Trump’s attack on voting by mail has several fronts, but one is by far the most serious: his attempt to slow down mail service, perhaps in a targeted way, while also insisting that only ballots counted on November 3 are valid. In addition to casting doubt on the entire election, another purpose of this scheme is to engineer a scenario in which Trump can pressure Republican-controlled legislatures to ignore the popular vote in their Democratic-leaning swing state (think Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and instead select an Electoral College slate that supports him. Trump’s attempt to cut short the counting of valid votes is flatly contrary to constitutional law and federal statutes. Even so, states can and should do more to protect American’s mailed-in votes. States should immediately enact new legislation or take other legal steps clarifying that they intend for Congress to honor electors they choose, and that they may need a bit of time to finalize choosing them—ideally doing so by December 23 and no later than January 6, 2021, when Congress meets in special session to certify the election results. Through state-level action, Trump’s efforts can be neutralized.
…
My bold.
The authors give detailed instructions regarding what actions states need to take now and what legislation they need to pass now to head off these acts of sabotage. Somehow I don’t think this is likely to happen…
Non-subscribers can read 4 articles every month for free in The Atlantic online.
Yes, but now you’ve come back to where I started. We still have a functioning legal system. When Trump commits crimes, he has to hide from the law just like any other criminal. Trump is not powerful enough that he can just do whatever he wants.
In the long run, that might change. But it’s not going to happen by November. There will still be limits on how far the Republicans can go in rigging the election.
No, I agree - right now, he can’t do whatever he wants. The concern is that he’s actively pushing the boundaries of what he can do, and he has people with extensive experience and knowledge of the inner workings and machinery of ‘the system’ who are helping him along.
I don’t think Trump particularly likes being president - it’s probably wearing his ass out. But, he has gone too far and made too many enemies to turn around now. He is in the predicament that many authoritarians find themselves in, which is having run afoul of the law to the point where if he loses power, he becomes the hunted. He has to stay in power.
That’s why we must remain vigilant and be acutely aware of what the threats are, and what kinds of tactics he might use. He is in danger of losing his wealth, which is how he defines himself and his family. Moreover, he’s in legal jeopardy, in danger of losing his freedom. He’s cornered, and that means he will do anything he can that is within his power to stay on, and that includes using tactics that we’ve potentially never seen before. And what’s particularly dangerous is that there are a lot of political allies who have invested in a second Trump term and see potential losses for themselves and are willing to help him stay in power, using whatever power they have.
But those armed men will have to be given orders. If they’re going to change the outcome of the election, they’ll have to be ordered to turn some people away from the polling sites and not let them vote. Do you think that can be done secretly? Do you imagine that thousands of soldiers (or police officers or national guards or some civilian militia) will be given orders all over the country to turn black people away and nobody will hear about it? Remember, these orders have to be given out before Election Day.
Doesn’t have to be all over the country, just in some select areas.
They will not be turning people away, just “protecting” the polls. Do you not think that having a half dozen armed soldiers standing outside your polling place may have some sort of chilling effect?
We already know that there will be multi-hour lines. They’ve been getting practice at turning a peaceful crowd of people into a “riot”, and getting a large number of Americans to accept it as following legal orders. If one or two dozen polling places get shut down for a few hours while “security is established”, they will not make this secret at all. Will you object then?
After the polls close, and people are still waiting in line, if they are dispersed as an illegal gathering after curfew, they don’t get to vote, and there is no chance for a do-over. Is this the point at which you think we should wait for before we raise our objections?
The problem here is that you keep saying “secret” or “conspiracy” as if there is something that we are saying is being hidden from plain view. There is no secret, they are doing this all out in the open and under our noses, under the apparently correct belief that whatever they do publicly is acceptable to a wide swath of our fellow citizenry.
The authoritarian has no need of secrecy, the Trump admin hasn’t kept a fart secret. He will never be more honest than when he tells you what he will do to you, and you best believe it, because when he says what he will do for you, he is lying.
