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A Firing Offense?

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 19, 2024

In a sane world

These signs by local artist Maia Ferrell (nonprofit) have been cropping up in my lefty neighborhood since mid-August.

Board of elections officials and supervisors take oaths before starting their public service jobs, both in my state and in Georgia.

Here’s Georgia Code § 21-2-70:

(B) In the case of a board of elections, each member of the board shall take an oath in the following form upon becoming a member of the board which shall apply to all primaries and elections conducted by the board throughout such person’s tenure on the board:

I, __________________, do swear (or affirm) that I will as a member of the board of elections duly attend all ensuing primaries and elections during the continuance thereof, that I will to the best of my ability prevent any fraud, deceit, or abuse in carrying on the same, that I will make a true and perfect return of such primaries and elections, and that I will at all times truly, impartially, and faithfully perform my duties in accordance with Georgia laws to the best of my judgment and ability.

Now, like the presidential oath (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8) and the Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8), try enforcing it.

Because it seems like this kind of activity between election officials would be … wrong, if not illegal or a fireable offense in the private sector (The Guardian):

Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.

The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.

Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.

If it were me, I’d be calling for the dismissal of these election officials. But given GOP conservatives run Georgia according to Frank Wilhoit’s formulation for bad faith politics, it’s not likely.

Receiving the email were a handful of county election officials who have expressed belief in Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020, and have continued to implement policies and push for rules based on the belief that widespread election fraud threatens to result in a Trump loss in Georgia in November. They include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of elections who refused to certify results this year; his colleague Julie Adams, who has twice refused to certify results this year and works for the prominent national election denier groups Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network; and Debbie Fisher of Cobb county, Nancy Jester of DeKalb county and Roy McClain of Spalding county – all of whom refused to certify results last November and who received the letter Hancock took issue with.

And aside from little Spalding County (pop. 67k) about 35 miles south of Atlanta, Fulton, Cobb, and DeKalb counties conveniently represent, along with (Hancock’s Gwinnett) the four largest counties in Georgia and a third of its population.

In this environment, and in this state, and with its recent history, this story should be attracting more attention than it has.

Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, writes at Civil Discourse that these election officials must be “gifted fortune tellers” if they’re already discovered that Georgia’s 2024 election will involve massive fraud before a single vote has been cast:

“The goal of their plan is to hamper certification of the election results if Trump loses,” Vance writes:

This news is not a surprise. As we’ve discussed previously, there are some efforts underway to pretend the purely ministerial obligation election officials have to certify completed counts is something else, a process whose outcome these officials have the discretion to challenge. If this sounds familiar, it’s roughly akin to the idea of delaying certification of the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2020, to throw the election into chaos amidst claims of (nonexistent) fraud. It’s a recipe for a coup.

… You don’t have to be an expert in election law to see what’s happening: Trump is trying to create a legal path to do what he failed to accomplish in 2020, overturning the will of the voters if he loses.

Photo via Joyce Vance’s Substack.

This election will be a fight for every vote, Vance reminds readers. On the positive side, she’s seeing signs for Harris-Walz in Alabama neighborhoods she normally thinks of as Republican:

Occasionally down here in Alabama you see a smattering of signs supporting Democratic candidates. But I don’t remember seeing this many, in such a wide variety of places and with so much variety and creativity, ever before. Is it joy? I’m not sure what it is, but these signs make me smile and feel hopeful every time I see one, and I hope they do for you too!

Dealing With Trump’s Tariffs

Published by digby on September 10, 2024

Mark Cuban tweeted this and I thought it was useful:

I think one major point the discussion of tariffs is missing is the time and cost to businesses, even the smallest single person company.

It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of bureaucracy. It almost always required hiring a broker to deal with all of it.

And of course there is the ongoing record keeping that each business is responsible for.

Here is what @grok had to say (really growing attached to @grok @elonmusk)

When importing products that are subject to tariffs, here’s what you generally need to do:

1. **Determine the Tariff Rate**: Use the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) to classify your product and find out the applicable tariff rate. This classification involves determining the correct HTS code for your product, which can be complex and might require consulting with a customs broker or trade specialist.

2. **Calculate the Duty**: Once you know the tariff rate, calculate the duty you’ll owe. This duty is based on the customs value of the goods, which includes the cost, insurance, and freight (CIF) value. The formula typically looks like this: Duty = Customs Value * Tariff Rate.

3. **Customs Entry**: File a customs entry through the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system, usually with the help of a customs broker. This entry includes all necessary documentation like commercial invoices, packing lists, and possibly a bill of lading or airway bill.

4. **Pay the Duty**: You’ll need to pay the calculated duty, along with any other fees or taxes, to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before or at the time of entry. If you’re using a customs broker, they might handle this for you, but you’re ultimately responsible.

