I’m not trying to minimize the conduct by the California GOP, and I agree, certain voters may have used them. I was only indicating my hope that the job for the California BOE would not be too onerous for them to track down those voters that used the fake boxes.
I did check to see when ballots were mailed in California. It was on October 4th, so there are probably more ballots in those boxes than I wished. A big unnecessary headache for the BOE.
You’d think so, but a lot of these people believe Hillary was running a child-sex ring in a pizza parlor and that Q is exposing the deep state that is really controlling America. It’s a pretty small step to think that the deep state is so practiced at fraud that it is hard to spot, while the GOP operatives have been recently led astray and don’t know how to properly do the crime.
I was talking more mainstream voter, than the crazy far right voter.
As I said, the strategy probably will work on a number of their followers.
This case may not be an example of that. They DID get caught, and the state Attorney General and Secretary of State ARE on the case. Both are Democrats, so they’re not impotent and they aren’t going to sweep it under the rug.
They’ve issued a cease-and-desist order. (Why they give them until Thursday to comply is beyond me. The order ought to demand they cease-and-desist immediately.) They have to submit a list of names of every ballot they harvested, and surrender all the ballots they still have. (I think they should also confiscate every one of those boxes immediately.) Nothing in the order rules out further investigation and legal action.
The specific individuals involved, at least some of them, are known. They might end up in deep shit.
The story is getting big play. They nationwide mainstream media are on it. A quick google search shows headlines at Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, even the British tabloids are on this story.
We are in Round 1 of this - next is the refusal to comply and the “argue strenuously against the law and enforcement agency” phase. The likely narrative will be that the GOP is being attacked and victimized by the bad old Democratic run State of California, and that voting is “rigged” because they can’t set up their boxes!!!.
(I should really sign up to be a GOP operative. There is big money to be made there…)
I fully expect that officials who sympathize will let this crap drag out until after the election(aka “With all due process”).
Which is the rule of law party again?
The state AG and SoS should order those boxes confiscated IMMEDIATELY and then the Republicans can fight it in the courts.
Shoot first and ask questions afterward.
The GOP has defied the cease-and-desist order and is refusing to comply.
They did say they would take down any “Official” signs, however.
California has its own racketeering laws though, as I’m sure most or all states do.
Their intention is not to “get away with it”. Their intention is to sow seeds of doubt in the whole process, to be able to say(if the election doesn’t go their way) “There are too many incidents of fraud and possible fraud to accept this election as legit.” It just a continuation of their strategy to fuck up the government as much as possible to bolster their claim that government doesn’t work.
Makes sense. I never really thought about it, and I don’t recall ever seeing a charging document that included those statutes. Thanks for pointing it out.
I don’t see how RICO statutes would apply in any case, since money doesn’t appear to be involved. Still, I believe the California AG has deemed what they are doing to be illegal, so they can’t just let it pass. And Xavier Becerra is hardly a shrinking violet from what I know of him. He has a reputation for winning his cases.
Yeah, I didn’t even look at whether they apply. I just think people forget about state laws sometimes, and wanted to point this one out.
I am far from an expert and I often have reason to regret when I speak off the cuff, but it seems to me that votes while not money are some sort of items of value aren’t they? By extension a political party would “profit” by controlling votes which are the very definition of the coin of the realm in politics.
It seems like corruption (isn’t that what RICO statutes are?) can be easily demonstrated because they have accomplished AT LEAST one of the following:
The illegal harvesting is blatant and obvious, that should be a given. The corruption is a second moral failing and should be punished even more vigorously than the primary offense.
The third moral failing is to call themselves the “law and order” party while demonstrating the most determined desire to break the rules and cheat whether technically legal or not. I cannot begin to express my disgust with the current president, his party (which was also my party -and technically still is), and any operative who support any of them. I am a long way from believing the Democratic Party is perfect and blameless in all matters – but there is no doubt which party holds the moral high ground at this time in history and it sure as hell isn’t the GOP.
I have never been more sincere about a political opinion then when I say I hope the Republican Party either corrects itself within six months of Biden’s inauguration — or they disband, die off, then burn in the lowest level of hell for their blatant corruption.
Forgive me for the diatribe. Trump and his allies have done what no Democrat was able to do for over 25 years. They have made me a progressive and led me to deeply suspect all Republicans everywhere. (And doubt the intelligence of anyone who supports Trump or any current GOP office holder.)
I’m wondering where the OP gets their news because it’s been everywhere I look.
I wonder if it’ll actually work. There are more and more people who are turning their backs on the GOP. My mom, for example, a die hard republican, told me she wasn’t sure how she was going to vote. She’s never voted anything but Republican and said that while she still prefers the republican policies she doesn’t think she can bring herself to vote for Trump, as a person (and presumably for BS like this). I don’t know what she ended up doing, but she seemed to get a little bit of relief when I mentioned that she can vote for Biden this year and vote R again in 4 years when we have someone saner (than Trump).
Really and truly, someone in her position probably should have voted Jo Jorgenson, but as long as she was leaning towards Biden, we didn’t need to go down that road.
Having said that, while Trump has his ‘base’ that we always talk about. Not everyone that voted for him the first time around mindlessly agrees believes every word that comes out of his mouth/party. The hard part is getting them to vote him out of office. Even shifting them over to libertarianism will help the left. Every vote for Jorgenson is a vote for Biden.
By itself-probably not…but it isn’t the only crap being pulled, is it?
In red states, that is probably true. In purple states, voting 3rd party instead of for Biden can lead to a Trump victory (see Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016). Although a lot of that was people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary after 40 years of tearing her down, and Biden doesn’t have that problem.
No it’s certainly not, but my point (albeit, lost in that post) was that a lot of this crap is pretty transparent. And, while plenty of people see it as an means to an ends, more and more people are questioning how they’re going to vote. Even if all this benefits them, they know it’s not fair or right.
I fear the problem is deeply embedded within the GOP. It is not confined to a few bad apples like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. It take more than one or two election cycles out of power for the Republican Party to do any soul searching or change their ways.
If history is any guide, it will take at least 3 lost Presidential Elections before they change their tune.