Originally published at: Georgia Election Board, Beloved By Trump, Keeps Cranking Out Rules That May Sow Chaos - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Election truthers in Georgia got their latest win this week when the Republican-controlled Georgia State Election Board approved another rule that gives county election officials a new way to potentially delay certification. It’s the second time this month that the Trump-friendly board has passed a rule of this type, a particularly worrying development given how close…
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They can’t win if they don’t cheat. Think of all the barriers people have to surmount just to vote in the first place, never mind the gerrymandering, the stuffing of state governments and all the rest. Meanwhile the majority of the states that vote for the GOP are failing, every year, since the Civil War.
Our undemocratic system has been under the control of a wealthy minority playing the electoral college against the country as a whole. We have a bloated, bloody leech attached to our body politic.
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MAGA morons making it easier for MAGA moron election officials to ignore their MAGA moron voters is fine with me.
By all means, please discard the results in Hood County.
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The MAGA-Republicans seem to hope this kind of foolishness could prevent a Harris win via the Electoral College but is there any actual support for that anywhere in law or for that matter custom?
I mean if enough states certify for Harris to reach 270 electoral votes as the current status of the ‘Blue Wall’ states would suggest what is to prevent her subsequent certification in the Senate even if some states do not report?
Come to think of it, what is to prevent any given state from ignoring the tallies of tardy counties and certifying based on the certified results that were turned in? That could turn some state legislatures upside down in a way Republicans would not like.
I have no doubt MAGA-Republicans can make a real mess of things particularly in states where they have gained sufficient power but can’t see that they can do much beyond that unless they have a lot more power than I believe they do.
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I’m sure there’s info out there, but I’d really like to see some solid reporting on these end-game questions. I assume there’s a really awful GOP plan that yet more brazenly involves the kind of nefarious plotting we saw in 2020, only more so. I imagine that this time, they think there will come a point like what they planned with Pence, a point at which some person or people go ahead and cross an undemocratic Rubicon, confident that nobody can stop them.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has slammed the board’s “11th hour” rule changes as “misguided” and likely to stoke “chaos.”
Yes. That’s the intent.
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Our Democratic Republic has been mangled out of shape by “conservative” justices (though there is nothing conservative about making bribery legal, overturning half-century-plus-old laws, or stripping away public rights). These bought judges, their political apparatus (Federalist society, and the GOP), and the wanna-be oligarchs who fund them are a clear and present danger to the nation, and should be treated as such.
Elie Mystal has a pretty well thought out podcast (Contempt of Court) series on SCOTUS reforms that should be a starting point. Most of his solutions don’t require decades-long fights for Amendments to the Constitution, either.
But how do you keep the wanna-be oligarchs from fowling everything up? One way to cut this Gordian knot is to tax billionaires out of existence. 95% of every dollar of wealth over $1 billion should be taken by the government due to the danger they present to the public trust.
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Georgia: Not on my mind, and no longer peachy! Committing an insurrection in another way. Shameful!
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There may well be more to come.
Big government Republicans want more politicians poking their partisan noses in a well-run, democratic process, admitting to the world that Georgia, like Virginia and Texas, suddenly doesn’t know how to run elections.
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I’m surprised there hasn’t been a lawsuit yet, simply to get this stopped since it’s so close to the election. Maybe there’s nothing in GA law that stops changes from being made this close to an election. The point here is to try to force the election not to be certified, but I don’t know how that’s going to work with election workers who aren’t MAGA nuts…they will certify the results and ignore the nonsense. These rules are probably laying the groundwork for lawsuits where Fulton and other Democratic counties have some minor issue that doesn’t affect the election and certify anyways instead of delaying the election; they may also be angling to declare that Fulton had “irregularities” and throw all of the county votes out.
As for the bigger picture, the intent is to sow chaos across the nation by having MAGA nuts who are running elections run to the press about all of the “cheating” they have seen. They think they can cast enough doubt, and perhaps interfere in enough certification, to throw the election to the House, or else get the House or Supreme Court to unilaterally intervene and declare Trump the winner by default. It seems unlikely, the vast majority of the nation will count the votes as always, and the swing states have either Democrats in critical offices or else have shown that they will count fairly (and the GA officials will try to do so despite the nonsense they have been handed). In the end, it’s going to be like last time, with lots of lawsuits flying around trying to overturn results, throw out ballots, and generally make people not trust the election. This will not work in the courts, like last time the lawsuits will be nonsense…their only real hope is the SC decides to ignore reality and installs Trump. And, sadly, it’s not guaranteed that the SC will actually rule properly this time around, though it’s still likely that 6-7 justices will not go along with this without a large amount of cover that is very unlikely to be available.