5. **Compliance with Other Regulations**: Beyond tariffs, ensure compliance with regulations from other agencies like the FDA for food products, USDA for agricultural products, etc. This might involve additional certifications, inspections, or permits.

6. **Record Keeping**: Maintain detailed records of all transactions, including invoices, duty payments, and any other documentation. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) might audit these records, and you need to prove compliance with trade laws.

7. **Consider Tariff Engineering**: If possible, look into ways to reduce tariffs. This might involve changing the product’s design, sourcing materials from countries with lower tariffs, or qualifying for free trade agreements like the USMCA (for products from Mexico or Canada).

8. **Price Adjustment**: Since tariffs increase the cost of your goods, you might need to adjust your pricing strategy. This could mean raising prices, absorbing some of the cost, or finding ways to reduce other costs.

9. **Understand the Impact**: Be aware that tariffs might affect your competitiveness. Consider how these costs impact your market strategy, including potential price increases for consumers or the need for alternative sourcing.

10. **Stay Informed**: Tariff rates can change due to trade agreements, policy changes, or disputes. Keep abreast of any updates through official channels or trade publications.

Remember, while customs brokers can handle much of the paperwork and payment processes, as the importer of record, you’re responsible for ensuring all information is correct and all duties are paid. If your business involves frequent imports, investing in knowledge or hiring experts in international trade compliance might be beneficial. 

#8 is especially relevant, don’t you think? It’s inflationary. But you knew that.

Any small business person who imports anything and votes for Trump is a fool. He’s talking about imposing tariffs on everything.

As Above, So Below

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 31, 2024

Trump cannot change, nor will he

“A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area and was eventually subdued by the police with a Taser and arrested.” https://x.com/MelodyZare/status/1829732863090077778

“Are we in La La Land?” asks Colbert I. King in the Washington Post.

“He’s on our side,” Donald Trump told a rally crowd on Friday as police hauled off a supporter for attempting to assault reporters.

Associated Press:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser.

The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.

The man made it over a bicycle rack ringing the media area, and began climbing the back side of a riser where television reporters and cameras were stationed, according to a video of the incident posted to social media by a reporter for CBS News. People near him tried to pull him off the riser and were quickly joined by police officers.

The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”

Yes, at Harris-Walz victory party, numbnuts.

Clearly “on our side,” Trump said approvingly.

It’s a measure of the gangrenous rot Trump has spread across the country that even after the January 6 insurrection he fomented, after his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, after the threats he’s inspired against election workers, after his repeated dishonoring of veterans, and after 34 felony convictions, Trump glibly keeps inspiring followers to violence and his cultish followers keep being inspired to act out on his behalf. It’s who he is. He will not change. He has no conscience. He never had a moral compass. Whether he has a soul is beyond my discernment.

King continues:

If I didn’t know better, I might conclude that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, was merely the act of exuberant “patriots” voicing their displeasure with Joe Biden’s victory — and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. What else to think, based on the media’s treatment of the twice-impeached former president and felon and his campaign to return to the White House?

Trump is being covered by the press as if Jan. 6 were old news.

A fifth grand jury indicted Trump this week in the stolen government documents case against Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith filed the charges even as a large fraction of addled people in this country seem torn between which party’s presidential ticket to choose in November. La La Land, indeed.

King goes on:

Imagine a president singling out his own vice president for the scorn of a bloodthirsty mob and sitting back as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect him and his family. Imagine a president receiving reports of members of Congress fleeing the Capitol for their lives and not immediately sending reinforcements to the Hill. Imagine a president leaving it to a D.C. mayor and her police force to rescue U.S. Capitol Police.

We don’t have to imagine it. We watched it. We’ve lived it. Trump’s voters don’t have to imagine it either. It’s what they voted for in 2016 and in 2020. It’s what people like the man arrested in Johnstown, and those convicted and jailed over Jan. 6, and those still awaiting trial and sentencing for it will vote for in 2024. All the while calling themselves American patriots.

We want our leaders to be inspiring. But this is not what we imagined getting.

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Downed By Law

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 27, 2024

MAGA finds it easier to rig elections than win them

Is there a term for an entire political party suffering a case of flop sweat? The GOP’s brows are gleaming. Stuck with their degenerate (and degenerating) candidate for president and faced with an energized Democratic ticket raking in millions by the hundreds and volunteers by the tens of thousands, Republicans are engaged in a frenzied effort not to prop up their own slates but to strip the right of fellow Americans to express their will at the polls.

