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
No surprise for most of us here. The big surprise for the enablers would be when the leopards eat their faces.
It’s too late to “get ready”. They aren’t planning to win with votes.
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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.
No shit. They’ve only been saying it for years.
Those attacks on democracy have to be stopped and fixed though.
Eh, there’s one additional way we can stop them. A landslide victory that puts her massively over the electoral college threshold would make a handful of compromised counties completely irrelevant.
What’s the electoral college threshold? I was wondering just recently if there’s any percentage of popular that matters more than the electoral college.
270 total electoral college votes. No, the popular does not matter, just the 50 individual states. They distribute their electoral college votes in different ways, each state gets to set its own rules.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College
The number to reach is 270 EC votes. However, it is very possible to reach that number while not winning the popular vote. That’s why certain states (such as PA, GA, AZ) tend to be the “battleground” states as they have enough EC votes to shift the election and usually aren’t reliably red or blue.
If I remember correctly, it’s theoretically possible to win the Presidency of the US while only winning something like 25% of the popular vote (though in practice, if you’re able to win the states to pull something like that off you’re also going to be winning the bigger states as well so your victory would look more like Reagan’s).
Jesus Christ. If Trump won 25% of the popular vote and still became president, I hope it’d finally be enough to get the country to revolt.
That’s not in the cards given the last 4 years. Remember we only won in the wake of a mass uprising, with most people thinking they were voting to defund the police, defend Roe, free healthcare, less war, legalization of pot, freeing the concentration camps on the border, etc.
We’ll be lucky if Trump’s campaign shitting itself and Biden dropping out are enough to compensate for the last 4 years of either inaction or making things worse.
I don’t think people voted for Joe Biden for those reasons. Except maybe defend Roe.
I talked to a lot of people in 2020, the younger voters absolutely thought that’s what they were voting for. You underestimate how low-information the average american is. They associated free healthcare or defunding the police with democrats, and thought Biden was running on those things.
Yeah, apologies, but I don’t tend to believe personal accounts given over the internet. Just out of general principle.
OK, get your own anecdotes, ask random, apolitical coworkers “Who are you voting for, and what policies or actions will they implement that you like. What policies or actions do you expect <opposition> to implement that you don’t like”.
It’s no longer 2020, so I’m sure the specifics have changed, but I’m certain you’ll find incoherent ideas very loosely related to reality.
Sure, you can find anecdotes for anything. But anybody expecting defund the police out of a moderate like Biden was ignorant, which is fairly uncommon among actual progressives. Dude was clearly old dem establishment, he was Obama’s VP and defeated the progressives like Bernie in the primary after all.
edit: Oh, and if you think all dems want progressive values, that’s a very strong sign that you’re consuming conservative media. That’s their line.
Once again, the average american is very low-information. A few times I had to explain that the primary vote had been the one to decide whether any of the policies that would help them would be on the ballet, and stuff like emptying the camps, defunding the police, and cutting military spending weren’t even on that.
you’re consuming conservative media
Progressives are told that dems share their values, or infer that from republicans opposing those values.
They’re a lemmy.ml so to me they start out with no credibility.
I do think this is the only way. It’s not 270towin this year, we need a margin.
It will cast doubt on the election process regardless. This is very dangerous rhetoric, and unfortunately there’s about 20% of the country that wants this.
20% of the country are traitors and Trump put a good chunk of them in office.
Look at the supreme court. His appointees are going to fuck up our country for decades and there is no political will to deal with it.
40%…we have really devolved as a country.
Welp maybe it’s time then to drone the shit out of them.
it’s important that nobody sinks into complacency even if harris’s victory is looking like an absolute blowout towards the end. GOP absolutely WILL do literally everything they can to undermine the election. everything from 2020 plus more
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Last time they were I’ll prepared and stopped by a whole lotta responsible people. Most.of those people have moved away after all the death threats they got over this, and have been replaced by people who are, shall we say, a little less queasy with questionable practices like fraud.
The point is not to get complacent. They’ve had four years and the backing of numerous new agencies and billionaires in that time to work on how they can get it right. Don’t they already have Georgia or some shit promising not to certify? Remember how long it took those shithole states to certify in 2020, the corruption.ans intimidation at voting sights? That was all before they knew what they were doing or has time to plan and get on the same page.
Because they spent the last 4 years infiltrating election groups, running out the honest people, and making sure election deniers are in charge wherever they can get them.
