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election denial
'That's What Demagogues Do': Sanders Warns Trump Will Prematurely Claim Victory
"That's how you move a country toward an authoritarian form of society," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Nov 05, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned on the eve of Tuesday's presidential contest that no matter what the initial vote tallies show, Republican nominee Donald Trump will declare victory—just as he did four years ago—in an attempt to sow chaos and confusion as election workers tabulate the results of what's expected to be a razor-close race.
"Donald Trump, early on in the evening, will declare, 'Hey, I've won this election, and if there's any state that I lost, it's because of voter fraud,'" Sanders (I-Vt.), who has backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, predicted in a video message to the nation released on Monday.
"That's what demagogues do," the senator added, "and that's how you move a country toward an authoritarian form of society."
Watch:
Sanders' warning came after Trump and his GOP spent the months leading up to Election Day laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the presidential contest if it doesn't go their way, repeating baseless claims of voter fraud and preemptively suggesting a Trump loss is only possible if the contest is rigged.
"The only thing that can stop us is the cheating," the former president declared at a campaign rally in Arizona last week. "It's the only thing that can stop us."
One recent
analysis estimated that Trump loyalists have majority control of 15 county election boards in eight key swing states, a potential boon to far-right efforts to disrupt the vote-counting or certification process.
Anticipating premature victory claims from Trump, election observers are warning U.S. voters to be on the lookout for a "red mirage"—which refers to the misleading appearance of a significant Republican lead before mail-in ballots are counted. Around 75 million Americans cast ballots in the early voting period, according to state-level tallies.
Reutersreported last week that "Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory."
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned in a blog post Tuesday that Trump is likely to exploit a potential "red mirage" just as he did in 2020.
"Trump's nonsense claim that the votes counted earlier in the night were more legitimate than those counted later became the underpinning of his entire Big Lie, culminating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol," Reich wrote. "It looks as if the 2024 election will be close. Early tonight, Trump is likely to appear to be ahead and again use that early lead to falsely claim victory. Mirages can be confusing, but if you know what they are, you won't be fooled by them. Please help spread the word about the red mirage so people know what to expect tonight."
The Washington Postnoted Tuesday that "finding out who won the presidency may take days," observing that "election officials in key swing states are urging Americans to be patient as they tally results, a process that varies from state to state because each has different vote-counting laws."
"Polls show an extremely tight presidential race, and the closer the results are, the longer it will take to know the outcome," the newspaper reported. "The swing states that took the longest then could again be slow this year: Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. If the race is close, other states could join the list."
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On the 'Secret Plan' Trump and Mike Johnson Have to Overturn a Harris Victory
Think races for the U.S. House don't matter? Think again.
Nov 01, 2024
The scariest thing at Trump’s quasi-fascist Madison Square Garden rally was not the vulgar and offensive rhetoric by surrogates like unfunny comic Killer Tony’s comments about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” and Black Americans carving watermelons for Halloween, as disgusting as they were.
No, it was Trump’s threat that he and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson have “a little secret” to upend the results of the election. As Rep. Dan Goldman warned, Trump and Johnson may try to go to the House and throw out the certification of the electoral vote and turn it over to the Republican House majority who would hand the election to Trump.
Here’s how it could go down: MAGA operatives in swing states could challenge the allocation of electoral votes with the goal of making it impossible for one or more counties or states to certify the electoral vote on time, block both candidates from receiving the necessary minimum of 270 electoral votes, and throw it into the House for a so-called “contingent election” where each state gets one vote and Republicans are likely to have the edge with a majority of 26 state delegations unless Democrats flip this in the upcoming election.
Faithless Electors
Although most states award their electoral votes to the candidate who received the most popular votes in their state, the Constitution does not require them to do so. According to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, each state has the right to decide how to appoint its electors. In many states, this would allow one or more electors (so-called “faithless electors”) to cast their vote for a candidate other than the one who received the most popular votes in their state. This has happened nearly 100 times in history, although so far it has not changed the ultimate results. It could be different this time.
According to various state laws in 15 states, a faithless elector’s vote isn’t counted and a replacement is named. But in 19 states, their votes would count. Some of these states have enforcement mechanisms, but others, including Pennsylvania, do not.
In July 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Chiafalo v Washington that a State may "penalize an elector for breaking his pledge and voting for someone other than the presidential candidate who won his State's popular vote." But it doesn’t require them to do so.
Let’s say Harris carries all the safely Blue states plus only the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That would give her 270 electoral votes to Trump’s 268, the bare minimum for her to win. But let’s say there’s a faithless elector from one of the states that permit it, or a court challenge voids some electoral votes as discussed below. Then neither candidate would have an electoral college majority, which would throw the choice of the next president to the House of Representatives. Each state gets one vote and unless this election changes it, Republicans hold a majority of the states. So the House Republicans hands the election to Trump.
Court Cases that could flip the electoral vote from Harris to Trump
Meanwhile, there are several court cases that could flip the electoral college, particularly if the election is so close that it comes down to Pennsylvania.
