Originally published at: This Year, Nearly Everyone’s On The Same Page: GOP Gets To Work Early To Delegitimize Election
Ahead of the upcoming election, Donald Trump’s allies are advancing a more organized, more calculated version of their misinformation strategy from 2020. Like in 2020, these allies are attempting to delegitimize the election before it’s even happened. But unlike last time, their strategy is emerging early, a contrast from the throw-everything-at-the-wall approach in 2020 that…
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“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
Martin Luther King
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Unspoken Republican rules:
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If the truth just won’t do, lie.
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If you can’t win fairly, cheat.
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When all you’ve got is cheating, all the world is a scam.
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This, straight from the mouth of the father of modern Republican conservatism.
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Paul Weyrich became severely ill in his later years. He died in excruciating pain. And yet, somehow, I’m pretty okay with that.
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All I see is the money.
Between negating preclearance in racist states that went on to act exactly to type, to claiming unions would match corporate spending, John Roberts birthed a million malignant ships stuffed with cash.
And no oversight. You had to take his word as read, and there would never be a facility to provide a response to the error. John Roberts was the architect.
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touting supposedly “staggering” evidence that would prove that close to 50,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in Georgia
Obviously, Georgia has been a red state for too long.
Have a real Party, Georgia. Vote the Democratic ticket.
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This from the Washington Post:
“PHOENIX — A key election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County plans to ask the state’s highest court as early as Tuesday to prohibit nearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local races this fall after discovering that the state has no record of asking them for documents proving their U.S. citizenship.”
It is telling how the Republican Maricopa County election official’s default response to their own mistake is to deny people their right to vote.
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No! Don’t emulate the lack of empathy and compassion of Republicans. That’s just getting down in their mud puddle.
It’s like mud wrestling a pig, you both get dirty but the pig likes it.
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“So what we see are those who are…"
Russian sympathizers?
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Even registering to vote let alone attempting to vote as a non-citizen will put one in prison ahead of trump
18 U.S. Code § 1015
(f) Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or claim that he is a citizen of the United States in order to register to vote or to vote in any Federal, State, or local election (including an initiative, recall, or referendum)—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
A lot of non-citizens here legally are very aware of this. The price is way too high to try to vote illegally.
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“There are people that want to succeed where they failed last time,” David Levine, an election integrity consultant and former elections administrator, told TPM. “And I think one of the things about 2020 was that the effort to cast doubt on the election and to subvert it was in some respects ham-handed, disorganized and last minute.”
What I get out of this, and I am not as sure as Republicans and Trump seem to be, is that Republicans and Trump expect to lose the 2024 election.
I really hope this is the one thing they get right.
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CJ Roberts disputes your (obviously correct) observation:
“Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions. . . . Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” - CJ Roberts in Shelby County v Holder
Roberts, doing his judicial version of Trumpian blame shifting, approvingly adopts “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
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Lying without consequence is another strategy for these folks. How can we combat these lies?
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That’s a tough row to hoe because even blatant lies fall within the 1st Amendment protections of freedom of speech and press. The cult members accept the lies as absolute truth when spoken by Trump and his enablers then reinforced when they are repeated ad nauseam by Fox, et al.
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It seems to me that a significant component of a strategy to deligitimize election results would be to manipulate polling data in the lead up to the election. Of course, a single manipulated poll could be excluded from the average as an anomaly if it was far off from all the others, but if more than one poll was manipulated, it could significantly influence the polling averages, and bolster arguments that the election is rigged and that the results are invalid. That said, I have no idea how one would manipulate polling data and don’t know if it’s possible to manipulate the more reputable ones. But I do suspect that there are many ways to manipulate polling data such as changing sampling methodology that are less obvious than actual altering or discarding responses. I’m not sure what can be done about this other than discouraging ourselves (and anyone who will listen) of the limited predictive value of any individual poll and to make sure that we don’t fall into despair over the near certainty that the GOP will refuse to acknowledge any other outcome than their desired one.
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Seems it is mortally dangerous in Lebanon to visit the local market for food because the pager the guy next to you has in his hand might blow up
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The Georgia State Election Board does not count or certify votes. The local superintendents of elections do the counting and certifying, and they transmit their numbers to the Secretary of State.
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That’s what Rasmussen is for.
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