A lot of what needs to be done is making sure that the Harris win is large enough that you can’t easily claim that a handful of ballots should be tossed and change the outcome. That means:
- Check your voter registration — part of the Republican strategy has long been invalidating registrations so people can’t vote
- Volunteer — nothing in the world quite like talking to people.
- Donate — money is used for everything from ads to voter turnout operations
- Organize; be prepared to turn out with others in your community to actively object to any effort to ignore your votes
At the very least, begin relocating or developing redundancies to federal agencies located in states likely to do so, specially Texas which has been made the host of too many key international federal agencies.
I don’t see SCOTUS ruling against themselves.
Defeat Trump soundly. As soon as election officials refuse to certify, slap them in jail and charge them with serious crimes IMMEDIATELY instead of fucking around for 4 goddamn years like the last time. Long prison terms and huge fines, or preferably, extraordinary rendition to Afghanistan and revoke their passport.
If you think your county or state won’t certify election results, make sure to call them and tell them exactly how you feel about it.
So they’ll know how to not hurt your feelings?
Pretty weird thing to say, bucko
No shit. They’ve only been saying it for years.
Those attacks on democracy have to be stopped and fixed though.
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https://www.thebulwark.com/p/republicans-will-refuse-certify-harris-election
I wonder how much the kids get paid for the pass through clicks on this.
What a waste of processing power.
Biden can seal-team-6 them.
He’s pretty well committed to not doing that, and it’s very much unclear to me if the military would actually go ahead with following that kind of order.
I don’t know how it’s done in your country, but it possible also volunteer to man the voting stations and count votes
Okay, now hear me out. What if we treat them like traitors?
Bring back hanging as an execution method for sedition.
Over noticed that peiple dont really fear the social consequences of their actions, especially sinve scammers and con men keep getting chamce after chance to steal money. Cant help but feel that coincided with the decline of a good ol’ tar and feathering.
It’s basically a cheat code for society. So much of our functioning civilization is built on honor code that just noclipping straight through has shown that there’s no backstop and you can just about literally get away with murder.
Well, it’s a cheat code for the rich. There are only consequences for your actions if you’re a poor
Very true. Good note.
Oh there are consequences for the rich, just that some cultures (like us) are so complacent with bread and circuses that we haven’t yet felt the collective urge to pick up rocks and bash in the heads of the callous owner class.
History shows what happens when the rich live consequence free for too long.
Cant help but feel that coincided with the decline of a good ol’ tar and feathering.
I legit think that’s part of it but more in a broad sense that we’ve lost nearly all sense of a local community. People act differently when they legit don’t care about the opinions of others around them.
That didn’t used to be the case back when everyone knew everyone else in the local community because ratbags would get cut off from doing business and retaining services and everyone would publicly shun them which is a significantly more powerful tool for social shaping than people realize.
We need to bring back the sense of local responsibility that being a part of a community used to involve. I have no idea how to do this.
Autocorrect should not be turned off.
Wht teh fucn not?
Believe it or not, that’s with autocorrect on. I haven’t been able to find a sywpe keyboard that’s worth a damn in the last 10 years
The new Futo Keyboard is phenomenal. All the features of Google keyboard/swiftkey but completely local and open source with on-device speech to text if you use voice typing (with models you can swap out yourself if you want).
Just make sure to download the latest pre-release version as it fixes a bunch of bugs and adds missing stuff compared to the ‘stable’ release.
America has rarely treated its traitors like traitors. That’s how we got in this whole mess.
It’s never too late to start!
Promise?
There’s a point at which you can’t start. But any moment before that and it’s still not too late to fuck up a traitor or two. For funsies, even!
Thanks for the taco, Hulk.
Time to call the French!
Imagine if they dragged Prescott Bush out of his house in the middle of the night and strung him up.
We would literally be on a different. Fucking. Planet.
Entirely. Although it’s never too late to dig up his skull and start a secret society.
TIL. From Wikipedia:
Prescott Bush
In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a “key liaison” between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany, although this has been disputed by Jonathan Katz as a misconception caused by a clerical research error. According to Katz, “Prescott Bush was too involved with the actual Nazis to be involved with something that was so home grown as the Business Plot.”
Imagine your best defense is “I’m too much of a Nazi to be involved in petty things like a coup in the U.S. We’ll be speaking German soon enough anyway.”
Send them to Saudi Arabia since they seem to love their rule of law.
I may not want their coup, but they have the same rights as any other citizen, including a speedy and public trial, and not being subject to cruel and unusual punishments.
Tolerance goes both ways
Not really, check out the Intolerance Paradox. It is damaging to society to tolerate the intolerant.
So, tolerance should really only go one way: Towards the disadvantaged and needy.
All the billionaire fuccbois ruining our government deserve zero tolerance for their immoral and illegal ways.
