(Update 9/16/20: Thanks again to Tengrain at Crooks&Liars to share this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Wish me luck with the FWA Royal Palm Literary Award for Non-Fiction: Blogging)
It's getting more obvious by the day: trump wants to nullify the 2020 Elections. Via Cameron Peters at Vox:
It’s not a new talking point for Trump, who has already mounted a sustained campaign against mail-in voting and the US Postal Service — and who continues to claim there was widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election, when there was not.
But in an election where as many as six in 10 Americans say they plan to vote early and a historic number of ballots are likely to be cast by mail, such rhetoric takes on a dangerous new dimension. There’s a fair chance we won’t know who won on election night as ballots are counted — many states accept ballots postmarked on Election Day for days afterward — and Trump is already sending up a signal that he plans to dispute the results or even prematurely claim victory on Election Day if early returns show him ahead...
...Trump also suggested Saturday that his supporters should turn out as poll watchers, “because with you people watching the polls it’s going to be pretty hard to cheat. I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want to be a cheater.”
The suggestion is a concerning one, however. There is a history of GOP poll watchers engaging in voter intimidation — one that led to a since-expired federal consent decree curbing such activity. With instances of armed Trump supporters engaging in pseudo-law enforcement vigilantism, there’s reason for concern that poll watching could lead to further voter intimidation in November...
there are several things at play here. trump above all is projecting, accusing the other party of being the cheaters when it's been him and the Republicans caught cheating both in 2016 and now. trump is also trying to create a Narrative to sell to the Beltway media, as a means of beating it into their heads early and often to the point they will parrot it as fact.
Above all, trump is sowing chaos, creating an environment where he can abuse the powers of the office and refuse to accept a possible outcome of not only losing the popular vote to Biden, but also enough states to lose the Electoral College as well.
This is an attempt by trump to intimidate voters into not even trying to vote, of depressing turnout so that only his true believers show up and skew the results again like in 2016.
There is a solution to this, Democrats.
TURN THE VOTE OUT. Everyone registered to vote, get the fck to the polling booths. Mail in your ballots. Show up for Early Voting, show up in such numbers that trump can't claim early leads.
VOTING MATTERS. You have the numbers, Democrats. You have allies among Independent voters sick of trump's incompetence. You need to counter trump's lies with a clarion call to every voter who supports you to get the ballots in and make every person count.
1 comment:
Perhaps we should get the networks to agree to not publish any election results until each race is decided.
Perhaps the $100 mil that Bloomie is dumping on Florida will make a difference and get the results announced early enough to head off the worst of Fergus' shenanigans.
My vote won't count for much in the presidential race as Biden will win California by even more than Clinton did, but now that I live out in the boonies, I have a goddamn incumbent Republican congressman to vote against, which is a new thing to someone who has voted for Barbara Lee every other year for more than a decade.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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