No, it would have to big a pretty big operation. It’s not like Trump is coming close. If he wants to steal this election, he had to literally stop a few million people from voting.
Compared to the chilling effect of four more years of Trump? They’re not going to stop people from voting by subtle means. They’re going to have to physically shut down polling sites.
This isn’t China or Russia. If Trump orders soldiers to shoot at people who are trying to vote, those soldiers are going to say no.
Didn’t Trump once say (lie) that he would pay the legal fees for anyone hitting/attacking a protester at his rally? This intimidation at polling places won’t be regular Army. It will be regular maggots.
These people love to play army. The question will be just how legal it is to stand around a polling place with a MAGA hat and rifle. There are rules about campaigning within a certain distance, but that’s probably open to some interpretation.
In Colorado you have to be 100 feet away from the polling place. You could have a bunch of them ‘standing guard’ in the parking lot. Will that keep people from voting? Might intimidate some. A lot of this is also dependent on if Trump manages to prohibit voting by mail. Which he is working on.
A more likely scenario is that ballots simply don’t arrive on time. The postmaster general could strategically close certain offices with little advanced notice, and he could continue to do what he’s already doing, which is cutting hours and disrupting delivery.
We’re heading toward a scenario in which people register to receive mail ballots and go into the election assuming that they will have a chance to vote, only to find out that they either get the ballots too late or not at all and then attempt to go to polling locations that are packed and understaffed.
What Republicans want is mass confusion. They want to claim that voters in Democrat-leaning precincts are voting twice. They will claim victory on election night when they are leading and insist that voting stop. They will claim voter fraud if it continues, and they’ll claim fraud where they’re losing. It’ll then go to the courts and legislatures.
There will be confusion, frustration, outrage, and doubts about the outcome. Doubts about democracy don’t favor people who support democracy. The first major step toward killing a democracy is to make them doubt the validity of the elections process.
How many votes did he “win” by last time? Ten thousand here and there? He “lost*” by millions of votes last time, yet still won the presidency.
And none of them would have to be following any sort of “illegal” orders, I’m positive that any orders that they are given will be considered to be legal. Legal to Barr, legal to the LEO, and legal to you. That’s the whole point.
What is the appropriate response if there are federal agents protecting a polling place, and a riot breaks out among the people standing in line to vote?
If a federal agent were ordered to shoot a non-violent protester in the face with “less lethal munitions”, would that soldier say no? If federal agents are ordered to use teargas and rubber bullets to clear clergy and peaceful demonstrators from church grounds for a photo op, would those soldiers say no?
What pushback will you give, if the people who have been waiting in line to vote for hours are dispersed at 8PM for violating curfew? What remedy will these voters have?
What order, specifically, do you think if going to be given that would be over the line to where an individual would be justified on challenging the legality of it?
The orders that have been followed so far, and that it seems as though they have been considered to be perfectly legal by yourself, are more than enough.
*yes I put it in quotes as I’m fully aware of the electoral college and don’t want to get into that sort of sidetrack.
I mean, I wish that was true, but there is zero objective evidence to think it is. Zero. All the evidence suggests Trump is currently enjoying about 41-43 percent of the vote, and there is still time for him to make up ground. Remember that he doesn’t need more votes than Biden to win a fair election; he can win with 3-4 percent fewer votes, and if he were only 1 point behind would PROBABLY win.
I absolutely do not believe that. I think most Democrats would roll over, just as they have for almost four years. When the other side is quickly willing to resort to violence most people stop fighting, and Trump will have the armed forces and federal law enforcement on his side. Everything will be done under color of law, just like the thuggery in Portland.
The Republicans would never do that. They’ll just cheat the election. Then they’ll say they won - it’s not like this would be the first time. They openly cheated in the Georgia governor’s election in 2018 and no one did anything. That was a trial run. They’ll cheat in 2020, the Trumpists will think they won, and lots of moderate Democrats and media outlets like the New York Times will figure out a way to live with it and say “we’ll get 'em next time” even though there will never be a real next time.