That’s exactly the nature of my comment. OP is saying we should be fair and I say fuck being tolerant to them since they would not hesitate to deny us the same right
The right to a speedy trial is an absolute joke in this country. But in this case I’d like them to actually get it because it means they’ll be in prison faster.
Speedy is relative. It’s in response to monarchies which would, if they didn’t like you but didn’t have a case against you, lock you up “pending trial” for the rest of your life. The point was just to prevent that.
Good thing that, uh, doesn’t happen anyway. At Guantanamo Bay for instance.
Is it cruel and unusual to exile them to a country that already has the system of government they’re trying to implement?
Definitely unusual. Prison is good enough.
Implying America prisons aren’t cruel and unusual.
We should make examples of them to deter future coup attempts.
Indeed we should. The problem is that the last batch of Trump zealots who tried to help him illegally overturn the last election still haven’t actually even faced trial let alone been punished. The wheels of justice are turning so slowly, they might as well be standing still.
There is no justice except what we make ourselves. The “system” is a distraction meant to placate the masses into thinking we’re living in a fair and reasonable society.
If this comes to pass ut is only karma, chicken of America’s bloody past coming home to roost. You reap what you sow even if it is done on foreign soil.
I suppose then you would enjoy the resurgence in foreign blood when Trump ascends the throne and begins launching nukes into Gaza and the West Bank?
This is the same excuse given when big corporations fail due to their own bad decisions. What is happening in US are its foreign policies getting implemented on its own soil. You shouldnt have made such decisions if you didnt want its consequences.
If Israel wants to nuke Gaza and West Bank it will, it won’t matter who is at White House.
In that case I will look forward to seeing the look on your face when I inevitably put on my jackboots and am ordered to train weapons in your general direction when your turn comes under that administration. Hooyah, and no hard feelings, just following orders.
And like all the wars since WW2 US will lose this one too.
Too bad that won’t give you any comfort with all the unexploded ordnance in your playgrounds, white phosphorus burns, Agent Orange in your soil, PFAS and mercury in your water supplies, and destroyed infrastructure after we deliver some Freedom.
Watching Trump’s press conference from Mar-a-lago the other day, and hearing his excuses for why he isn’t out on the road campaigning, it struck me that the narrative that he’s moping around depressed that he’s losing isn’t the whole story.
He’s got Vance out pretending to campaign, while he and his buddies are sitting around coming up with plan B. He’s probably had calls with dozens of Republican governors and is getting teams of “alternate electors” together (the Stephen Miller interview on Ari Melber’s show made it pretty clear that they still see that as a perfectly legal strategy). Donald may know “it’s over” but that just means he’s going to get more desperate and we’ve already seen what desperate Trump can do with 2 months of prep, I’m not looking forward to seeing what he can do with 5 months.
My crackpot theory is that he doesn’t actually want to win. I think he’s making so much money campaigning that he realized he could milk a couple more election cycles until the dummies get tired of him.
Nah. You’re describing the DNC. The charges DJT is facing are real. He needs the immunity and the ability to shut down the prosecutions. Not to mention how much MORE grift is available for a sitting president.
We know he needs the immunity, but I’m not sure he knows that. He’s dodged so many felonies at this point, he likely thinks he’s untouchable even if he loses. This is just speculation though, of course, based on my experience with my own maga family member’s tendencies to hand-wave away logic that makes them uncomfortable, especially when the topic is something that seriously affects them. You make some good points though. I think you’re right, but as I said, this is my loose crackpot theory xD
If he could strike a deal with the courts, that he doesn’t get prosecuted for any of this crimes… he would happily lose. More money in playing the victim.
This is correct. They are not planning to win with votes.
I live in a mail in ballot state but I think people -especially in swing states with trump election officials- should call in sick to work on election day. Get some friends and be election observers. If you watch everything you’ll at least catch them in the act of whatever they’re planning. Bring water with you and help out. Even kids that can’t vote can do some things to help. Be an election volunteer if you can.
Vance
obligatory couch joke
I mean they already admitted it out loud. The smart thing to do now is to prep their countersuits. What we really need are federal voting laws, but good luck with that. “The States shall decide” is one of the dumbest things in the Constitution. They need stronger federal laws to protect and cover elections for federal office, if nothing else.
This could be what leads to abolishing the electoral college
I think the UN should send in independent observers to the US to oversee their elections because boy oh boy are those Republicans working hard to cheat.
I hear you but that just seems like putting kerosene on a fire.
It does seem so in every third world democracy, but it is the duty of US… Oh now I see.
Hey so… Being non American, I only learned about the electoral college during the last election, or was it in 2016? I forget.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
And doesn’t that mean that a president can be elected against the will of the majority?
AFAIK the Electoral College can ignore their constituents.
However this should look very bad on the specific members ignoring their constituents.
Bad enough to prompt them to not be reelected.
Yes. Yes it does.
Some states have laws to force a correct EC vote according to the popular vote. Not all do
It’s called a “faithless elector” and what happens depends on the law of the state the elector is representing. Some states void the vote without penalty, some void it with some penalty, some allow the vote but with penalty, some allow the vote with no penalty, and some have no law at all (which seems like no difference from allowing with no penalty).