In Republican National Committee v. Wetzel, the ultra-right wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that a state may not legally count a ballot mailed before election day that arrives for counting afterwards. As Mark Joseph Stern argued in Slate: “18 states and Washington, D.C., accept late-arriving ballots; the 5thCircuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots.” SCOTUS could affirm or overturn the 5th Circuit. Although there’s probably no time to do so before election day, if it affirms the 5th Circuit between the election and the final certification of the electoral vote by Congress, it could disqualify the votes of countless Harris voters.
Meanwhile, in Genser v. Butler County Board of Elections the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters whose mail-in ballots contained a technical error (they were not placed in a second “security envelope”) would be permitted to submit a second provisional ballot that could be counted.
The Republican Party filed a motion for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and bar provisional ballots from being counted. If SCOTUS rules in their favor, it could disqualify thousands of Pennsylvania votes. Remember that in 2000, Bush defeated Gore by only 537 votes in Florida, when SCOTUS stopped the vote count.
With a 6-3 extreme right majority, SCOTUS could again hand the election to the Republican, Donald Trump.
Vote for a Democratic House
The only way to guarantee that the Trump/Rogers “secret plan” is to flip a couple of House delegation majorities from Red to Blue. That’s why it’s vitally important for Harris voters to vote in every state and cast their vote for the Democratic House candidate.
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Beware Trump’s Election Deniers Sitting on Election Boards!
The election deniers’s movement has spent years getting ready for 2024 with the goal of ensuring that a Republican is elected president.
Sep 29, 2024
For the past four years, former U.S. President Donald Trump has been building a cult of election deniers who believe his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
They don’t care that no one has ever presented a shred of credible evidence to support Trump’s blatantly bogus claim.
Notwithstanding the lack of evidence, 69% of Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, have said they believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate president, a direct result of Trump’s massive disinformation campaign.
Election deniers are preparing to try to elect Trump at all costs, no matter who the voters choose. An all hands-on-deck legal effort will be required to stop this from happening.
The election deniers’s movement has spent years getting ready for 2024 with the goal of ensuring that a Republican is elected president.
According to a recent study by the Center for Media and Democracy, there are 102 election deniers on election boards in eight battleground states. These election deniers, the study found, have majority power in 15 counties in battleground states, including seven in the critical state of Pennsylvania.
Now they are moving into action, preparing to throw up various roadblocks to help elect Trump.
One of their key lines of attack is to delay and obstruct the certification of the winner in their state. Under the Electoral Count Reform Act—enacted in the aftermath of Trump’s attempted 2020 election coup—the deadline for a state to certify its electors is December 11. Failure to meet that deadline could mean the electoral votes in that state would not be considered in the final tally.
If that happens in one or more states, it could mean that Trump wins the electoral vote majority or alternatively that the race is thrown to the House of Representatives where Republicans are expected to control a majority of state delegations and elect Trump.
(The Constitution provides that if a presidential race ends up in the House, each state delegation gets one vote.)
In 2020, Trump, in his infamous phone call, pressured and threatened Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes that would give Trump the win in Georgia. Raffensperger, a Republican, rejected Trump’s pressure.
Georgia is once again center stage.
Georgia’s State Board of Elections is controlled today by election deniers and has been adopting new last-minute election rules with no plausible justification other than to tilt the state for Trump.
The Georgia Board recently adopted a rule requiring counties to hand count the ballots cast in the state to determine whether the number of paper ballots matches the voting machine count. While small rural counties may be able to comply with this burdensome last-minute requirement, large urban areas, which favor Democrats, don’t have the capacity to do this kind of paper ballot counting. Nor is it necessary.
The conservative Republican attorney general warned that the rule is likely unlawful. The rule is expected to be challenged in court.
This ballot-counting rule follows another rule by the Georgia Board that requires counties to make “reasonable inquiries” into the balloting before certifying the results, another rule subject to abuse by election deniers seeking to obstruct certification. This rule is being challenged in court.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, a ridiculous challenge has been made in federal court to a rule—similar to one in place in 20 states—that allows a state to count mailed-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day if the ballot is postmarked by Election Day. This challenge, with national implications, was argued Tuesday before a conservative three-judge panel.
Election deniers are preparing to try to elect Trump at all costs, no matter who the voters choose. An all hands-on-deck legal effort will be required to stop this from happening.
Fortunately, that effort is underway.
That effort is being led by former U.S. Solicitors General Seth Waxman and Donald Verrilli Jr., two of the nation’s premier Supreme Court and appellate advocates. Also leading the effort are Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, with Covington and Burling; Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel; and John Devany, a Partner at Perkins Coie. They and a team of dozens of lawyers are representing Vice President Kamala Harris and the DNC.
Waxman and Verrilli, along with a third former U.S. solicitor general, the late Walter Dellinger, led the successful defense of the 2020 presidential election results, which included overwhelming victories against the dozens of baseless efforts by Trump and his supporters to try to overturn the Biden victory.
We can be confident that the supremely skilled and talented Waxman and Verrilli with their impressive history of major legal successes, and the team of dedicated colleagues, will protect our elections in the courts this election season.
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