Republicans have long neglected serious efforts for turning out the vote in favor of suppressing the votes of people they perceive as lower-caste interlopers. Irresponsibles, I’ve called them (ironically). David Frum famously (and belatedly) declared in 2018, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

Frum was years late with that realization. The voter integrity “boot camp” I attended in 2013 was a white-knuckled exercise in “protecting a demographic patch of electoral turf that’s shrinking” beneath Republicans’ feet. Not once in that day-long workshop did any speaker suggest opening up the franchise to greater participation, registering new voters and encouraging them to go the polls to exercise their right to vote. No, the goal was to prevent Them from “stealing” the election from Real Americans™.

The Georgia state election board’s attempt to implement a flurry of last-minute election rule changes has drawn both the ire of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party of Georgia and county board members. The move by the board’s MAGA majority seems designed to undercut the state law mandating local officials certify election results (NBC News):

At the heart of the civil suit, filed in Fulton County, are two items the election board passed this month: the reasonable inquiry rule and the examination rule.

The suit says that the rules conflict with Georgia’s statutes governing certification and that the election board did not follow procedures for rulemaking as required by state law. It therefore asks the court to pause the two rules to the extent that they conflict with existing law.

The plaintiffs are also asking for a declaration that election results must be certified by Georgia’s statutory deadline of Nov. 12 and that certification is mandatory rather than discretionary.

A conservative party otherwise obsessed with size and strength is putting its weakness on public display. Fair fights are for losers, Donald Trump might say.

“Voters in 28 states will face restrictions that weren’t in place in the last presidential election,” the Brennan Center reported in May. The overwhelming majority were red states in 2020.

“As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting,” Heather Cox Richardson writes, summarizing additional GOP displays of self-doubt:

In Nebraska, Alex Burness reported in Bolts today, two Republican officials—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen— last month stopped the implementation of a new state law, passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, that granted immediate voting rights to about 7,000 people with past felony convictions. In the process, Hilgers also declared unconstitutional a 2005 law that had allowed those convicted of a felony to vote two years after they completed their sentence. Evnen then told county-level elections offices that they could not register former felons.

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

As with Georgia’s plans for casting doubt on election results there (to borrow from King Crimson), if MAGA Republicans get their way, confusion will be democracy’s epitaph.

But HCR’s summary is not finished:

Voter intimidation is underway in Texas, too. On August 18, Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo, who was a key figure in promoting the Big Lie, posted a rumor that migrants were illegally registering to vote at a government facility west of Fort Worth. The Republican chair and election administrator there said there was no evidence for her accusation and that it was false, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton nonetheless launched an investigation.  

In addition to feeding the narrative that there is voter fraud at work in Texas, the investigation led Paxton’s team to raid the homes of at least seven Latino Democrats. No one has been charged in the aftermath of the raids. Latino rights advocates call them a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to intimidate Latino voters and have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.

Today, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that since 2021, Texas has removed more than one million people from the state’s voter rolls, and said the process will be ongoing. Abbott’s office said those removed are ineligible to vote because they have moved, are dead, or are not citizens. But more than 463,000 of those on the list have been removed because their county of residence is unaware of their current address. 

Even when voters do make their wishes known, in Republican-dominated states, those wishes are not always honored. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo today pointed out an article in which Adam Unikowsky, who clerked for the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, eviscerated a recent decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that will prevent an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot in November.  

The reason? A technical defect in the submission: “They didn’t submit a photocopy that wasn’t required” of a document already submitted a week earlier. (The “defect” was quickly corrected.) If the ballot initiative sponsor had failed to count the number of beans in the jar, the court’s ruling would have been no different. Because keeping the abortion rights initiative off the Arkansas ballot, HCR notes, “will generally help Republicans.”

Just as Jim Crow helped southern segregationists maintain white supremacy for nearly a century. MAGA Republicans’ 21st-century attempts at resurrecting it would be humiliating if they were capable of shame. This makes Donald Trump’s sculpted comb over a fitting symbol of Republicans’ desperate efforts to hide their receding popularity from the world and from themselves. Nobody’s fooled.

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The Big Lie To The Big Steal

Published by digby on August 19, 2024

Rachel Maddow has an oped in the NY Times today bringing her historical knowledge to this scheme that’s percolating in the swing states run by Republicans about decertifying the vote. She reminds us that back in the very close 1960 election some fringe wingnuts floated the idea of refusing to certify the results in certain states in order to give Nixon the electoral college victory over Kennedy. At the time, it wasn’t even considered but, as we know, times have changed.

She observes the most recent activity in Georgia which gives local election boards the power to challenged and overturn a valid election. And it gets more troubling every day:

On Monday, the board is expected to consider yet another revision to the rules that would afford members of county election boards an additional option for delaying or refusing certification. The rule would allow local board members to demand “all election-related documentation” before certifying the results.

