United States Politics Thread 46

[Karch]

I'm pissed off that the right wing is using the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre as an excuse to attack Black Live Matter and the left in general while downplaying that the person who committed it is a serial domestic abuser, which ought to be far more relevant than that he posted some Black Lives Matter-type content in the past, which ought to be irrelevant.

The person was also a Black Hebrew Israelite (or at least expressed support for their ideas), which is more relevant than him posting BLM stuff in the past.

[Raphael]

So, right now it looks like the most likely chain of events is

1) In 2021 and 2022, right-wingers who are determined never to certify a Democratic candidate's victory no matter how voters vote get themselves elected to vote-counting and vote-certifying positions throughout the USA, getting enough power to ensure that no Democratic nominee for national office or, in many places, for state and local office can be certified winner,

and

2) no matter how people actually vote in 2024, Donald Trump or whoever else the GOP nominates that year is declared and certified as the winner of that election.

Anyone got any ideas on what to do about that?

[bradrn]

So, right now it looks like the most likely chain of events is

1) In 2021 and 2022, right-wingers who are determined never to certify a Democratic candidate's victory no matter how voters vote get themselves elected to vote-counting and vote-certifying positions throughout the USA, getting enough power to ensure that no Democratic nominee for national office or, in many places, for state and local office can be certified winner,

and

2) no matter how people actually vote in 2024, Donald Trump or whoever else the GOP nominates that year is declared and certified as the winner of that election.

Anyone got any ideas on what to do about that?

I’m not American, but this sounds extremely unlikely to me, bordering on impossible. It honestly sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything else. Why do you suspect this will happen?

[Vardelm]

I’m not American, but this sounds extremely unlikely to me, bordering on impossible. It honestly sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything

Maybe because that's what's actually happening? For example...

[bradrn]

I’m not American, but this sounds extremely unlikely to me, bordering on impossible. It honestly sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything

Maybe because that's what's actually happening? For example...

Sure, I’m not arguing that there’s iffy things going on with voter suppression. (They’re trying to export it to Australia now, thankfully without too much success so far.) I just don’t think it will be nearly enough to force one particular result ‘no matter how people actually vote in 2024’ — even an honest-to-goodness attempted coup couldn’t do that. And I’m not sure there’ll be enough political will to do what they did once Trump has been gone for four years.

Besides, note that currently they’re ‘just’ trying to control how people vote. If they truly believed they could override the voters’ will, they wouldn’t even bother with that.

[Raphael]

I just don’t think it will be nearly enough to force one particular result ‘no matter how people actually vote in 2024’ — even an honest-to-goodness attempted coup couldn’t do that.

The 2020 coup attempt failed partly because too many of those Republican officeholders whose complicity would have been needed had spent most of their careers in the time before Trump and still had some respect for laws and elections left. My impression is that Republican primary voters are currently in the process of removing that obstacle.

And I’m not sure there’ll be enough political will to do what they did once Trump has been gone for four years.

I don't think that in 2024, Trump will have been "gone for four years". There's a very good chance that he'll be the Republican nominee; if not, it's pretty much certain that the Republican nominee will be someone in his mold.

Besides, note that currently they’re ‘just’ trying to control how people vote. If they truly believed they could override the voters’ will, they wouldn’t even bother with that.

I guess from their perspective, there's nothing wrong with having several approaches or strategies going at the same time. Besides, I'm not claiming that most of them consciously think of themselves as Evil People proudly stroking their goatees and conspiring to override the voters' will. They, or at least most of their base (officeholders might be more opportunistic) see themselves as brave fighters for election integrity, by which they mean elections in which their side wins. Because, you see, they are so absolutely convinced that The People, or at least the part of The People that should matter, are on their side, that they simply can't imagine that their side could lose an election without something fishy going on. Which is why I think that many of their elected elections officials, at least the ones newly elected now or in the near future, will simply refuse to certify elections that their side lost.

[zompist]

Here's a Politifact roundup of several such attempts. Their summary: some haven't gone anywhere, some are "speculative". The latter category includes the Georgia law which "gives power to the state election board to suspend local election officials", and an Arizona law which will "strip authority for handling election-related litigation from the secretary of state (who is currently a Democrat) and hand it to the attorney general (who is currently a Republican)". Another hot Republican item is to conduct "audits", thought much-hyped Arizona one accomplished nothing. (This is the one which featured attempts to scan ballots for bamboo, because Republicans were afraid of Chinese influence, and apparently anything touched by the Chinese is contaminated with bamboo.)