It’s entirely conceivable that enough faithless electors from states that do not void the vote could swing an election, though there’s never been enough to do so before.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
It is the case that electors are required to vote for the nominee that they pledged to vote for. If you pledged to vote A as an elector you are obligated to vote A. However, as I understand from skimming CHIAFALO ET AL. v. WASHINGTON (2019), it is on pain of penalty…
There might be more to it but I don’t have time to read it all.
Also, it doesn’t really matter what the rules say. The current right wing majority of the SCOTUS doesn’t give a flying fuck about laws, rules, or precedents if they don’t support their views so who the fuck knows.
Due to the way the Electoral College works (even when not being undermined by bad-faith actors) it is possible for a candidate to win the popular vote (i.e., get more raw votes than his opponent) and yet end up with fewer Electoral College votes thereby losing the election. This has happened many times, and I believe no recent Republican president has won the popular vote with the exception of Bush Jr.'s second run.
The EC isn’t really that complicated. It means that the election is not settled by a national popular vote, but rather with the result of a weighted average of 50 State elections + Washington, DC. This weighted average is based on the number of seats each state has in the House (which is roughly proportional) plus the Senate (where each State has two seats). The net result is that the weighted average overweights smaller states.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
The way it works now, each campaign pre-selects a slate of electors who would get to vote in the EC if their candidate wins that state. So the likelihood that an elector casts a different vote is slim, because they are supporters of the candidate who won the election.
And doesn’t that mean that a president can be elected against the will of the majority?
Absolutely, and it has happened twice since 2000. Both times the Republican won the EC while losing the popular vote. It happened because they did better in the smaller states than the competition did, and we already established the EC purposely overweights smaller states.
It all works this way because, historically, there was no requirement that EC slates be chosen by popular vote at all. The State Legislatures themselves picked who they would send to the EC. And while they were sent with a directive on who to vote for, they didn’t have to comply, and there were Presidential elections that weren’t decided until the EC actually made their votes, as any one who has watched Hamilton knows. But over the years, several states decided to have the EC slates chosen by popular vote, until it became the norm.
So one possible problem is that because of this vestigial alignment with the will of the Legislature, the Legislature has the last word on the EC slates, and had the power to totally ignore the election if it wants. State Legislatures haven’t done this to date. It hasn’t been done since 1960 in Hawaii, when there were serious irregularities with the vote, acknowledged by both parties, and the Legislature acted to make sure they got the result right, by certifying both slates and then withdrawing the one that lost after the recounts.
(Fun fact for that 1960 election: the losing candidate was Nixon, who happened to be VP at the time, and had the job to preside over the counting of his loss in HI even though technically both slates of votes were sent by HI.)
Thank you for this detailed response.
I find it incredible that it’s not really the people who vote for their leader but some electors that, from my understanding, aren’t necessarily elected by the people?
The original concept was that the electors were chosen by the State Legislature. So not directly via popular vote, but indirectly by a body that was elected by a popular vote, so is still accountable to the public.
It means that the election is not settled by a national popular vote, but rather with the result of a weighted average of 50 State elections + Washington, DC.
You missed an important detail: most states give all their electoral votes to whoever won that state, so for example whoever gets 51% of the votes in Texas gets 100% Texas’s electoral votes. The result is that most states’ electoral votes are easily predicted by post elections, leading presidential candidates to focus on a handful of “swing” states where the outcome of that state’s election is in question. Another result is that it suppresses voter turnout in non-swing states because people their feel like the outcome of their state’s election is predetermined.
I want to say every republican president since W in 2004 (and I think even that is somewhat questionable?) has lost the popular vote and only won because of gerrymandering and the electoral college. We already are electing presidents against the will of the majority.
As for electors going rogue? Welcome to the US government (and a shocking other number of governments but…) where basically every bit of our constitution depends on good faith actors.
When you think about it, democracy at it’s core depends on good faith actors. Democracy IS good faith
That’s not entirely true. Many states make it a crime for electors not to vote for the state’s winner.
After the fact, but it doesn’t prevent them from doing it in the first place. The federal government doesn’t care, they’re just handed the electoral votes from the states and go with it.
W lost the popular vote in 2000 but won it in 2004.
What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?
So the term for this is “faithless elector” and the answer is, it depends.
For some states if an elector promises to vote for X, and then they vote for Y, they are immediately replaced and their vote does not count. In other states the vote stands as is.
Most commonly a faithless elector isn’t used to vote for one of the major parties, but for a third party or someone who didn’t run for president. For example if Trump won a given state, but an elector refused to vote for Trump, they will likely vote for another Republican.
Alternative Headline: “Conservatives Fuck Around, Insist on Finding Out”
Can we just hand out “I’m with Stupid” shirts as they vote with arrows pointing to themselves?