Imagine an election night this November in which the two parties are trading swing-state victories. The Democrats capture Nevada, while the Republicans take Arizona. The Republicans win the big prize of Pennsylvania, while the Democrats top them in Wisconsin and Michigan. The nation is waiting on Georgia. If Georgia goes red, it’s President Trump; if Georgia goes blue, it’s President Harris.

Then, local news headlines start to circulate. There are reports of unspecified “problems” in the vote in Fulton County. And in Gwinnett County. And in DeKalb, Coffee and Spalding Counties. Republican officials are refusing to certify the results in their counties. They say they are making “reasonable inquiries.”

As legal challenges wend through the courts, a wave of disinformation, confusion and propaganda swells, fueled by unproven claims that something is amiss in these Georgia counties, and also by similar noise — and possibly also certification refusals — in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada. (All have seen local Republicans try the certification refusal ruse since 2020.)

She points out that the states only have until December 11 to send official certify results to Washington but notes that nobody knows what will happen if they don’t:

The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one. If one or more states fail to produce official results, blocking any candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment prescribes Gerald L.K. Smith’s dream scenario: a vote in the newly elected House of Representatives to determine the presidency. Each state delegation would get one vote; today, Republicans control 26 state delegations; Democrats control 22; and two are evenly divided.

Our democratic system is not invincible, but it is strong. Certification of election results is a ministerial responsibility that is not discretionary. Legitimate election challenges are handled with recounts and litigation, not by individual election board members. There is no loophole that allows bad-faith officials to so flummox the electoral system that they take the choice of the next president away from the American people.

But in the past three and a half years, the ad hoc certification ploys that failed to flip the last presidential election to Mr. Trump have been professionalized and systematized by Republican officials and their allies. A recent report in The Times quoted an official with the conservative Heritage Foundation saying that “the conditions” in the country are now such that “most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.” Michael Whatley, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, has declined to answer when asked if the party intends to try to block vote certifications.

I sure wish the race could open up a bit and provide a large enough margin that this wouldn’t be a possibility. But if the swing states are as close as they have been we’re going to have a fight.

There was a time when a big popular vote win would allay these fears simply because both parties believed in democracy and in a case where the electoral college was tight the loser would easily concede knowing that the will of the voters across the country had chosen their opponent. Republicans have made it clear that they don’t care about the spirit or the letter of elections law. If they can game the system, they will do it. lt worked in 2000 and might have worked in 2021 if they could have gotten Mike Pence on board. Of course they will do it again.

The Plot To Steal 2024

Published by digby on August 12, 2024

You’ve probably heard about the nefarious plot in Georgia to challenge the election by now and I’m sure you’re familiar with Trump’s shenanigans in other states in 2020. This article in the Guardian takes a look at the current national effort led by Trump insider Cleta Mitchell. Read the whole thing, but I thought this was a worthy excerpt:

Since 2020, there have been at least 20 instances in eight states of election officials refusing to certify election results.

The first red flag came in 2022, when county commissioners in Otero county, New Mexico, refused to certify the results of a primary election, citing vague concerns about voting equipment. The secretary of state eventually went to court to force the commissioners to certify the election.

In July of this year, two Republicans on the county commission in Washoe county, Nevada – a key county in a battleground state – refused to certify its primary vote, setting off alarms. The commissioners who refused to certify eventually reversed themselves. Nevada’s secretary of state, Cisco Aguilar, has since asked the state supreme court to clarify that county commissioners have an obligation to certify votes.

Sometimes election officials who refuse to certify have pointed to mistakes that happened during the election, even though they did not affect the outcome. In other cases, like Adams’s in Georgia, officials have refused to certify to protest about what they view as unfair laws.

While courts would probably force recalcitrant officials to certify the vote, significant damage could still be caused.

“You can force certification through legal mechanisms, [but] those events tend to be like rocket fuel for conspiracy theories and misinformation and undermining confidence in the election. So there’s damage done even where certification is eventually forced,” said Berwick, the Protect Democracy lawyer.

The timeline for certifying the vote is important because, under federal law, states must have an official election result by 11 December, six days before the electoral college meets. Delaying certification efforts at the local level could put states at risk of missing that deadline.

“If we get past that deadline, it opens up a lot of questions, like tricky legal questions and room for shenanigans,” Berwick said.

The experts are counting on the state courts but who knows? And there has been some action at the federal level to [revent a re-run of 2020:

A new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, should provide a significant new layer of protection against election subversion. The bipartisan bill passed Congress at the end of 2022.