It’s not that they’ll figure out a way to live with it; the question will be “What can we really do about it?” That’s the same question people have been asking for nearly four years now: yes, Trump violates the Constitution all the time, but what can we do about it? What can we do to stop him? Hell, he just enacted his own stimulus bill by fiat and he’s daring Democrats to sue him in court. He’s deliberately undermining the postal service for reasons that are obvious. He’s interfering with the census for reasons that are obvious. What are people doing to stop him? Nothing. Why? Because people don’t know how.
And that’s the danger: Trump and the GOP will cheat. Anyone who votes against Trump and even many who don’t will know that he’s cheating with the help of the GOP. And in the end, if they succeed, they’ll claim that the Constitution or the Courts are on their side. And who will stop them?
Nemo may be right. Maybe election day comes and our fears turn out to be exaggerated. But all the signs are signaling that the Republicans as a party (not just Trump but a major cross section of the GOP) are in on the fix, or at minimum, are signalling they’re not going to stand in opposition to it.
FFS, Sens. Ron Johnson and Lindsay Graham are using Ukrainian/Russian ‘intelligence’ to attack Biden now. The Director of National Intelligence is a political hack. The postmaster is a political hack. The AG is a political hack. All of these hacks have signaled quite clearly that they intend to help the president undermine fair elections.
The census is being botched, which is something I’ve pointed out multiple times and gotten little or no reaction. It astounds me that this isn’t making more news because this is a massive assault on the Constitution. It threatens to reward some states with funding and political power at the obvious expense of others - for the next 10 years. And any attempt to redress that is going to be fraught with serious political friction.
The GOP is assaulting America’s political system, and again, who’s stopping them? What’s keeping them from going further? Nobody, nothing.
I made the comment that Putin is in regular contact with the Trump administration. Earlier in this thread, I made another comment in which I said that Trump is Putin’s authoritarian apprentice.
Now compare these two videos and tell you me what you think:
I looked for other videos of the RNC of Trump’s entrance but since the media here are too fucking stupid to understand the significance of it, few actually bothered to post short clips that focus on the entrance on Tuesday night. But it was basically ripped off from Putin. The camera showing him walk behind the doors, the military guard opening the doors for him - just like Putin.
But here’s what’s really going on with this. The Convention is the deliberate attempt to merge political power of one faction with symbols that represent state power, symbols that are supposed to be neutral. The White House isn’t supposed to be used as a campaign venue, but it has been. Cabinet-level ministers (secretaries as we call them) aren’t supposed to use their positions for political campaigning, but they have. And last night the Director of National Intelligence, whose job is simply to collect data on security threats, came out and argued on behalf of an incumbent president that his opponent is a danger to national security.
It’s just the beginning.
As confident as I am that this election will show that Biden is the more popular candidate, I am increasingly confident that Trump will either find a way to keep power or make it impossible for Biden to govern. Either way, America is probably fucked for at least the next 4 years, more likely much longer than that, and perhaps forever.
Instead of thinking about “If Trump wins,” I think it’s more accurate to think of it in terms of “If Trump can remain in power.”
I think Biden wins a democratic contest, but that is not necessarily the alpha and omega of the discussion. The question is whether or the transfer of power will happen democratically or even at all. That is the question.
Using the symbols of state power, using the offices to project partisan political power and essentially representing them as one and the same, is authoritarianism. And it’s important to understand that this authoritarian brand of republican governance has widespread democratic approval. It enjoys the consent of many of those who are governed. It might not be the majority, but so what?
This election is truly about to define what America is for a long time. Is America a country that is an inclusive, pluralistic, multi-ethnic, tolerant democratic republic, or is it an ethno-nationalist republican authoritarian democracy hybrid that retains some democratic characteristics, for those who “matter”? That is what we’re deciding now.
In theory, that’s how it works, but that may not be how it ultimately works in reality. We’re heading toward a situation we’ve never experienced, never thought we’d even have to go through, and people may not know what to do.
), “TWELVE MORE YEARS!!”