Agreed. He surrounds himself with scumbags and cheats. That list is his top tier of conmen. It’s time to call in the bench!
To be clear: I don’t doubt there will be cheating and attempts at cheating by the GOP in this election. However, I remain convinced they are incredibly inept and will be easy to catch.
Defeat for the Democrats can only happen by their own stupidity. So far they are doing a damn good job but I have no doubt they could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
New House.
If the actual vote is close, then Trump will win. There are enough voter suppression tactics, ballot-tossing in red states, legislatures willing to do whatever it takes, to make sure that a close vote goes to Trump. And, if he’s in the lead and there are more votes to be counted (mail in or disputed ballots), he will demand that the counting stops and the red state legislatures will do that, just like they did in Florida in 2008. And the Supreme Court will either stay out of it or agree to stopping the count, just like they did in Florida. The Court is more in the pocket of Republicans now than it ever was, with hacks like Kavanaugh on the bench.
If Biden doesn’t win by a large margin, we’ll have four more years of corruption, lying, and so on.
Thanks.
I think you misspelled “indefinite future under the new Emergency Decrees adopted in Feb 2021”.
Yeah, could be. It seems over-the-top, but lots of over-the-top things have happened, so who knows?
Yesterday, the Republican Senate issued a report that would have destroyed a different president, and it’s in the news for 2 hours.
I mean, Trump’s already claiming publicly that he deserves more than two terms.
If it’s close, something like this will happen:
This could be the beginning of a civil war.
The Electoral College is slated to meet to cast ballots on Monday December 14, 2020. That is 41 days after the election. The date is set by a federal law. Presumably the date could hypothetically be changed over a threatened veto if enough members of Congress cooperated.
Of concern, the primaries in New York State were still counting ballots after more than 41 days. So a somewhat real possibility is that one or more states will still be counting ballots come Dec 14th and not have results with which to appoint their slate of electors. That would toss it to the legislature(s) of that/those state(s). Ugliness would almost certainly ensue.
The relevant portion of the 12th Amendment regarding counting of electoral votes in the House reads:
“The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.”
That leaves some room for interpretation. If a state is still counting ballots and has not appointed their slate of electors then is the needed threshold now lower than 270 to win? If not then it is more likely to get thrown to the House which likely favors Trump.
To put some numbers to my hypothetical…
Suppose Michigan (with 17 Electoral Votes) is the last state still counting ballots come December 14 and they are not done. The hypothetical results without Michigan is Trump 262 and Biden 259 with exit polling predicted a narrow Biden win in Michigan.
The state legislature in Michigan presently has Republican control of both the state house and senate.
So, if the ballot count is not done imagine the Republican controlled MI legislature voting to stop the ballot counting and appoint a Trump slate. Chaos ensues. The Democratic governor issues a veto.
The MI legislature goes to court citing the Constitution’s vesting of the power to appoint electors to the legislatures of the various states. MI Supreme Court rules 4-3 (in line with the party affiliation the governors who appointed the judges) that the veto is not valid and the state legislature’s appointment of Trump electors stands.
The Biden campaign brings as appeal to the SCOTUS citing 14th Amendment Equal protection or whatever they can think of to try to force a continuation of ballot counting so his win can be certified.
Could make 2000 Bush v Gore look like a congenial tea party.
Not anymore…
But will catching them be enough. Suppose simultaneous bomb scares are phoned into multiple polling places in Democratic strong holds in Wisconsin, and Florida, and unmarked federal agents show up to secure the perimeter and prevent anyone from entering. As a result Trump pulls off a narrow victory in those states. Later its shown that some member of the Trump campaign called in the threats, and there is a paper trail leading to Barr showing he had federal agents at the ready before the threats were called in.
Obviously this was cheating, but the votes are already cast and counted. The court can’t just arbitrarily hand the victory over to Biden. It isn’t clear that Trump wouldn’t have won despite the interference. Ideally Trump would be immediately impeached, or the state legislature would call for a do-over, but what if they say, just say “tut, tut that was very bad form we condemn these actions most strongly, but its old news, the election is called and its time to move on.”
One can hope I end up being 100% wrong on that post. Miller in handcuffs would be delightful.
Not sure where to post this. This thread seems like as good a place as any.
Why this matters : Way more Democrats will vote by mail than Republicans, due to fears of the coronavirus, and it will take days if not weeks to tally these. This means Trump, thanks to Republicans doing almost all of their voting in person, could hold big electoral college and popular vote leads on election night.
Longish (longer than usual Axios articles) and pretty interesting article that plays out several voting scenarios. Not paywalled.
The Dems will not be able to go to bed and sleep easily on election night.