Same as happened in 2000, we’ll get 8 years of the guy who lost.
We already had four years so technically we would only get another four.
Until SCOTUS says the constitution isn’t constitutional and gives him a literal crown.
That’s how Putin did it; probably the guy guiding all of this.
They have term limits over there in Russia as well, but they have interpreted it as “only allowed X years in a row”…so Putin installs a crony for 1 session every X years, and then magically wins the votes by a landslide every other time.
That’s what they’ll end up doing. They’ll ‘interpret’ it as consecutive terms, and we’ll get 8 years of Trump, then 4 of Vance, then 8 of Trump, etc.
I’ve been saying this exact same thing. Trump is a raging moron and I fear the intelligent demagogue that follows him more than I fear a second trump presidency (although a second trump term might guarantee the former)
It’s not much consolation, but I do take a little solace in the fact that nearly all of the Trump-wannabes have crashed and burned on the ballot. So far, it seems like only Trump can pull of Trimpism. His ego won’t let him name a successor, so when he goes, there will be a MAGA void to fill and it might be difficult for a single person to fill it.
Will Trump’s natural death free us from right wing extremism? Absolutely not. But will one savvy politician gather all the support trump has? Not immediately, that’s for sure. When he’s gone, I bet 40% of his base will believe he’s still alive and the deep state is hiding him somewhere while Desantis-Cruz-Vance, etc are false prophets. I mean, Vance was supposed to be the savvy MAGA guy, and look how well liked he is.
I believe the goal and intent is to get enough results into question that they kick it into Mike Johnson’s hands - and that mfer has almost no history at all. No bank account, nothing. He’ll do the thing, it’ll be contested, it’ll go to supreme court, where – surprise surprise, they’ll rule in favor of Donald J Trump and he will be elected our new Dictator. At which point he’ll be sworn in, because - Dems have never had any backbone - and then he’ll proceed to gut every institution which questions him, and turn this nation into an autocracy.
What people don’t realize yet, is that the election doesn’t matter unless Kamala wins by such a large margin that they can’t pull this off. They require the veil of uncertainty for this all to work. But since we’re on razor-thin margins, it’s going to happen anyways.
We’re already boned, and nobody realizes it yet. The playbook is out in the open and the media has stopped calling this out. They’re complicit in it, because they think the leopards won’t eat their face too. So they’re cozying up early.
Bonus: I believe they’ll be doing something wild with Vance as well - probably temporarily making him president, while he pardons Trump for any past crimes, and then giving the presidency back to Trump.
Hmm, we learned in 2022 that the House can’t do anything until a Speaker is installed. And the new Congress is seated a few days before the EC votes are counted. What if Kamala wins the election, but the House declines to elect a Speaker? Can they even convene to count the votes? I hope so, since the VP president over the counting of votes, not the Speaker.
Still, a Kamala win will be a lot more bullet-proof it it comes with a Democratic House and Senate, too. Then there is far less that Mike can do to fuck it up.
I’d like to believe that the only reason 2020 got so ratfucked in the first place was that Trump was intentionally not putting the screws on anybody to do their jobs.
A second Jan 6th won’t happen, at least not this year. A MAGA mob will show up at the capitol and be met by a fully prepared and well armed national guard, because Biden is the commander in chief and he’s going to take threats like that seriously.
If the house declines to elect a speaker, Biden could in theory put pressure on them to pick one. The constitutional crisis can swing both directions - yes the Republicans will likely try to avoid certification, but then Biden could threaten to not step down unless the certification happens, or hand over the reigns to VP Harris anyway by resigning. I don’t see it working in their favor to try something like not certifying or not electing a speaker, because they don’t have the luxury of Trump in the white house to look the other way at their bad behavior.
There is still something the American People can do in such an undemocratic maneuver. Its the single action that we’ve built all of this bureaucracy to avoid. But the SC should never decide the president in a Democracy and neither should the Speaker. It should be counted until the counting is done, thats it. I will be razing hell the moment they try to remove our own agency and place it into the hands of their cronies. I’ve got a megaphone ready and all the PTO in the world.
Edit: raising, not raze. I’d rather not make it worse.
But the SC should never decide the president in a Democracy
That already happened in Bush v. Gore
I believe you meant “raising hell” as in bringing it too the surface of Earth and recruiting Satan’s legions to fight with you, not razing hell as in cutting it down, because how would that help?
So you just riding the wave, heading for the hills? Sounds like you are convinced this will happen, not arguing that it won’t. If this is your reality right now, curious what that means, if anything, for your day to day life at the moment? Extra locks on door? Stockpiling ammo? Or do you think it will be more of a slow professional “business” fascism as we all continue to boil in the pot?
Genuinely curious what the folks who are 100% convinced today that we’re beyond fucked and society is crumbling in two weeks either way, are doing at this moment (when they can still “prepare” mentally, financially, etc.)
