The elections went smoothly, in every state. How did this happen?
As the bad results came in,
I expected Trump to tweet in all caps: “the election was rigged!” .
I expected to hear reports of Republican election officials refusing to certify the counts.
I expected Republicans to file court cases demanding recounts, or verifying signatures on mail-in ballots , or whatever.
I expected to see news conferences similar to Rudolph Giuliani at the Four Seasons warehouse.
I expected to see demonstrations of Maga fanatics holding signs “stop the steal” .
But no…there has been complete silence.
For years now, there has been serious discussion: That Trump and the Repubs will not honor elections. That Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are working behind the scenes to disrupt the elections. That Trump will refuse to leave the White House in 2028.
There was a lot of talk during the ICE invasion of Minneapolis that Trump was hoping for violence so that he would have an excuse to declare martial law and cancel elections,
With all the excitement about the election, I haven’t seen much comment on the most mundane–but most important!-- aspect of it : that the system worked.
Is this silence a major sign that MAGA is weakening? That democracy is safe?
It’s not over yet. It’s possible that they may refuse to seat the new legislators under some pretext or another, or barring that, Trump will just bulldoze ahead and ignore the legal fallout. There could be a major showdown coming, but what shape it will have is anyone’s guess.
Trump himself was not on the ballot, and neither he nor his hardcore supporters are going to make much of an effort on the behalf of others like Ken Paxton.
The biggest factor is - there were just too many losses across too many districts by margins too large to handle.
They were setting up challenges in individual states and locations (Alaska, California, etc) and there may be a few individual results they will try to claw back, but there was too much of a majority to set up a narrative of blue staters cheating. When even Kansas and Texas vote blue, it’s a sign the time and effort are better spent elsewhere.
I think polling showed a large number of Republicans in many states just stayed home. Maybe I’m wrong?
They couldn’t vote Dem, but didn’t want to support the healthcare cutting, starting foreign wars, gas price raising and inflationary party with too many unethical people in it even by politician standards party.
I think it was a combination of Russian, Iranian, and North Korean AI bots swaying public sentiment to influence the election by portraying the POTUS in a negative light by highlight all the things he says and does and implements as national policy.
And now he has lost his majority, in both houses. That makes Trump look like a loser. And being a loser is the one thing that Trump cannot handle. His head would explode.
Maybe he is so stupid that he doesn’t understand that he needs a majority to pass bills, and the budget? Maybe he thinks he can just sign executive orders for everything?
There were at least 2 troubling incidents in the Cleveland area as noted by Reddit posters in that sub. In one case a person selected a Democratic candidate and when they went to the next page the vote was flipped to the Republican candidate. Confirmed by a poll worker who shut down the machine.
The 2nd case was worse. When the voter reviewed their complete slate before saving it ALL Democratic votes had been removed but no Republicans to replace the. Also confirmed by a poll worker.
So how many machines did not get spotted? I guess it was to no avail anyway.
The system always worked, and we would do well to point that out to anyone who is still flogging the entirely made-up lunacy that surrounded 2020.
There was never proof anywhere at any time in 2020 that the system had failed. The usual glitches? Sure. Actual rigging? That didn’t happen except through Trump’s efforts in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and others. That’s the only rigging that ever happened, and it was successful to a sickening extent.
So except for the massive effort made by Trump and his minions to convince voters that their election systems couldn’t be trusted, 2020 was a normal election. 2022 was a normal election. 2024 was a normal election (with a shitty outcome). And 2026 was a normal election. I think all that has changed is Trump realizes he can’t flog the narrative twice, and certainly not in the face of such an overwhelming result.
For the first time in a long time, when someone says, “This was a mandate,” it actually is.
And I agree with @msmith537: We have got to get foreign interference out of our elections to the greatest extent possible.
Those were almost certainly machine glitches and not a malicious effort to rig an election.
I think the worry of rigging was always overblown, but have to understand that generally when Trump and company cry foul they legitimately believe the election was stolen from them or are just paying fealty to him. Democrats too for that matter. And in close elections it is easy to believe some conspiracy cost you the election particularly when you are surrounded with like minded individuals. But when the results are clear, like they were this time, Republicans are not going to believe they should have won and thus are not going to search for any election issues.
I did get your joke, but I do also think the undercurrent of constant input from troll farms in Russia, North Korea, Iran, China and elsewhere goes largely unaddressed and flies under the radar. In fact, it’s barely noticed. Yet it exerts a significant influence over the American public who think they can rely on places like Tik Tok, Facebook, Truth Social and others for their “news”.
I am still shell-shocked at how effective it was in 2016 and 2020. It has gone wholly unaddressed since Trump returned to the White House in 2024. I think people are more savvy about it now, but it’s still a factor and we need to really crack down on it.
Look back to 2018 when Democrats had huge gains in the midterms as well. There were very few complaints of voter fraud to my recollection, and searching back the only real controversy was in North Carolina, where it seems like there was actual voter fraud.
The reason why the system works isn’t because fraud doesn’t occur; it’s because with our protections in place, people get caught. And we have remedies in place, as we did in NC in 2018 where they made things right and declared the correct winner after dealing with the chicanery.
But yeah, outside of that actual controversy (which led to criminal charges, though the guilty party died before facing trial) there wasn’t much in the way of claiming election fraud. That’s because it really is only a Trump problem, and as you say Trump wasn’t on the ballot this time.
The Alaska senate race could be interesting to keep an eye on. The ranked choice system there is likely to give the win to the Republican, the real Dan Sullivan. It looks like no candidate will make the 50% threshold. The second choices of the also-rans will be added. One of those is another republican. It’s hard to know what Dan the teacher is. We should expect that most of those second choices are R’s.
el donald’s best move is to just sit back and let it happen. There are some less-than-sane reasons why he would not but, mental health is not his strong point.
Competent advisors would tell him to just let it go. el donald is not known for listening.
Competence seems to be carefully avoided in this administration. He may not have let anyone in who sees it and points it out to him.
He cultivates ignorance. A smart move is just not his style.
I can’t say for sure about Alaska, but in most RCV systems I know about if there’s no majority winner, they start with the lowest vote-getter and distribute their voters’ second choices to the top two, not all of the also-rans. That means that the “fake” Sullivan’s votes would be first.
As as I asked before, who would be those people’s second choice? I dunno.