It's hard to know how seriously to take these things. None of them are good, and the general tendency is to try to disempower officials (who usually, partisan or not, want to do their jobs) and empower legislators (who can go full conspiracy theorist). But a lot depends on how the election actually goes in 2020.

Arguably what Trump and the Republicans hoped for in 2016 was an exact repeat of 2000, when contested votes in a single state could be escalated right up to the Supreme Court, which would have handed Trump a win. But just as wars do not neatly repeat the last war, elections don't either. Rather than everything hinging on one state by less than 1000 votes, there were four states that were fairly close, but none of them with a margin less than 10,000.

So they're gearing up now for a repeat of 2020, trying to strengthen their shenanigans capabilities in those same four states. Maybe it works, but 2024 is not likely to be an exact repeat of 2020.

[bradrn]

(This is the one which featured attempts to scan ballots for bamboo, because Republicans were afraid of Chinese influence, and apparently anything touched by the Chinese is contaminated with bamboo.)

I really hope you’re joking about this.

[zompist]

(This is the one which featured attempts to scan ballots for bamboo, because Republicans were afraid of Chinese influence, and apparently anything touched by the Chinese is contaminated with bamboo.)

I really hope you’re joking about this.

You can't satirize current US politics. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... audit-2020

[Raphael]

That's all worrying enough, but I'm especially worried about the "get yourself elected to a position where your signature is needed to certify election results, and then refuse to sign any certificates for Democratic Party winners" approach, which doesn't even require changes in laws.

[alynnidalar]

If you're talking about local election officials, then it will surely set your mind at ease to know that out of over three thousand counties/boroughs (as well as some cities/townships that run their own elections) in the United States, as far as I can discover, literally none actually refused to certify the results of the 2020 election. Were there a few election board members here and there who voted against certifying their specific county/city/township's results? Yes, however in every case I could find, they either were outvoted or changed their votes to agree to certify. (there are also a very small number of instances where counties missed certification deadlines, but these would seem to genuinely be "we took too long to count votes", not a deliberate attempt to avoid certifying)

So forgive me if I say it's just a little bit hyperbolic to suggest in only four years we would go from "literally no counties/cities/townships refused to certify election results" to "enough counties/cities/townships refused that it actually had a major impact on the outcome of a given election". Personally I am a great deal more concerned about efforts to restrict voting rights in general (and efforts to shift the certification process to legislatures rather than local officials) than I am about the idea that thousands of local election officials will abruptly begin refusing to certify elections in a coordinated way.

(Frankly I see the "corrupt local level election official single-handedly overturns elections" as about as big a problem as "fraudulent ballots get accepted in massive numbers"; that is, they sound very scary until you realize they don't actually happen.)

[Vardelm]

If you're talking about local election officials, then it will surely set your mind at ease to know that out of over three thousand counties/boroughs (as well as some cities/townships that run their own elections) in the United States, as far as I can discover, literally none actually refused to certify the results of the 2020 election. Were there a few election board members here and there who voted against certifying their specific county/city/township's results? Yes, however in every case I could find, they either were outvoted or changed their votes to agree to certify. (there are also a very small number of instances where counties missed certification deadlines, but these would seem to genuinely be "we took too long to count votes", not a deliberate attempt to avoid certifying)

So forgive me if I say it's just a little bit hyperbolic to suggest in only four years we would go from "literally no counties/cities/townships refused to certify election results" to "enough counties/cities/townships refused that it actually had a major impact on the outcome of a given election".

This wasn't a focus for 2020, whereas it's something that's definitely being pursued for 22, 24, & beyond. They don't need to affect all 3000; only enough in key battleground states to change the outcome.

Personally I am a great deal more concerned about efforts to restrict voting rights in general (and efforts to shift the certification process to legislatures rather than local officials) than I am about the idea that thousands of local election officials will abruptly begin refusing to certify elections in a coordinated way.

I sort of see the certification process as being part of the same effort as running for various local & state boards. But yeah, restriction of voting rights is a very concerning issue, and is more immediate since it is being perpetrated right now.

[Moose-tache]

We sometimes forget that the Right is almost as much of a squirming rat's nest of competing ideologies as the Left. The slick, 22 year old evildoers from 8kun are eventually going to have to funnel their backdoor coup through the conservative apparatchiks who actually run elections, both as state officials and as community volunteers, and I have noticed a few facts about every such person I have ever met.