The law makes it so that Trump and his allies cannot repeat what they did in 2020 and submit false slates of electors from key swing states. Significantly, it says that the slate of electors submitted by a state’s executive is the legitimate slate and raises the threshold in both houses of Congress to object to the electoral result.

While the law controls what Congress must do once it receives certificates from electors, it doesn’t have much to say about what must happen in the lead-up to the electoral college vote. That could leave a lot of wriggle room for Trump and allies to try to slow down certification and go to court to try to force states to miss their certification deadline.

And they will. You know they will.

Are we any better off than we were in 2020?

Lawyers and other activists say they are ready, having spent the last four years studying and understanding the vulnerabilities that Trump and allies targeted in 2020. Any effort to block certification is likely to be swiftly challenged in courts, where Trump has already been unsuccessful dozens of times.

The new Electoral Count Reform Act should offer additional safeguards should there be an effort such as there was in 2020 to get Congress to stop its certification of the vote

Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the threat altogether. The same pressure points that existed in 2020 exist in 2024, and in some places election deniers have been elevated to positions of power.

“This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent,” said Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center. “That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.”

It is going to happen and he is going to come unglued as will some number of his followers. If I had to guess, most of them are probably pretty tired of all this and will actually feel some relief that it’s over. They’ll whine, of course, but I doubt he’ll get the crowd he got in 2020 (which he will certainly call for.)

But there will be a few who want to take some action and I would expect them to be very reckless. I hope everyone is prepared for that too.

New Election, New Strategery

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 11, 2024

MAGA goes back to the drawing board

So the whole fake electors and Green Bay Sweep did not work as Trumplandia planned for overturning the will of the voters in 2020. And since the coup plan counted heavily on Republicans holding the vice presidency, and since Congress reformed the 1887 Electoral Count Act in 2022 to prevent a recurrence, the enemies of democracy went back to the drawing board for 2024.

Sure, red-state legislators have since erected every new hurdle to voting they could conjure and pass. But what’s a MAGA Republican to do if troublesome citizens still manage to muster enough votes to elect a Democrat and not Donald Trump to the White House in 2024?

Monkey-wrench election certification, that’s what.

As a Rolling Stone investigation explained, “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials” stand ready to question “the validity of elections” and to delay or refuse to certify results as mandated by law. At least 22 have done so in the past, injecting themselves as election arbiters into what is an essentially “ministerial” function. Election challenges are the job of state boards, district attorneys and courts.

The slapdash quality of the Green Bay Sweep has been replaced with a more sophisticated effort.

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in 2024, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

Then there was that creepy moment at an Aug. 3 rally when Trump name-checked three state Georgia Elections Board Republicans (the majority) for “doing a great job” as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

This is election denier-in-chief Donald Trump we’re talking about. Why would he praise election officials?

An election subversion war machine

Washington Post:

All three members of the board — Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jaffares and Janelle King — have, like Trump, questioned the results of the 2020 election. And the trio came under fire recently from a good government group for quietly holding a meeting without the other two members in an attempt to pass new election rules that would increase the number of partisan poll watchers.

Georgia’s election deniers this month did indeed pass “a raft of new rules that critics say could void valid votes, place onerous burdens on overtaxed election workers and potentially delay the certification of results.”

Elias warns at Democracy Docket that with “fewer than 100 days until the election, Republicans are building an election subversion war machine.”

This is not the white-knuckled volunteer effort to challenge voters’ eligibility that I reported at Crooks & Liars in 2013. This scheme involves election officials challenging the results.

Elias writes:

They have sacrificed traditional get out the vote activity to fund and recruit for their massive voter suppression program. They have a constellation of well-funded legal groups supplanting these efforts with unlimited money and grassroots volunteers. They are sending their lawyers into courthouses around the country to lay the groundwork for their anti-democratic plans.

Regarding the new Georgia rule, A.B. Stoddard adds at The Bulwark:

Election experts say the new rule could disrupt the entire process across the state by allowing local partisans to reject results. And Georgia appears to be at the center of Trump’s plans. Casting doubt on Fulton County, which makes up the bulk of Democratic votes in the state, will help him claim he won the Peach State as the rest of the results come in red.

But even without an explicitly permitted “inquiry” like the new Georgia rule provides, Republicans in other swing states still plan on acting at the county level to slow or stop certification. Because questioning the outcome at the very start of the process will create delay. Any doubt and confusion, and perhaps even violence, makes it easier to miss essential deadlines and can threaten the chance that the rightful winner prevails.

Enough confusion and delay ultimately could mean throwing the election to the U.S. House of Representatives. There, where each state gets one vote, the red-state majority could — legally — hand back the Oval Office to the MAGA king, end the republic as we know it, and damn the will of the people.

What’s to stop them?