Most people in America can’t do anything about that though. Only the people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
Nah. Even if you are in a safe state, vote. Even if you are in a state run by weirdos, vote. Literally vote.
It worked in 2020. trump had more votes than in 2016 and he lost by even more. January 6th had no chance of success because it was obvious who won. Taking the capitol building doesn’t mean anything.
The supreme court doesn’t even mean anything without the consent of the governed. The British won the War of 1812 and literally burned the White House to the ground. They still had to leave because the US is so big that it’s literally ungovernable without consent of the population.
The British definitely did NOT win the war of 1812. Wtf are you talking about?
Leave it to the Brits to be beaten by America’s weather.
The official results are “inconclusive”. The US lost more lives, more money, and the capital. I call that a loss, especially since the US declared war to begin with. What do you call it?
they’re neck-and-neck in the polls; how do you think that this will happen?
is it because you’re one of those people who disregard polls?
I take polls under advisement, though recent years have definitely demonstrated that there are issues with them. Regardless of their veracity, though, they are subject to shifting as time goes on.
they’re supposed to shift and that’s why it’s called polling; you’re taking action to measure that shift, if any/
Uh, no, that is not why they are called polls.
Middle English (in the sense ‘head’): perhaps of Low German origin. The original sense was ‘head’, and hence ‘an individual person among a number’, from which developed the sense ‘number of people ascertained by counting of heads’ and then ‘counting of heads or of votes’ (17th century).
Yes to them being supposed to shift though.
i’m not referring to the etymology of the word and your response seems to conflict with your previous post.
your previous post says:
don’t trust polls because they can change
and this post says:
polls are supposed to change
If you’re not referring to the etymology, then why did you bring up why they are called polls?
No, I said I take them under advisement. This is an in-between stance between trusting them completely and discarding them completely. This is preferable to any sort of purist, absolutist position that would not be able to keep up with a world where things can change.
HERE you go, buddy.
Everyone else, ignore polls, and just VOTE.
i don’t doubt that polls can be wrong; i asked my question because i was confused by the other poster’s position
Polls skew to the right. You should expect to see a few safe red states flip to blue. This is the first presidential election since J6, and the first since roe was overturned. A lot of centrists, and even Republicans are just fucking sick of seeing and hearing Donald Trump. And not to mention most people only voted for Biden because he wasn’t trump, not because they were enthusiastic about Biden. That’s also different this election. Not to mention project 2025, and Donald’s credible threats of dictatorship. He lost in 2020 and it’s only going to be more lopsided this time.
Not to mention project 2025
this has been a thing since 1980 and it’s bonkers that we only just now started caring about it, but it makes sense that no one brought it up during an election year since biden has been one of its biggest proponents; like he voted against anti-gay marriage in 1996; bragged about creating the student loan debt law he created in 2005; expressed pride at supporting segregationists during the 2020 election; very publicly told anita hill to stop complaining and shut up about sexual harassment from clarence thomas in 1991; and advocated against letting lgbtq in federal service from 1972 to 2012.
it’s a VERY good thing he’s not in the race anymore because now the candidates are actually different from each other now.
And it will continue to be a thing. They’ll keep trying. But we need to keep people aware that they won’t stop trying. But their ranks will continue to fall. We just need to do what we can to make sure that we do all we can to help that process along.
For what it’s worth, Biden has grown and moved left over the course of his political career, and that’s a good thing. We should give credit where it’s due. Yeah, he wasn’t perfect by any means, but he did save democracy for another 4 years. If we need to fight it 4 years at a time, so be it. But he did a good job with what he had vs the expectations. He got a lot done considering what he was working against, and honestly I’m proud of him for it. That being said, we need to move on to continue to progress.
And it will continue to be a thing. They’ll keep trying. But we need to keep people aware that they won’t stop trying. But their ranks will continue to fall.
biden et. al along w the republicans have enacted nearly 75% of project 2025’s recommendations since 1980.
For what it’s worth, Biden has grown and moved left over the course of his political career …
biden is currently making the wrong decision; it’s seriously fucking up people’s lives; and there’s literally allies and opponents alike telling him he’s making the wrong choice (as he has done before in the examples i cited earlier); but he’s still ignoring all the advice and all the evidence and continuing support the genocide, no matter what the cost and damage it’s doing (again as he had done in the examples i cited earlier).
biden has not grown or moved; the issues have.
