Vote While You Still Can
Challenges by Voter Vigilantes Seek to Discourage Democracy
The Big Lie has now metastasized into a crazy-quilt of efforts to discourage people from voting by disrupting the ballot casting process and/or discrediting the results, regardless of outcome.
Just in time for Halloween, the former President has launched the spookiest narrative yet about Democrats cheating at the polls. Appearing as a call-in guest on Dinesh D'Souza’s (Trump pardoned his conviction for election fraud) podcast, Trump offered up a new terrifying tale to explain his 2020 election loss.
"And then, of course they voted 6, 7, 8 times, as much as they could in the local areas. Some of the people went back, I guess, they said 28 times in one day to vote at different places with numerous votes. but they can't put in 1,000 because it wouldn't look right. They're very smart. They go in with 5 votes, 6 votes, 7 votes, and then they go to another one. But it adds up to millions of votes."
Assuming the Biden campaign found people to vote eight times, 875,000 humans risked jail to give him a 7 million vote victory. Think of the possibilities; not too far short of a million people registered up to eight names, donned disguises to fool any poll watchers, and managed to not leak the story to any media. (h/t @NewsCorpse)
What is even worse about this latest treat from the orange trickster is that a majority of Republicans will accept this information as the truth, and add it to their list of reasons to otherize anybody who doesn’t agree with them.
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In Arizona, MAGAts have taken things to another level, with armed civilians photographed surveilling ballot drop boxes. No doubt they were looking for the 2000 Mules D’Souza claims brought in arms full of ballots to drop boxes in 2020.
They didn’t find any fraud (at least there have been no press conferences yet), but have attracted felony investigations from U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, along with lawsuits filed by the League of Women Voters and two other organizations alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act.
NBC looked into the origins of what right wing social media users are calling “drop box tailgating parties.”
No such drop box fraud has ever been found in significant numbers. But that has not stopped conspiracy theories about “ballot mules” — who supposedly secretly drop off hundreds of fake ballots in the middle of the night at drop boxes or election sites nationwide — from taking hold on pro-Trump parts of the internet. The conspiracy theory got its biggest boost from the widely debunked propaganda film “2,000 Mules,” which alleges such mules somehow changed the outcome of the 2020 election, even though repeated hand counts of ballots recertified the results.
The conspiracy theories have inspired action. Users on the Twitter-like platform Truth Social, which is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, have discussed forming “mule parties” or “drop box tailgates” since at least late July, looking to organize volunteers to surveil drop boxes. On that platform, the former president’s account has shared posts by users advocating for drop box surveillance, including the Mesa drop box.
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Moore v. Harper is the right wing’s hope for a Supreme Court ruling breathing life into a fringe theory arguing for state legislatures to have special authority to set federal election rules free from interference from other parts of the state government, specifically state courts.
What this is really aimed at is the redistricting process stemming from a North Carolina supreme court decision striking down a gerrymandered congressional district map. A similar case coming out of Ohio seeks to negate a citizen referendum establishing an independent voter commission.
This is a big deal case, with 16 amicus briefs for supporting legislature control (Moore) and 48 in support of upholding the North Carolina court decision (Harper).
The right wingers desperate for a way to put their thumbs on the scale (Moore) are:
America First Legal Foundation (a group founded by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, high level staffers of former President Donald Trump);
American Legislative Exchange Council;
Honest Elections Project (a group linked to Leonard Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and right-wing funder);
Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence (brief written and submitted by John Eastman);
The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Redistricting Trust and North Carolina Republican Party and
13 Republican state attorneys general.
Amicus briefs in favor of the Harper parties include:
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), as well as a group of 20 senators led by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.);
13 Democratic secretaries of state;
22 Democratic state attorneys general;
The DOJ writing on behalf of the United States;
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)
The court will hear arguments in December, so what we’re talking about here is a ruling that will impact the 2024 election.
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In New York state, 18 Republican-controlled County Boards of Elections are refusing to obey a law requiring them to begin processing mail in and absentee in advance of election day. The GOP has filed a lawsuit challenging the statute.
The purpose of this tactic is to delay announcements of election results in order to discourage voter interest.
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The Associated Press has published the prerequisite article explaining why election results take time to become public.
In reality, however, results released on election night are unofficial and always incomplete. They inevitably change as more ballots are counted.
Unlike in many countries, elections in the U.S. are highly decentralized, complex and feature long lists of races, from president and Congress all the way down to local measures and town council seats. Some states give local election offices several weeks before Election Day to process mailed ballots, including checking signatures and verifying ID information. In other states, that process can’t start until Election Day or shortly before, meaning those ballots might not get counted until the next day or even later.
Many Republicans under the influence of Dear Leader now hold that delays in announcing ballot counts are suspicious, and mail-in ballots –which were a Republican sponsored reform in many states– are now viewed as likely to be tainted.
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A leaked tape of former Trump attorney John Eastman speaking to prospective GOP poll workers and challengers in New Mexico provides the big picture in coverage at Politico:.
The comments, outlined in a new audio recording obtained by POLITICO, suggest that Eastman and some other conservative activists see aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of individual votes as part of a larger strategy to build evidence that can be used to invalidate a county or state election…
…The marching orders given by Eastman raise the specter of a repeat of 2020’s flurry of baseless lawsuits flooding state courts sowing doubts about the integrity of elections, some of which were cited by members of local elections boards or state legislatures as reasons to refuse to certify the election. Election administration officials are already bracing for a potential deluge of poll challengers and workers inspired by a false narrative being sustained by far-right social media influencers.
The article went on to quote Mario Jimenez, a former chief deputy clerk who administered elections for 10 years in Dona Ana County, saying the instructions given to attendees by Eastman included extremely narrow, technical and sometimes simply incorrect interpretations of voting rules.
This sets the stage for election night confrontations between officials and (probably) well-intentioned poll watchers.
Eastman was the lawyer responsible for conceiving Trump’s failed strategy to defy the Electoral Count Act by having states with “disputed” vote totals send alternative slates of electors which would then be recognized by Vice President Pence.
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Fun fact: 15,802,803 early votes cast as of 10:37 p.m. Thursday, per the United States Elections Project .
Here’s a link to my Voting Guide if you want some (obviously biased) coaching.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com