The North Carolina State Board of Elections in March 2023 removed two Surry County election officials for co-signing a letter declaring “I don’t view election law per NCSBE as legitimate or Constitutional.” One refused to certify the results of a November 2022 municipal election; the other agreed on a technicality, reported ProPublica. Similar efforts to thwart certification have lost in court in other states. But that’s all after the fact. Delay is the pro-autocrat’s friend.

Stoddard offers:

The Washington Post reported in June that “in some states, election administrators have already identified voters in each county who could serve as plaintiffs in emergency lawsuits to force county boards to certify results. In others, state administrators are sending detailed instructions to county officials laying out the limits of their power to block certification.”

It’s crucial that these plans are widely publicized. And they can be. Just like Project 2025, which was virtually unheard of and is now in the forefront of the political debate. Putting a media spotlight on this issue will force Republican officials to address what they are well aware of and are refusing to call out.

Indeed, that is one reason I’m writing this today. An alarmed friend called Thursday to insist such a preemptive publicity campaign is what’s necessary. Prophylactic publicity. Threats of lawsuits against election officials who obstruct certification. Threats, even frivolous ones, are Trump’s preferred strategy, aren’t they? Because they often work. We know.

Work the refs. (They do.) Show up in numbers to public meetings of your local elections board and direct questions to Republican members about certification. Make them sweat enough to think twice about throwing the process into chaos.

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What If He Loses?

Published by digby on August 9, 2024

I keep asking that question and I think we all probably know the answer. He will lose his mind and so will his supporters. Think about this:

In fairness, LaCivita was cutely suggesting that the Democrats were the ones who were going to contest the election of Trump rather than the other way around. But I think we know the reality of that statement, don’t we? Joe Biden certainly does:

Speaking to CBS News’s Robert Costa this week, President Joe Biden offered a pessimistic assessment of the aftermath of this year’s presidential election. “If [Donald] Trump loses, I’m not confident at all” that there would be a peaceful transfer of power, Biden said. “He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it, all the stuff about, ‘If we lose, there’ll be a bloodbath, it’ll have to be a stolen election.’”

The “bloodbath” comment to which Biden refers was offered at a Trump rally this year and, in context, appeared to refer to theoretical economic damage from Trump not returning to the White House. But the latter part of Biden’s comment, about how Trump is likely to frame any loss as a function of illegality, is unquestionably on the mark. It’s what he did in 2020, as you’re no doubt aware, and two-thirds of Republicans still tell pollsters that they think Biden’s win that year was somehow illegitimate. More than a third of Republicans say there’s solid evidence Biden didn’t win, which — despite four years of feverish looking — there isn’t.

It’s not clear that there’s any way to ensure that Trump’s supporters accept a loss this time around, either.

[…]

Pew Research Center polling conducted last month found that fewer than half of Republicans believed that the election would be “conducted fairly and accurately.” Recent YouGov polling, conducted for the Economist, determined that 8 in 10 Trump supporters think that he will defeat Harris in the election. Should Harris prevail, is it more likely that those Trump supporters will accept the defeat or that they will assume the election wasn’t fair and accurate?

A separate poll conducted by YouGov for the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University determined that about 30 percent of Republicans who felt the 2020 election was stolen anticipate significant political violence after the election. That poll also found that a lot of Americans are concerned about misinformation — none more than those who reject the 2020 results.

“Republicans who believe Trump won in 2020 are more concerned about misinformation than any other group surveyed,” Johns Hopkins’s Hannah Robbins notes, “and believe ‘liberal media’ are responsible.”

Now you’ve got honest election officials who stood up for the truth last time being drummed out of their jobs either through threats and intimidation or primary elections. And in places around the country, Georgia notably just this week, we see changes to the laws which will allow Trump cronies and GOP henchmen to overturn a legitimate election of Harris with bogus charges of voter fraud and then certify Trump as the rightful winner even though he lost.

The odds are low that Trump would be able to seize power in the event of such a loss. But, as we saw in January 2021, that’s not the only possible negative consequence of his supporters thinking without evidence that the election was stolen.

I’m not sure the odds are as low as he suggests. We don’t know what the courts would do in the event of a state certification crisis. After all, the Supremes intervened in 2000 on behalf of Bush. Three of the justices were appointed by Trump and three of them worked for Bush in that earlier case. Do we really believe that they won’t do it again after what we’ve seen recently?

First things first, of course. Win the election. But nobody should be sanguine that the post election period won’t be complete chaos with an unpredictable outcome. This is what Trump has wrought.