Polls are going to be skewed tpwards the people that answer the phone calls from random phone numbers flagged Spam or Political.
How many have called you this cycle? How many did you answer?
i’ve seen spam calls, but i’ve never seen political before and i suspect my demographic data will guarantee that i will never get a phone call from a poll worker.
They didn’t start for me until after I turned 45. Not sure what to make of that, if anything.
if it does mean anything it would suggest that i’m right about my demographics precluding a call since it should have started a few years ago; if 45 is the magic age for it.
My number probably made it onto a few lists last couple election cycles from donations and petition support, and that might be more likely than age. But we are talking about the racist states of america so it’s entriely possible the difference is out demographics…which is stupid and infuriating, but silver lining: good for you without the extra calls to ignore?
that seems to further confirm my suspicions since i have been donating since 1996.
which is stupid and infuriating, but silver lining: good for you without the extra calls to ignore?
worst silver lining ever since the suffering endured by people with similar demographics have at the hands of democrats and republicans alike (especially biden) is less stupid and infuriating than the shitlibs on the fediverse and reddit that brand you privileged for pointing any of this out; no matter how much you’ve suffered.
Okay, now hear me out. What if we treat them like traitors?
America has rarely treated its traitors like traitors. That’s how we got in this whole mess.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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
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.
Very true. Good note.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Some states have laws to force a correct EC vote according to the popular vote. Not all do
Yes. Yes it does.
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.
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.
When you think about it, democracy at it’s core depends on good faith actors. Democracy IS good faith
W lost the popular vote in 2000 but won it in 2004.
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.)
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
So we setup police on certification day to arrest anyone working the polls who breaks the laws concerning transition of power.
Simple as.
If electors can be compromised, so can police though.
There’s a higher percentage of police in the MAGAt crowd than the general populous. I’m not sure that’s the best idea.
Congress is responsible for certifying the election, not local voting precincts. The local precincts simply collect the ballots, counties/parishes tally the totals, who then forward those totals to their respective states, which are then sent to Congress via the electoral college. It is up to Congress to receive them, and then certify the results.
It’s a good thing then that the sitting VP is bestowed the power to unilaterally decide who wins the presidency.
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
If we get that far. The voters have to make it past Local Sheriffs on the ground.
There’s also a Coalition of Right Wing Sheriffs wandering around somewhere.
I don’t know how it’s done in your country, but it possible also volunteer to man the voting stations and count votes
Chaos is just the first part of their plan. The whole purpose is for generating lawsuits that make their way to the Supreme Court.
The weirdo Republican’s entire plan is to have the SC hand the dictatorship to Trump, irrespective of the Electoral results. Harris could win Texas and be over 300 Electoral votes and the SC will still hand it to Trump.
Do you really think those 6 idiots handed the office of the President immunity? HAH! They handed TRUMP immunity. They absolutely will NOT see a Democrat with that immunity in the Presidency after the election.
It has to stay out of the Supreme Court’s claws. At this point, I really don’t see how it WON’T end up at the SC.
Chaos is a ladder
I would hope that a blatantly corrupt ruling by the Supreme Court that hands power to Trump would be enough to get Biden to just disregard their ruling as illegal, put down the coup attempt and arrest anyone found to have been conspiring to overthrow the government. It would be horrible for it to get to that point, but in that nightmare scenario it would be the least bad option.
If the Court blatantly rejects a valid election and throws their support behind a coup attempt, they will have already abandoned the institutional norms that the system relies on in order to function. Going along with it would only do more damage. The only way to repair the damage at that point is by stopping the plot, preserving the proper outcome of the election and removing insurrectionists from positions of power.
OMG… I so completely agree with you and that terrifies me.
If the Supreme Court throws out a legitimate win by Harris, then they need to be removed and tried for treason. Because that is EXACTLY what it would be.
Exactly. Reminder for those who still don’t fully appreciate the scope of the problem: fully one third of SCOTUS were lawyers for Bush in Bush v. Gore. This is their endgame and their purpose: invalidating the vote to coronate a Republican dictator is what they were put on the court to do.
Chaos is just the first part of their plan.
How did you gain this insider knowledge?
There are two types of people in the world:
- Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Honestly, the “incomplete” part of this data set is simply admission. They’re actions, largely their lawsuits and hounding of election officials, is pointing directly at this, with the SC ruling, it is all but said.
