Let’s say that the 2020 presidential election is “stolen” by the candidate and party that you oppose (either Trump and the R’s, or Biden and the D’s.) They steal the election in a way that is brazenly unethical, obvious, and visible for all to see. (I won’t provide an actual scenario, lest there be nitpicking over the nuts and bolts of it, but just roll with the hypothetical: The election is stolen with a capital S, in a way so obvious and blatant that nobody can deny it, utter robbery, cheating as publicly as can be.) Furthermore, the Supreme Court and every other legal institution is perfectly OK with it; they are fully in on the theft.
What would you do about it?
Writing a sternly-worded email or phoning one’s Congressman obviously would not suffice in such a situation. Would you take up arms (but even then, where and against who)? Emigrate and leave the US?
Having been through the Bush v. Gore debacle, one could make the argument that we have seen this in real life. So, what would I do? What I did last time - I would bitch about it to like minded souls, mostly.
An administration that stole an election is not likely to be any worse than one that didn’t, and would quite possibly be better. Al Gore and Hillary should have stolen theirs.
Probably better to keep an eye on whoever your Combatant Commander is(for the continental US, it’s USAF Gen. VanHerck as commander of NORTHCOM), as the JCS don’t actually have command responsibility in the sense of ordering units to do X, Y or Z.
In other words, Milley can say “Hey, we don’t like that”, but he can’t actually order NORTHCOM or SOCOM to actually deploy anywhere. That’s left for Sec. Esper to do at the President’s behest.
So I’d imagine that any sort of active-duty involvement would be interesting as a result.
That sounds weirdly Trumpish, in that it’s saying that the ends justify the means.
Which is part and parcel of our problem these days; Trump/the GOP is willing to trash our existing democratic institutions just for the sake of staying in power.
Stealing the 2000 election would have been similar, except usurping power for the same reason.
Well, to me it’s not just about the probability that any given administration will be good or bad.
It’s that if someone is willing to break the rules of a fair and free election, then what other rules (I suppose I should say laws) are they willing to break?
And before you say “all politicians are corrupt criminals, blah blah blah,” no. Not to that degree. I don’t want somebody in power who stole an election because they would clearly be focused more on their own power than on the good of their constituents.
What rules? The states have very wide latitude to choose their electors any way they like, no two states are the same. All of them have details that you or I are free to consider “free and fair”. Nowadays, state incumbent legislatures consider it their duty to bias voting rules as much as they can