First, every single one of them is at least nine thousand years old, and still thinks it's weird that actors and Catholics are allowed to be president.
Second, they have a level of obsession with propriety and procedure usually reserved for Monty Python skits.
And lastly, they are dead certain that their highly fetishized notion of American Democracy(R) rests solely on their able shoulders.

You can get Madison Cawthorn to push a law disenfranchizing half the country, but good luck trying to get Earl from the VFW hall to throw out ballots because of "feminist hypergamy."

[Vardelm]

First, every single one of them is at least nine thousand years old, and still thinks it's weird that actors and Catholics are allowed to be president.

If they're all 9000 years old, there's a high statistical probability that they will mostly or entirely die out by 2024. If not, I want to know more about their diet & nutritional supplements.

[Raphael]

We sometimes forget that the Right is almost as much of a squirming rat's nest of competing ideologies as the Left. The slick, 22 year old evildoers from 8kun are eventually going to have to funnel their backdoor coup through the conservative apparatchiks who actually run elections, both as state officials and as community volunteers,

Or they can replace them through primaries or other elections. And they seem to be on it. That said, alynnidalar is, of course, completely right about voter suppression.

[alynnidalar]

They don't need to affect all 3000; only enough in key battleground states to change the outcome.

How many people do you suppose need to end up on election boards or elected as sheriffs or county clerks or whatever for this to have an actual meaningful impact on the election? Five? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Remember, we are starting from zero counties/etc. refusing to certify. It would take a monumental effort to go from "literally every single county/etc. in the nation certifies" to "at least dozens of locations refuse to certify, and nobody makes them" in four years.

I'm also still uncertain how refusing to certify on a local level would actually change the outcome of the election. If a local place refused to certify, it wouldn't mean everybody throws up their hands and decides that's that. There's legal processes that would get involved here. There would be court cases. There would be audits. Refusing to certify an election on a local level might temporarily slow down the electoral process, but the people who certify votes are (generally) not the ones who count the votes; it's a very decentralized process. In no way is it a straight path from "Joe Shmo in Georgia refuses to certify -> Donald Trump wins", as much as Trumpists desperately wished it was in 2020.

(in fact, it's somewhat unclear whether local vote certification has meaning at all, in a lot of ways. In the rather infamous Wayne County situation (where a bipartisan board of canvassers in Michigan temporarily had a tied vote on whether to certify), if they had not ultimately voted to certify, the whole matter would have gotten turned over to the Board of State Canvassers. Again we're back to the state level, not local. I imagine most other states would have similar provisions.)

And that's not even getting into the legal challenges! Republicans did an awful lot of that in 2020 and there's no reason why Democrats couldn't do the same; I don't mean just the court cases (which the Republicans ended up losing, to be fair) but the vote audits, many of which were in fact performed. (all of these ultimately supported the certified results, but if election officials were performing shenanigans, this would be the primary tool to prove it)

So no, it's not as simple as "get a few extremists on local election boards and then refuse to certify elections you don't like."

[Moose-tache]

I'm not sure why we're so concerned about the GOP taking over the White House anyway. They've already demonstrated that they can use the legislature to take over the entire apparatus of government.

Step 1: no Democratic president is allowed to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court.
Step 2: wait ten to fifteen years.
Step 3: proceed with partisan gerrymandering, now safe from any challenge from the Supreme Court
Step 4: profit!

This is all assuming the Democrats get their act together and even make a legally compelling case against partisan gerrymandering, which so far they haven't done. So the chart could simply be:

How to Take Over America If You're the Republican Party:
Step 1: nothing

As long as the GOP is secure in its Congressional power, it's pretty trivial who the president is. During the six years that Obama spent facing off against a Republican majority, his only achievement was getting really good at Twitter and golf. All of this elaborate conspiracy about infiltrating the electoral process is unnecessary when the vote doesn't matter and the winner doesn't matter and nothing matters.

[Raphael]

Problem is, that's apparently not how Republicans perceive things. They seem to think that they're the ones who are constantly under siege. And their perception of what's going on, as weird as it might seem to you and me, will probably have a bigger impact on their actions than your or my perception of what's going on.

[Moose-tache]

Nothing I said is incompatible with a dilusional victim complex.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

dilusional

Is a "delusion" termed "dilusional" because of how it "dilutes" the functions of the mind?