Georgia Gone Rogue

Published by digby on August 8, 2024

Yes, they are actually doing that — again. It’s absurd. Meanwhile, Trump will not be allowed to lose Georgia again:

After being praised by Trump, Georgia’s un-elected, administrative State Election Board changed the state’s election certification rules. Georgia House Democratic Whip, @SamForGeorgia warned the rule change could delay the state’s 2024 election results. 

The 3 GA Board of Election members who voted to change these rules were praised by Trump during his Saturday rally in Atlanta, he specifically thanked them by name. Many of these members were appointed to the State Election Board recently. 

Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

Two rules approved by the State Election Board in a possibly illegal meeting last week appear to have been suggested by the Georgia Republican Party.

Documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon sent the text of the rules to board member Rick Jeffares several days before the meeting. McKoon also shared talking points summarizing why the rules should be adopted.

Jeffares and two other Republican board members later approved one of the rules McKoon suggested and approved a scaled-back version of the other.

On Wednesday, two of the Republican board members defended their actions. They said the meeting was legal and — though they were appointed to the board by Republicans — they are not doing the party’s bidding.

Sure.

They are planning to de-certify a Harris win. It’s obvious. And I’m not sure they won’t be able to get away with it. This plan will be in effect anywhere where they can install their henchmen in election offices.

Georgia’s On Trump’s Mind

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 5, 2024

Alarm bells are warranted

“Here in Georgia, we’re watching as Trump and his allies prepare to sabotage the 2024 election by changing the rules around certification election results,” tweeted Max Flugrath on Sunday.

The thread by the communications director of Fair Fight Action raises the alarm over weirdness out of the ordinary for Donald Trump. At his Georgia rally on Saturday, Trump praised three Georgia State Election Board members by name.

Yesterday at Trump’s Georgia rally, his lie-riddled & rambling speech had all the usual hits: false election conspiracies and attacks on VP Harris.

But one part of Trump’s remarks stuck out.

And it may be a preview of his strategy in November.⬇️ 

Trump praised the Georgia State Election Board, a government body overseeing its election rules. 

Trump thanked three of the Georgia State Election Board’s members specifically for their efforts to change Georgia’s certification rules.

This is odd. Trump doesn’t usually concern himself with details this in-the-weeds. 

The Georgia State Election Board members Trump thanked & singled out were recently appointed:

Janice Johnston
Rick Jeffares
Janelle King

Trump called them “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”

So, what exactly are they fighting for? 

.@AmericanDoom_ published a great write up this morning about Trump’s certification comments at yesterday’s Georgia rally:

In Atlanta, Trump confirms that Georgia’s state election board is in his pocketThe comments came at Trump’s rally Saturday night and confirm much of what democracy advocates have long suspected of the board’s Republican members.https://www.american-doom.com/p/in-atlanta-trump-confirms-that-georgias?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=48kvzt&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

From that American Doom post:

It’s jarring enough that Trump name-checked these previously-obscure officials — and that they received such a warm reception from the crowd — but it’s even more concerning that he praised some of their work specifically. Trump is not a man of details. The importance of him even being aware of a rule of such election minutiae as that passed at the SEB’s last meeting is a shocking alarm bell that he and his campaign are highly aware of the mechanisms they need to employ in order to get their way in Georgia in November. 

Put more simply: Trump knows about certification, and his comments Saturday night are surely reflective of a much-deeper understanding of the issue within the highest ranks of the Republican party, signaling a clear plan to weaponize certification to their greatest advantage on election night.

Of the three SEB members Trump praised — and who were apparently in the audience Saturday night — Jeffares and Johnston are confirmed election deniers, as I reported here at American Doom and for the Guardian. The third, King, is probably one as well, or is simply climbing her way up through the ranks of the Georgia Republican Party and doing whatever she’s told by her handlers in her capacity as a member of the SEB. 

Flugrath again:

First, more context on the Election Board: It’s now a Trump-aligned government body. One new member is a former Republican Party operative.

Their meetings are chock full of false election conspiracy theories, many are based on Trump’s 2020 election lies.

Trump-friendly panel shapes Georgia’s election rules at long, often chaotic meetingsThe State Election Board in Georgia once toiled in relative obscurity. Now it hosts raucous meetings where public comment lasts for hours and attendees loudly heckle board members and speakers.https://apnews.com/article/georgia-state-election-board-0141f8011dc9e7c054ed73f63dbf5f58

The Trump-aligned GA election board members are working to change the state’s election rules with less than 100 days until the election.

They recently held a meeting, unlawfully noticed and carried out, where they advanced changes to Georgia’s election certification process. 

