2020 Election Chaos

In what should be headline news from now until November 3, Greg Palast discusses voter suppression with Chauncey DeVega.

What I am very worried about is how Republicans could use the 12th Amendment to the Constitution to steal the 2020 election.

[I]f the Electoral College does not reach a majority, which is 270, the election then goes to the House of Representatives. How could that possibly happen? The answer is the rabidly right-wing legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida say that there is so much voter fraud and that the mail-in ballots are not to be trusted. Trust me, those states are going to do things such as misprint ballots. Many "mistakes" are going to occur in those red states.

So the result could be that Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida do not certify their electors, and Biden has lost those three states' votes. There are still not enough votes for [Fuckface], but Biden does not hit the 270 threshold in the Electoral College to be elected president.

The 2020 election now goes to the House of Representatives, where every state gets a single vote. New York, California and Illinois each get a vote. Wyoming, South Dakota and Oklahoma each get a vote. Who wins? Most state delegations are majority Republican, even though the Republicans don't control the House and have far fewer voters in America.

According to my count, 26 state delegations are majority Republican in the current Congress. Biden would have to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and a third state like Arizona to win an Electoral College majority.

And then there are outright physical threats as voter intimidation.

But even more important than intimidation of Democratic voters are demands for proof of residence and proof of citizenship. There are other ways to keep people from voting, such as checking to see if a person has paid their alimony or court fines. Voters could be arrested. In the upcoming 2020 election there is going to be mayhem. There will be a large number of complaints about voting stations being closed two hours early, and claims that there are all these "illegal voters." Republicans are going to say that the election outcome was illegitimate. This will throw it to the House and [Dear Leader] gets re-elected.

Update (June 16):  Stop Making Sense by Tom Tomorrow.

Update (June 24):  In addition to "grievance politics" to motivate the base, Nancy LeTourneau lays out the ways Dear Leader will attempt to steal the election:  Voter Suppression, Foreign Interference, October Surprise, and if he loses, Challenge the Results. Who needs actual ideas for governing when you've got all that working for you?

Update (July 3):  Tom Rogers and Tim Wirth offer a scenario where the election could get thrown to the House of Representatives even if Biden wins the popular vote and the Electoral College.

[Fuckface has] been talking about Biden's soft on China — China wanted Biden to win so he says a national emergency; the Chinese have intervened in the election.

They keep this national emergency investigation going through December 14th. Biden, of course, challenges this in the courts and says, "hey, we won these states, I want the electors that favored me named". The Supreme Court doesn't throw the election to the Republicans as it did in 2000, instead it says, "look, there's a deadline here". If they can't be certified in these states because of this investigation going on, there's a constitutional process for this.

Update (July 21):  Kollibri terre Sonnenblume interviews Greg Palast and Bob Cesca gives his view on how the rigging will take place.

Like a petulant boy who tosses a board game across the room when he's losing, [Dear Leader] is going to hurl the election process into absolute chaos. Here's how: He'll continue to suppress voting by discouraging absentee voting, while benefiting from new and existing roadblocks to in-person voting. Then, on and after Election Day, he'll sue to try and stop absentee ballots from being counted.

Update (July 25):  Adrienne Jones details the problems with the Georgia primary while Steve Hochstadt considers what could go wrong when Fuckface loses.

Update (August 11):  In an interview with C. J. Polychroniou, Noam Chomsky warns Dear Leader's defeat can't be taken for granted.

Election tampering is a huge industry. Massive campaign funding in the last days can have a major effect, as seems to have happened in 2016.

We’ve already discussed the possibility that Republican interference with mail balloting might muddy the waters. Apart from all of these devices to undermine the limited integrity of elections, [Agent Orange] is quite capable of an ‘October surprise.’ It’s not hard to conjure up a variety of options. This is no time for letting one’s guard down, beguiled by dubious hopes.

Ja'han Jones reports on the multiple ways Republicans are trying to rig the election such as attacking the U.S. Postal Service, voter intimidation, and disinformation.

Voters don’t like [Fuckface von Clownstick], and he knows it. Faced with historically low approval in an election year, he’s doing everything he can to make sure voters don’t vote.

Update (August 13):  Dear Leader admits he has no interest in funding the Post Office.

They don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can't do it, I guess. Are they going to do it even if they don't have the money?

The plan is right out in the open. His re-election would be "one of the greatest frauds in history". It is stunning how the pandemic is both the ultimate reason why he shouldn't be re-elected (out of thousands of reasons!) and yet may very well have created the ideal conditions for supressing enough votes to win.

Update (August 14):  Amanda Marcotte has a warning:

This election, at the end of the day, is coming down to one single question: Will [Fuckface] be able to steal it?

It doesn't help that the U.S. Postal Service is now alerting states to make adjustments for late ballots. Marcotte is hopeful people will be prepared to do something about it.

Organizers and journalists, thankfully, have considerable resources when it comes to convincing voters that this threat is real and must be taken seriously.

Having [Dear Leader] confess to his nefarious plan on TV helps circumvent that reluctance to believe that, yes, he really is trying to steal the election.

For journalists and pundits, the most important thing is to break long-standing habits of viewing everything in electoral politics through the filter of standard horse-race analysis. That stuff just doesn't matter as much in an election where there's only one way [Fuckface] can possibly win: by cheating.

How something will "play" with voters doesn't much matter if voters can't vote. And that's what this election will come down to: Whether people get a chance to vote at all.

The only way we get back to normal is by facing this problem head on: The president is trying to steal the election, he has the means to do it, and he very well may succeed unless he's met with massive, organized resistance.

Update (September 13):  David Atkins renames Republicans the Chaos Party. 

[C]onservatives know they have lost the argument and the culture. The nation’s greatest problems, from police racism to inequality to climate change to the pandemic itself, simply do not lend themselves to conservative "solutions". Conservatism itself would have to change to adapt to the moment, and it is unwilling to do so.

The conservative response to all this is to create as much chaos as possible, with a view toward seizing power in a coup–thereby short-circuiting the consequences of failing to secure the legitimacy of popular will.

Update (October 6):  Roger Sollenberger elaborates on plans for Republican state legislators select their own Electoral College electors if doubts can be sown over the outcome of November's election.