A good overview on Trump's election-stealing strategies

Roxxsmom · Oct 1, 2020

This article, from an npr interview with Atlantic Staff Writer Barton Gellman, on how the 2020 Presidential election could trigger a Constitutional crisis.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/9190...lt-that-is-not-a-victory-atlantic-writer-says

Gellman says if the election is close, it could take weeks to determine the results in key battleground states as mail-in ballots are scrutinized for technical flaws and counted. If the president cries fraud and his supporters take to the streets, state legislatures could resolve to set aside the popular vote in their states and choose their own partisan delegations to the Electoral College.

While officials are preparing for a worst-case scenario, many believe the casting and counting of ballots will proceed normally, albeit more slowly, on election night.
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"This is not going to be a normal election," Gellman says. "I think that preserving its legitimacy is going to take extra effort this year. Democrats are certainly aware of Trump's proclivities. They're certainly concerned about possibilities that he will cheat or try to hang on to power by means other than winning the most votes and counting all the votes. Trump has made it absolutely crystal clear that he does not want all the votes to be counted."

On a common misconception regarding Trump's threat to refuse to concede:

Trump is capable of using the powers of the presidency, and the powers of his invincible decision not to concede, to raise doubt whether a winner or loser has yet been established — that he can prevent the achievement of a decisive outcome.

Interview Highlights

Barton Gellman: It's a subtle difference, but an important one: The usual way people say it is that they fear that Trump will refuse to leave the White House if he loses. He'll refuse to give up the reins of power. And Joe Biden says, well, that's an easy one. If he loses and he stays there, someone will evict him. That will most likely be the Secret Service or the military. They'll say, "Excuse me, sir, but your lease has expired on this office. It's 12:01 on Jan. 20, and we're going to now assist you in departing." That works if there is a clear winner or loser.

The greater danger is that Trump is capable of using the powers of the presidency, and the powers of his invincible decision not to concede, to raise doubt whether a winner or loser has yet been established — that he can prevent the achievement of a decisive outcome, which is a far greater risk to the American system...

Trump has done everything he can to set up his argument in advance, and he's also sowed mistrust of mail-in ballots among his own base. Many more Democrats than Republicans plan on mailing their ballots this year, though there's been a "blue shift" with mail in ballots for quite some time. So if he can find a way for many of the mail in ballots to be tossed out, or to circumvent the results via "his" courts or via GOP-dominated legislatures in some states, he likely will do it.

One interesting thing that is happening is fewer people are voting early than people thought would, so possibly more Democrats plan on voting in person after all. Of course this could lead to long lines, crowded polling places, and opportunities for in-person voter suppression and intimidation.

Some lovely :sarcasm

: things that have been happening include this and this.

This article is interesting too, re social media being on high alert for post-election threats.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/9189...itter-on-high-alert-for-post-election-threats

MaeZe · Oct 1, 2020

I like this from the first link:

"Republicans are on the verge of losing, so Gov. Abbott is trying to adjust the rules last minute," Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. "Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans are scared. We are creating a movement that will beat them at the ballot box on November 3, and there's nothing these cheaters can do about it."

Kaiser-Kun · Oct 1, 2020

Roxxsmom said:
One interesting thing that is happening is fewer people are voting early than people thought would, so possibly more Democrats plan on voting in person after all. Of course this could lead to long lines, crowded polling places, and opportunities for in-person voter suppression and intimidation.

The last one is probably what he wanted the Proud Boys to stand by for. I expect shootings at the voting lines.

Roxxsmom · Oct 1, 2020

Kaiser-Kun said:
The last one is probably what he wanted the Proud Boys to stand by for. I expect shootings at the voting lines.

I worry about violence at polling places too, and I worry about how police will handle it, given how biased they are towards Trump in many parts of the country.

MaeZe · Oct 11, 2020

Something more worrisome has come to my attention. I keep hearing Hispanic leaders interviewed on the news saying "Hispanics want to know what the Democrats have done for them." It sounded like someone was inserting that talking point into various Hispanic circles rather than it being of genuine grass roots origination. So I went looking and it only took me seconds to find this:

Politico: ‘This is ********** crazy’: Florida Latinos swamped by wild conspiracy theories - A flood of disinformation and deceptive claims is damaging Joe Biden in the nation’s biggest swing state.

MIAMI — George Soros directs a “deep state” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.

Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level that threatens to shape the outcome in the nation’s biggest and most closely contested swing state.

The sheer volume of conspiracy theories — including QAnon — and deceptive claims are already playing a role in stunting Biden’s growth with Latino voters, who make up about 17 percent of the state’s electorate.

“The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

The Cambridge Analytica folks would be proud. They might even be running the planning in whatever their new company version is.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the concern for potential election shenanigans.

But we might be letting it distract us a from recognizing the threat we should be paying attention to. All that BS about Trump refusing to leave and how all the GOP governors are going to call their states for Trump claiming they need to because of voter fraud is a consciously inserted distraction, to which Trump is likely playing a bit part.

And right under our noses 2016 social media influence is repeating itself.

MaeZe · Oct 11, 2020

Few people are paying attention to the propaganda that is flowing in a repeat of 2016. It's in another disguise right under people's noses.

The Trump camp knows Hispanics are a ripe target market.

NYT Opinion (free access during the COVID pandemic): Democrats, You Can’t Count On the Hispanic Vote

In Florida, an NBC News/Marist poll shows Mr. Trump leading Joe Biden among Hispanic voters, 50 percent to 46 percent, which could put the state in a virtual tie. In Texas, nearly 38 percent of Hispanics say they support Mr. Trump, while in Arizona, 29 percent do, according to recent polls. As with other demographic groups, Hispanic men are more likely than women to support Mr. Trump, with nearly 46 percent of Hispanic men in Texas and 42 percent of young Hispanic men in Arizona supporting him.

