Honestly not sure if this belongs in one of the other threads or not. I suppose if this ends up being a repeated act, we can discuss them here?
I think our friend Smapti is from up around that part of the country?
Thanks for starting this thread, and it’s fine where it is. Thanks also for your mindfulness about where to start it.
This is the sort of election disruption I’m expecting from MAGAs. In Oregon, where our elections are strictly vote-by-mail (or drop boxes), what better way to introduce chaos into the process? Of course, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they are probably destroying ballots that support their own side in addition to those who oppose them.
The whole point as I see it is to create doubt in our election process. We can’t let them succeed. I encourage everyone who mailed or dropped their ballot off anywhere other than the elections office in their county to follow up and ensure that ballot was received and counted.
Expect more of this as certain people begin to panic.
FWIW, we dropped our ballots off in a drop box last week. Washington’s Voter registration and ballot management portal says both of our ballots have been accepted.
But assuming that these fires took place in blue precincts, it makes sense for them to do so. If 70% of the ballots in a box are expected to be D, and 30% expected to be R, then torching the whole box would give an advantage to the Rs.
Well, it is in Portland… pretty sure we know which way Multnomah County is going to go.
It certainly demonstrates that they KNOW they can’t win fairly.
What votes get destroyed doesn’t matter. The point is to encourage the magas to create chaos. Then let Republican judges restore order.
The process is to create questions about what ballots are valid and what ballots are invalid. Consider the various outcomes that are possible depending on what various courts rule. Then issue the rulings that produce the results favorable to the Republicans.
That’s pretty wishful thinking in Oregon. Especially in Portland. Despite Trump’s efforts to corrupt the Ninth Circuit, I’m pretty sure there aren’t enough “Republican” judges on that bench to allow Oregon to favor Republicans.
It’s the chaos that matters. It’s the effort to undermine faith and trust in our elections process. And the fact that they’re bending so much effort toward undermining this trust should assure people that the systems are pretty damned dependable.
All judicial rivers eventually flow into the Supreme Court, which is definitely a Republican court at this point. So the Supreme Court can decide which lower court decisions it needs to review. If a lower court produces a ruling which favors Republicans, it can stand without review. If a lower court produces a ruling which favors Democrats, the Supreme Court can step in and reverse it.
I guess we’ll see.
The destruction of a few hundred ballots isn’t enough to sway an election one way or another. Even this SCOTUS would have trouble making such a finding.
Casting unfounded doubts on the veracity of the election process is just as effective as actually disrupting the ballot counting and certification process, especially with a judiciary amenable to bias. Even if disruptors can’t rely on the 9th Circuit to exclude legitimate ballots or accept irregularities in certification, they can petition for a writ of certiorari for US Supreme Court review, and since their real purpose to put a stranglehold upon legitimate governance gumming up the works of certification is practically just about as effective as actually manipulating the results.
Stranger
All true.
They sure hate Oregon.
ETA: When I dropped my ballot off at my local drop box last week, there was no one there but me. I then followed my ballot through the website to verify it had been received for counting. (I’ll assume it will be counted.) Then a few days ago, there was a local NextDoor fuss over explosions in the town where the ballot drop box is located. I admit I worried someone was trying to destroy that drop box. Makes me very sad I have to think about stuff like this. (The explosions turned out to be the local VFW blowing off cannons whenever the high school scored a touchdown.)
Well, they hate Portland and its surrounding areas. They’re fine with southern Oregon (i.e. “The State of Jefferson”) and probably much of the eastern part of the state.
There have always been a few efforts to manipulate and stuff ballot boxes, particularly in municipalities controlled by a political machine (i.e. Chicago) but it has always been limited in scope, and advances in election security and transparency have made it all but impossible to get away with this kind of thing today, so now they are resorting to vandalism, harassment of poll workers, and this kind of nonsensical legal fuckery to “win” elections. This is some real “Third World” active electoral disruption bullshit instead of “free and fair elections” that used to be the exemplar of democracy in action.
Stranger
Or, as conservatives call it, Real Oregon.
The difference is Republican court packing. It used to be a local political machine had to keep its election fraud low level enough that the results didn’t get reviewed by higher courts. Now the goal is to get local results sent to higher courts, where Republican judges will be able to pick and choose which results they like and which they reject.
What part of “Win at any cost” are some of you having trouble understanding?
I do wonder why they are burning ballot boxes in two solidly blue states that have zero chance of going to Trump, rather than doing this in a swing state.
My notion is that they don’t like how we run elections. It’s hard to intimidate voters who don’t congregate at a polling place and who have time to consider their ballots before marking their votes. They are trying to invalidate vote-by-mail (drop box) elections.
What laws are violated here besides arson? Any Federal laws that would get the DOJ/FBI involved?
Nowadays, they’re calling it Greater Idaho.
Whoever came up with the idea (and I expect it was not something the Trump campaign or RNC came up with) obviously lives in the Portland area.
But there is a close Congressional election in SW Washington, which is where one of the drop boxes was located.