I know enough history to see where this is headed. I hope it won’t be an immediate firestorm, and I feel as if there are a lot of people in a lot of high up places that won’t just let Cheeto-man arbitrarily take control like he wants. So it won’t be an overnight thing. I already stockpile ammo, Republicans don’t have a monopoly on gun rights, thankfully. If I gotta skedaddle, I have both a place in Canada I can stay, and a place over in the UK temporarily. I’m, unfortunately surrounded by these imbiciles - but I keep my head down enough that most of them think I’m one too. Family already has their passports sorted.
Germany wasn’t an overnight thing either. It’ll start with rounding up political rivals and immigrants into camps. If that comes to pass, that’s my litmus test for getting the fuck out of dodge.
Glad you have a plan, but Canada is sliding in to fascism itself with PP, and UK is already a shit show post Brexit and now with their new Tory govt.
IMO, the U.S. will become similar to Russia. It’s not some sudden societal collapse scenario; just an oligarchy with high levels of corruption and incompetence. Most people will conform or keep their heads down to avoid the consequences of stepping out of line. If you’re in a possibly targeted group, you may want a valid passport though. And it’s always been a good idea to keep at least a months worth of non-perishable food on hand in case of supply chain disruptions. Possibly stuff like emergency propane heaters and a propane tank could be useful too (they’ve been useful for me in the past already without an authoritarian government or social unrest). Knowing your neighbors and helping eachother out in little ways is probably the most powerful thing though.
The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever “prove” they won.
Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they’re not, they’re very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.
That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.
But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it’s just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you’re talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.
In a huge country-wide election, there’s simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you’ve never met, and/or election monitors you’ve never met. And, since you’re not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you’re using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you’re not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you’re feeding it is correct.
Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it’s just a matter of which narrative seems the most “truthy” to you.
You know how people outside the USA vote? They go there, show their ID, get a tick on the list of voters, and do the voting.
Interesting, given the stories of people voting several times by just going to different places.
In France we get an anonymous code and we can plug it into a website and it tells us if our ballot was counted or not, and if it wasn’t counted why. (markings on ballott, multiple candidates selected for one spot, etc.)
Right, but no way to verify who you voted for.
And, you have to trust that the website is telling you the truth. You have no way of verifying that it always gives the same answer to everybody. I guess someone could test that there’s some connection to their real ballot by intentionally screwing up their ballot. But, that doesn’t mean that there’s any way to prove that when it’s counted that the actual tally for the person / people you voted for are going up not down.
They can tell who votes. Your entire premise is based on a belief that votes are anonymous. They aren’t. They are pretected from the public. If you have ever worked in election, which I have, you would know that. You have to cross reference if someone voted twice, are alive, or even registered in the county they voted in. There are computers that verify electronic bullets and there are batch audits. No one is ever allowed to be alone even with one ballet. Everything is done in a team. If your partner calls in sick, you’re the third wheel to another team.
Just because the public doesn’t know doesn’t mean the government doesn’t know.
Votes are anonymous. You can tell who voted, but not what they voted for. It’s crucial for the fairness of elections that a vote cannot be definitively connected to the individual who cast it; if you could, you could coerce or retaliate.
And all of the things you mention are the trust OP is talking about. You were a trusted person in that situation. The process increases and validates trust.
That’s basically what was being said and it’s not functionally different because the vast majority of the public does not work in elections or their verification. In essence if 99% of the population does not have access to data or cannot interpret said data, trust is needed.
I read certain phrases from what they wrote and it infers that people do not know who voted for who or what. That just isn’t the mechanism. It’s done by computers. It has to be tabulated for a multitude of reasons. It’s not anonymous to the mechanism. It is anonymous to the public. Which is not what the original statement. It was that the trust is built from no one at all ever knowing or being to tell.
Oh man are you confused. For everyone else this person doesnt know how voting works.
Voting in the states is 100% anonymous across the board. The data trail stops after a person is signed in at the polls. There is zero information on a ballot to identify you.
You do know I worked in an election? For everyone else this person is grandstanding!
If we’re saying “Trump won” what do we mean? The election is certified and he gets to be sworn in? If that’s the case then there is absolutely nothing that can be done. We’ll have PBS and 60 minutes stories about what happened and we’ll just have to suffer the reality that they got what they wanted.
If he claims to have won on Tuesday, but the results aren’t in completely then there is room to argue. It would just be bluster, it wouldn’t be officially recognized as a victory. When he does that it will be to ensure he can cry foul if the final results don’t go his way. He 100000000% will be doing this.
I have just watched the Legal Eagle video about the various law-related things that happened around the 2020 election.
It served as a reminder that the plan had apparently been to claim to have won before all the votes were counted - something about doing so in the interim between two sets of votes being counted (I want to say mail-in versus in-person, but I might have misunderstood) and then act as if Trump had actually won at that point, thus giving legitimacy to any later cry of foul that was almost sure to be needed.
Which is precisely what Trump did.
… my point being that it would be foolish to assume it wasn’t in the play book for this time around as well.
Remember Bush v Gore?
Just like that.