More on the Georgia State Election Board’s unlawful meeting and actions here:

Georgia election board walks back rules approved at meeting flagged by state AG • Georgia RecorderThe nonprofit government watchdog group that sued to overturn votes taken at a Georgia State Election Board meeting earlier this month.https://georgiarecorder.com/briefs/georgia-election-board-walks-back-rules-approved-at-meeting-flagged-by-state-ag/

After a lawsuit, the election board is holding another vote on some of the proposed election rule changes, on Tuesday, August 6.

The new rules they’re trying to pass can be used to sow doubt in the results and delay certification of the the 2024 election.

Experts: Georgia GOP officials lay groundwork to “obstruct” and “subvert” election certification“We’re seeing the national strategy take shape in Georgia,” Atlanta election attorney warns.https://www.salon.com/2024/07/12/experts-georgia-officials-lay-groundwork-to-obstruct-and-subvert-certification/

The Georgia Republican Party & Republican National Committee emailed the GA Election Board members the text of these proposed election rule changes with talking points to use in meetings.

Rules adopted by Georgia Election Board appear to have been suggested by GOP leaderTwo rules approved by the State Election Board in a possibly illegal meeting last week appear to have been suggested by Georgia GOP Party Chairman Josh McKoon.https://www.ajc.com/politics/election/emails-show-republican-leaders-involvement-in-georgia-election-rules/BHUKJ6LZI5ENDLU5BPALXJ24ZY/

One proposed rule change would give authority to local election officials to slow down or refuse to certify the 2024 election results.

With election deniers holding local election positions in Georgia, this should alarm us all.

These Swing State Election Officials Are Pro-Trump Election DeniersNearly 70 pro-Trump conspiracists are election officials in key battleground counties — and they are poised to make a giant mess on Election Day.https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/

These proposed election rules changes effectively make the certification of election results discretionary.

But, Georgia law states that local election board officials **shall** perform their duties. Their duties are mandatory, not discretionary. 

Another of the proposed election rules changes would increase workload demands on overburdened election workers, which could overwhelm county elections offices and ultimately slow down or stop the certification of the 2024 election results. 

If you’re a Georgia resident & think these election rule changes are dangerous, please consider emailing a public comment of the GA State Election Board.

The deadline for accepting public comments is before 12:00 PM tomorrow, August 5th: SEBPublicComments@sos.ga.gov 

Let’s not forget, in 2020, a Coffee County, GA elections official delayed certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, refusing to validate recount results and using MAGA-backed election conspiracies as the reason.

Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach | CNN Politicshttps://www.cnn.com/2023/08/13/politics/coffee-county-georgia-voting-system-breach-trump/index.html

In the wake of Fulton County’s 2024 primary, Fulton County Election Board member Julie Adams filed a lawsuit to enable local elections officials to refuse certification.

Republican member of metro Atlanta elections board won’t certify primary resultsA Republican member of the Fulton County elections board is refusing to certify primary election results unless given access to detailed voting data, in a move that Democrats worry could jeopardize ce…https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/republican-member-of-fulton-elections-board-wont-certify-primary-results/IDYT7CZVMZAJXHDAADS7G6JNT4/

Adams is connected to the Election Integrity Network, founded by Trump ally Cleta Mitchell, who joined Trump’s infamous ‘find me votes’ call to Secretary Raffensperger.

Republican who refused to certify Georgia primary a member of election denialist groupJulie Adams, who abstained from certifying May results, belongs to Election Integrity Network, founded by Trump ally Cleta Mitchellhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/04/republican-julie-adams-georgia-election-integrity-network

America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned organization, is representing Adams in her lawsuit seeking to overturn Georgia certification law.

‘Wild west of election work’: How certification fights are already cropping up in battleground states | CNN Politicshttps://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/politics/certification-fights-battle-ground-states/index.html

Here in Georgia, we’re watching as Trump and his allies prepare to sabotage the 2024 election by changing the rules around certification election results.

Trump’s election sabotage plan seems more concentrated in Georgia than any other state. 

If these election rule changes are approved and MAGA-aligned officials obstruct the certification of the 2024 election results, our votes are crucial.

Check your voter registrations status.
Encourage friends, family, and your community to register + vote.
Volunteer if you can. 

Early voting starts soon, make a plan.

Consider serving as a poll worker.

Volunteer with your local/state Democratic Party’s voter protection efforts. 

Our collective participation is crucial to stopping Trump’s election sabotage scheme.

If we turnout and make our voices heard at the ballot box, we can protect American democracy. But we have to show up.

Please RT this to help spread the word.🙏 

Be on watch for this. Election protection attorney Marc Elias warned in the recent Rolling Stone reporting that “we are going to see mass refusals to certify the elections.” As you can see from Trump’s pleased blathering, Republicans are “counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.”

This is not a new GOP approach to “fixing” elections. It’s an upgrade, writes Elias, to their democracy downgrade.

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