against violence. That’s appropriate, but I’m talking about a different battlefield - one more likely to be fought in the courts and the court of public opinion. In other words, ensuring all procedures are in place and well documented to demonstrate that the election activities in every corner of the country were provably fraud-free.
Trump and his allies are doing everything possible to instill disbelief in election integrity, ranging from rhetoric that casts doubt to intimidation tactics for election workers to advocating for rule changes that will throw accurate determinations of outcomes into chaos. People who care about fair elections should be doing everything they can to fight that NOW.
Doing this won’t prevent all violence. But it may make fomenting violence a little harder.
While efforts to impede [election] certification are not new, never before have they been deployed on such a large and coordinated scale. For this reason, little academic attention has been paid to the mechanics of state certification frameworks. This Article fills that gap to demonstrate why, and how, state certification frameworks can combat the ongoing threats against them. It begins by providing a detailed overview of how election certification works and how recent attacks on the process have targeted and disrupted certification using false claims of widespread election fraud. It then delves into the rich but often overlooked history of certification as a non-discretionary duty to demonstrate that those attacks flouted hundreds of years of well-established American legal history; recognizing that discretion created opportunities for crises and election fraud, early courts and legislatures purposefully shaped certification into a mandatory, non-discretionary duty. The Article concludes with a roadmap for election officials, candidates, and advocates to resolve future attacks on the certification process in eight key battleground states likely to play significant roles in the 2024 election cycle.
The local-level rat-fuckery [viz the “election nightmare scenarios” of the OP’s title - b] is not going unopposed. That’s the whole point of Democracy Docket and Marc Elias’s advance efforts. Most of the potential bad actors are already exposed (Rolling Stone article, Rachel Maddow , etc.) and the remedial filings, lawsuits, and countersuits to overcome the bad-faith officials are already drafted.
There’s an idea floating out there that a some number of local officials somewhere can summarily “refuse to certify” and suddenly that whole state’s election edifice comes crashing down. And that it will happen in every single swing state, and that will be it – the election is then thrown to the House! Thrown to the Supreme Court! That’s just not how it’s going to go down
Media coverage of election-denying officials have greatly exaggerated how much impact individual refusals to certify can really have. Significant procedural delays in election certification can’t be effected by single and small-group actors. Remedies already exist and the mousetraps are already sprung (see @Aspenglow ’s post above). No one’s being caught off-guard this time around.
Lastly, @Aspenglow happened to drop this very helpful link into the thread:
So seeing this statute reminds me of a scenario a relative asked me about recently: Harris as VP/President of the Senate will be presiding over the certification for her own election (God willing!) on 1/6/25, right?
I know that the VP’s role in that process is wholly ministerial, with no power to affect the outcome. The statute expressly says so. But there’s plenty of MAGA types who don’t get that, and the same Trump who thought Pence could play games with the certification will likely fuel the perception that there’s something wrong with Harris presiding over the vote count that elects her President.
I’m not terribly worried about this scenario resulting in another 1/6/21 particularly. That debacle was able to get as far as it did because of the cover that the MAGAs were in D.C. to peacefully protest. Nobody’s going to shrug them off this time. If they rally or assemble anywhere near D.C. on 1/6/25, there’ll be so many police between them and the Capitol that they’ll hardly get in sight of it.
But I’m sure the meme that Harris is stealing the election on 1/6/25 will have some legs in MAGA-land, and I can’t imagine some of the most hardcore MAGA types not going to D.C. even without an explicit call to arms by Trump.
I am very confident that if they do, they will find themselves in a “fuck around and find out” scenario they did not anticipate, one they will regret for the rest of their short lives.
Agree this is a risk nowadays, given the ignorance of those who would make such an argument. But, if this comes up in casual conversation, a reminder that Bush (the Elder) was in the same such position in the 1988 election. It’s not like this scenario has never happened before, but today it seems anyone with an active imagination can see boogeymen everywhere if they choose to.
I think the Maggles will believe the election was stolen the same way I believe that when I take a shower the water will be wet. And if a couple of them go to DC to get arrested, oh well.
If anyone believes that it’s inappropriate for a VP to be elected as she presides over the count in a purely ceremonial role, I’ll ask them how pissed they were about Bush doing the exact same thing.
Yes. There won’t be any “official” violence on Jan. 6 because they are not on the inside this time. I think local violence in swing states surrounding election day is what will be the biggest problem. What this violence could look like was aptly presented on the “America Decides” episode of Succession (Spoiled for anyone who might be planning to watch Succession some day.)Tens of thousands of absentee ballots are destroyed by a fire at a polling station leading to the state being called for the fascist candidate which wins him the election. It’s those type of incidents happening that have me worried. I hope there is a lot of security at the vote counting facilities in the swing states.