The bigger problem is that one party has decided cheating is the only way to win…Republicans don’t care about democracy or the rule of law anymore, and they still have enough influence to cause a lot of damage. We need a big win this time around to star the process of shutting them out, and that work has to continue until they can’t force their will onto us. Maybe the party changes at that point, maybe it breaks up into the crazies and an actual party, or maybe they devolve into violence and start the civil war they so desperately want. The next six months are going to be pretty turbulent, probably more than 2020…hopefully Harris wins and Democrats hold Congress in January so things have a chance of going back to normal.
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“Any last-minute changes to the rules risk undermining the public’s trust in the electoral process and place undue pressure on the individuals responsible for managing the polls and administering the election.”
Which is its exact purpose.
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Let’s not be silly. This is meant to give them the means to fuck Atlanta and couple the claims of fraud with the largely POC and Dem identity of its voters.
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Can we just recall William Tecumseh Sherman? I feel he had the proper approach to keep Georgia in order.
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And good luck with that, given that 3 of the 5 members of the Fulton County Board of Elections are appointed by Democrats. Same in DeKalb County.
This dipshittery only works – if at all – in the deepest of red localities, and I don’t give two whits whether those MAGA voters get counted.
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Two things: (1) I’ve been saying they’ll try to whittle away at the margins in the deep red counties all along, so I guess I just don’t understand why you conclude that they’d be ignoring their MAGA moron voters, who actually want their board to rifle through the results to try to disqualify the blue votes and (2) giving red counties the ability to delay everything while other operatives file lawsuits to hold up Fulton’s certification (which the Dems on that board would likely move forward with in a timely manner) no doubt seems like a good idea from their perspective. It may give the MAGAt/FedSoc bench-clowns a chance to interfere and order the Dem boards to engage in these extra steps, etc. Ultimately, it’s all “chaos is a ladder” bullshit anyway.
I’d also want to read the rules and find out whether, when and how the commission can insert themselves into the situation if/when they claim that a particular county’s board isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. I can imagine them being one of the plaintiffs…
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Oh, so the MAGA morons want to go to prison? Instead of just counting their 81-19 MAGA margins and thereby helping their orange shitlord win the state? I thought the conspiracy was that they were going to fuck up the results by refusing to certify, not just that they were going to toss all the blue ballots and thereby invite the feds to send them to the pokey.
Fuck 'em. I don’t care if their 81-19 MAGA margin votes get counted. It’s no concern of mine if they want to punch themselves in the dick.
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We only get to send 'em to the pokey if it doesn’t work.
I am reminded that there were people who argued after January 6th, 2021, that “an unpunished attempted coup, is simply a training exercise.”
For the record: as a “liberal”, I would be so, so, so very owned if they did that.
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It’s not capable of working. That’s the fatal flaw in this stupid “plan.”
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This is a silly and deliberate misinterpretation. You deny the certification so you can then go rooting through everything during an “audit” for votes to challenge, which is why the rules also have that provision about obtaining all documents. As to them wanting to go to prison, have you been watching them happily going to prison for the past 4 years? If past is prelude, it’s not about WANTING to go to prison…it’s that their so fucking stupid, angry, racist, homophobic and demented that they can’t fucking help themselves. And just to say it again, I’m predicting their stupid, irrational and desperate behavior, not saying it makes any fucking sense or would be successful.
The smallest county in GA is probably around 1,800 people (it was 1,700+ at the last census). 81-19 might be the percentages, but when 810-190 votes magically becomes 810-75 votes after an “audit”, demands for birth certs, etc., don’t be surprised. There are 159 counties. 31 broke blue in 2020.
11,780 votes to be “found”* / 128 counties = 92 votes per county.
Tell me again they can’t whittle their way to victory if this shit is close (unlikely, but still POSSIBLE).
- And as I’ve noted previously, that shouldn’t be read literally. What they need to “find” is not votes, but vote margin. Rubber stamping provisional red ballots while putting provisional blue ballots through the ringer and rejecting others creates a 2 vote margin for every pairing of an approved red vote and rejected blue vote. Now, couple that with an overzealous desire to create larger numbers of rejected ballots to “prove” fraud was occurring…
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I suppose you’re correct… I just can’t let go of the notion that the Republican Party, as a whole, including folks who once upon a time counted as “normal” Republicans, seem all in on this scheme. They dropped their initial criticism of Trump’s coup attempt, and now they seem to be working to make it happen. So, assuming that they’re going to fail requires me to believe that all those former “normies” have suddenly become incapable of simple logical reasoning. I have insufficient data to feel deep confidence in their having recently developed actual brain-worms.
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