Originally published at: The Supreme Court and California’s Election Deniers Are on the Same Page About (at Least) One Thing - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Republicans Ramp Up Election Denial in California Just Before Suspiciously Related SCOTUS Decision Drops Two things are happening at the same time: 1) President Donald Trump and his stooges are becoming increasingly shrill about the “election fraud” that they insist explains a very liberal city advancing two Democrats to the general election and 2) the…
Why pay Bari all that money when I could ruin CBS and CNN for much less? More to the point, does she realize that that is the plan–that she’s a “plausible if you’re not paying attention” hire who management firmly expects to fail and, in so doing, remove two more independent sources of news?
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Fascists are invidious and insidious.
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The GOP is yelling ‘the sky is falling’. I don’t think we ever got the final results of an election on election day/evening. We do hear about the projected winner.
So the question: if there is widespread fraud going on in CA, just how will they prove it if it is so bad it will be hard to prove?
Per The New Republic:
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli—who oversees 500 attorneys—went on *The Glenn Beck Program*on Monday to beg listeners to help him find evidence of election fraud.
Crowd sourcing
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Law prof Leah Litman, in her book Lawless, highlights the screaming inconsistency between the election cases that justify anti-democratic election administration rules as necessary to maintain “public confidence” in elections, and the campaign finance cases that flatly reject “the appearance of corruption” as a basis for regulation of money in electoral politics. Litman’s refrain is “It’s not law, it’s vibes.” And the Court’s sensitivity to the vibes depends almost entirely on the political party or economic actor that emits them.
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They don’t need to prove anything; they just need to get a brain-dead press corpse (sic) to parrot their outrageous claims as if they somehow were newsworthy.
(Spoiler: They’re not – and American journalism once understood the difference between a story and a steaming, stinking pile.)
Republicans have learned to play our plasticized, coiffed and manicured, obscenely-overpaid Ken and Barbie doll stenographers like a freaking fiddle.
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I am a California born and bred voter, and I offer a simple way to solve California’s vote counting “problem”: Pass a state law that mandates that NO election results are released to the public or press until 98% of votes have been counted.
There is no “public right to know” along the way, the results are released when they are final!
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I’ve had this proposal out there for a long time.
Here’s how it goes:
Midterms and Presidential election campaigns cannot begin until 1 January of the year in which the election takes place. No ads, no rallies, nothing until 1 January. Any violations DQ’s the candidate.
A one-day primary, same day throughout the country; general election is already same day.
No election results are released until Alaska and Hawaii polls are closed. Doesn’t mean votes can’t be counted in that time period, but no results are released until those polls are closed.
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Modest Proposal: Rather than refusing to count ballots that the post office sat on, which when you think about it would allow the post office to effectively swing any election by delaying ballots from particular neighborhoods, and all sorts of other unconstitutional nonsense, why don’t we instead make it unlawful for any precinct to report the votes until they have counted 99% of the expected votes, or 72 hours after the election, whichever is longer.
Let’s normalize a 3-day wait before we get the results. Let’s normalize a little bit of goddamn patience.
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I don’t think that works. Candidates would only spend their time and ad dollars in the critical swing states. A longer primary season lets candidates travel the country and let voters know who they are, over the course of the primary season.
Any condensed electoral cycle also tends to favor the candidates who are the most well-funded. Spread it out over more months, and insurgent candidates have more time to raise money from momentum.
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Let me ask you how many people actually go to rallies anymore. I know the Trumpers do, but on the whole do the rest of us go if given a chance? What does going on-site anywhere really do anymore? Creates a lot of chaos, maybe. It may be time to change how campaigning actually goes in this digital age, especially since, once elected, we never see them again until the next election.
Stupidity sheild.
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Any Democratic Politician when Confronted by a member of the media must immediately cut them off at the knees.
Reporter: What is your answer to the Republicans who said that there was massive voter…
Dem Politician: There is no fraud. It is a lie.
Reporter: But what about…
Dem Politician: There is NO fraud. There is no proof of fraud. If you and the rest of the media would report the truth instead of repeating Republican lies the country would be a lot better off
Reporter: The President has said…
Dem Politician: The President lies. He lies all the time. Why will you not call out his lies? Report the news. Its suppose to be your job
Reporter: I am not saying that I…
Dem Politician: What are you saying? Where is the proof? Why are you pushing his lies? Are you on the President’s payroll?
CUT THEM OFF AT THE F*CKING KNEES. Do not fence with the media. No legitimacy. None. And do it over and over again.
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I’d like to see the entire campaign season where this dialogue happens with every candidate in every press interaction where this topic is raised.
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So why is Trump and his gang trying to wreck the World Cup ?
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Fellow life long Californian too. The utter b.s. is tiresome. I hate when early results are plastered on screens just to learn they’re showing 10% of returns. 58 counties and about 23 million registered voters this time around and suddenly there’s a problem. Why others are having nervous breakdowns, is confounding. We’re the folks who have to live with the results. My concern is the proposition requiring ID to vote and requiring a PIN for mail-in ballots.
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