Temporary_Name asserted that “Republican lead legislatures” “refused to allow any mail in or absentee ballots to be counted until every vote cast on election day was counted”. Is there any factual basis for this claim?
One example from a quick Google search:
ETA: more broadly …
That source says the opposite of Temporary_Name’s claim. What was your point in citing it.
I don’t think it does say the opposite.
Republicans resisted efforts to start the early counting of absentee ballots. That’s what was asserted, and that’s what the article details.
Er… what? GOP-led legislature, check. Prohibition on starting to count mail-in ballots before Election Day, check. This is precisely this issue Temporary_Name described.
Not trying to answer for SpacemanSpiff_II here, but Temporary_Name did overstate the case somewhat.
In many states, including PA as cited and Temporary_Name’s home state of AZ, tabulating of mail-in ballots was prohibited before the opening of the polls the morning of Election Day, but this is not precisely a refusal to allow those ballots to be counted before “every vote cast on election day was counted.” In many jurisdictions, tabulating of the two classes of ballots was happening at the same time, as counting of the mail-in ballots often ran past the time when the polls closed on Election Night.
The point, though, is that the “Red Mirage” effect of deferring larger numbers of blue votes from larger jurisdictions is created by the faster reporting of smaller jurisdictions and precincts, while the suspicious-to-primed-right-wingers appearance of votes “in the middle of the night” was what was expected given the rules in place at the time.
There’s a reason why no one looking at the election and trying to call states on Election Night called those states for Donald Trump - they know which jurisdictions and which precincts hadn’t yet reported, and they knew there were likely enough votes in those jurisdictions to reverse the trend that had already been seen.
The orange guy expected Raffensberger to go out in front of the cameras and say he won by one vote? It is to laugh.
More like he expected Raffensberger to announce it was really too close to call, and then Team Trump would take care of it from there.
“Get the computer karate guys on this right away!”
His abilities as a real estate magnate be as they may, Trump is a natural actor and entertainer. If he’d just sold his dad’s business and moved to Hollywood, maybe he’d have been a far more successful man than he actually is.
But the point is, he can act and he does so when he needs it. A lot of people listen to Trump talking and decide that he’s really genuine about what he’s saying, and truly believes it - regardless of how dumb it might be - because they forget that human beings are capable of acting. When you watched that movie where the dog died and everyone got real sad, they were acting, you know? The dog didn’t actually die.
The more important thing is that he’s got a history of selling a line with complete sincerity for as long as he needs to and then turning around and saying, “Yeah, I knew all along that wasn’t real. I fooled you all! Na-hah!”
If I was a prosecutor, I’d be scouting through footage of the man to find all the varying instances of him doing that - because there’s probably quite a few.
Far more?
Maybe he would have won an Emmy, instead of losing both times he was nominated. Or maybe he still would have lost.
He instead was President of the U.S., and polls show him the front-runner to win a second term in 2024.
Sounds pretty successful to me.
I guess he would be a damaged candidate if forced to run from jail, but the law seems to be moving very slowly. Did you notice that the Georgia special grand jury can’t indict him? At most they can recommend that another grand jury consider it.
P.S. Despite the super-careful go-slow approach all relevant prosecutors are taking with DJT, he attacks Black prosecutors in Georgia and New York for racism. And, politically, that won’t hurt him a bit.
Ronald Reagan was a trained, skilled, experienced actor with a silver tongue and a gift for saying the right quip at the right time. Donald Trump isn’t that. There’s no comparison. The people who are conned by Trump are doofi extraordinaire.
So he’s no proper actor. But he is a bullshitter and a succesful one.
I mean, really, the man has made it to age 75 grifting and conning his way through different kinds of ventures of varying degrees of success while remaining unindicted and never personally bankrupted, and made an entire major political party his bitches. That suggests to me someone who is not absolutely devoid of any sort of ability, skill or guile.
He has had plenty of setbacks over the years, has been caught red handed has had to payout settlements many times. The success he has had with nearly half of the electorate is not so much a result of his abilities in my opinion but more a product of the marks who make up that political party wanting to be his bitches.
Seriously. They want to believe his bullshit is true so strongly they can convince themselves of some very questionable things and hold some very contradictory and illogical views.
I don’t want to track them down at the moment, but I’ve seen contributors to both Lawfare and Volokh Conspiracy say that they’ve found something Trump said to seem true to them based on his sincerity. E.g. that he believes he won the election, that he believed people in the FBI were out to get him, etc.
Which is why Republican legislators in some states are actually floating bills that would require vote-counting to be completed on Election Day itself, eliminating any counting of ballots after that. One of the stories quoted above mentions the “days-long” task of counting mail-in votes … Republicans would prefer to have none of that.
Make mail-in voting harder to do? Check.
Slow down the USPS so mail-in votes may not get delivered on time? Check.
Deny requests by county auditors to start counting mail-in ballots early? Check.
Mandate vote-counting stop at midnight on Election Day, guaranteeing many voters who used mail-in ballots will be disenfranchised, as their votes won’t be counted? Check.
It’s almost like the Republicans really don’t want all the votes to be counted - just the specific ones they approve of.
They can also try to pass a bill that states that only candidates approved by the Republican Party can run for office. That would be an even easier way to stay in power and isn’t really any less likely to be struck down for violating the Constitution.
I look upon the Trump/Raffensberger situation as akin to the stereotyped mob goon enforcing a protection racket.
“Nice place ya got here. Wouldn’t it be a shame if a nasty bomb went off unexpectedly?”
Did he threaten to detonate a bomb or ask for protection money to prevent it? Not in so many words. But everyone knows what the intention was. He is able to accomplish the same thing as an overt threat without the clearly illegal liability. It’s called covering your ass.
Did Trump ask Raffensberger to throw the election? Not in so many words. But can there be any doubt about what he meant?