We tend to think of Hispanics as a nonwhite minority group, but many don’t necessarily think of themselves in such terms. What’s more, growing numbers of Hispanics are Protestant or evangelical Christians, a group that, like their non-Hispanic coreligionists, is far more inclined toward Mr. Trump. In Texas, for example, Hispanic Protestants support him over Joe Biden by almost two to one, according to the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation.

This is an older article that came out during the impeachment exercise:
The Atlantic: The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President - How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election

... The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?

As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: “That’s right, the whistleblower’s own lawyer said, ‘The coup has started …’ ” Swipe. “Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding …” Swipe. “The only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing …” Swipe. “Only one man can stop this chaos …” Swipe, swipe, swipe.

I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach.

... After the 2016 election, much was made of the threats posed to American democracy by foreign disinformation. ....

Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. In conversations with political strategists and other experts, a dystopian picture of the general election comes into view—one shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.

Roxxsmom · Oct 11, 2020

MaeZe said:
Something more worrisome has come to my attention. I keep hearing Hispanic leaders interviewed on the news saying "Hispanics want to know what the Democrats have done for them." It sounded like someone was inserting that talking point into various Hispanic circles rather than it being of genuine grass roots origination. So I went looking and it only took me seconds to find this:

Politico: ‘This is ********** crazy’: Florida Latinos swamped by wild conspiracy theories - A flood of disinformation and deceptive claims is damaging Joe Biden in the nation’s biggest swing state.The Cambridge Analytica folks would be proud. They might even be running the planning in whatever their new company version is.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the concern for potential election shenanigans.

But we might be letting it distract us a from recognizing the threat we should be paying attention to. All that BS about Trump refusing to leave and how all the GOP governors are going to call their states for Trump claiming they need to because of voter fraud is a consciously inserted distraction, to which Trump is likely playing a bit part.

And right under our noses 2016 social media influence is repeating itself.

I'm pretty sure Biden could answer that question in a few minutes. The ways Democrats are better for Latinx people than are Republicans in the US are legion. I think most Latinx who aren't already Republicans, or Hispanics as they prefer to call themselves in Florida, know that, and this represents a desperate bid to chip away at the Democratic advantage with this demographic, especially in Florida, where many Hispanic people are Cuban and Colombian--demographics more inclined than other Hispanic and Latinx groups to be Republican in general. Hispanics and Latinx are not a monolithic group within the US.

We're going to see increasingly intense efforts to chip away at Democratic-favoring voter groups in the next three weeks: women, Latinx, educated white suburbanites, even African American people. They're genuinely worried, and they're going to attempt to demoralize people by making it look like the attrition is greater than it is. Biden needs to fight back against this, obviously, and his campaign needs to keep hitting their message home.

Their biggest hope is still voter suppression and finding ways to discount as many votes as possible. If they have to win elections by making it harder for people to vote, by discouraging people from voting, from finding lame-ass excuses to toss mail in ballots, their party is not doing much to make itself relevant to most Americans, is it?

cbenoi1 · Oct 12, 2020

Forget the last-minute shenanigans. Here's the real taker.

Over 9 Million People Have Already Voted In The 2020 Election, The Majority Being Democrats
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommyb...on-the-majority-being-democrats/#2cd96efa659a

Americans are voting early in the 2020 general election at an unprecedented pace, with elections officials having already received more than 9 million ballots in the 30 states that have made data available, and that data indicates that registered Democrats have returned more than twice as many ballots than Republicans thus far.

If that doesn't scares the GOP shitless, this will.

A national Gallup poll released earlier this week showed that, unlike previous election cycles, a massive partisan gap has emerged between those who plan to vote early and those who plan to wait until Election Day. The survey found that 62% of Democratic registered voters plan to vote early or indicated they have already voted, compared with just 28% of Republican voters. This whopping 34-percentage-point gap is striking, considering that over the past four presidential elections, it hasn't been greater than 2%.

Oh, but it gets better.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 5.5 million votes have already been cast in the 2020 election, according to data from the United States Election Project, which represents a remarkable increase over the approximately 80,000 votes recorded at the same point in the 2016 election.

In other words, people have already made up their minds and the uphill battle for the GOP is not to prevent the Democratic vote, but to get their own supporters to catch-up, which is hindered by the Trumpeter-in-Chief who keeps claiming the system is rigged..

Over the past few elections, the number of Republicans choosing to vote early had been steadily increasing. However, President Donald Trump has spent the past few months railing against mail-in voting. Back in late May, he tweeted that there is "NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent" and definitively declared that "This will be a Rigged Election." In July, Trump wrote, "With Universal Mail-In Voting, 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history." His attacks have only intensified in recent weeks and days. Pundits have theorized that Republicans have been deterred from voting by mail due to Trump's unrelenting messaging. According to the United States Election Project, among the eight states that provide party registration data, 1,151,854 ballots have been returned by Democrats, versus 505,176 returned by Republicans.

DOH!

-cb

Roxxsmom · Oct 12, 2020

And this is exactly why they want to challenge and de-legitimize mail-in ballots and to find excuses to toss as many of them as they can.

If your party can only win by denying people their votes, that's pretty pathetic. It's amazing how hard they've fought to suppress voting when they could simply have, yanno, made themselves more relevant to a wider variety of voters.

nighttimer · Oct 21, 2020

cbenoi1 said:
Forget the last-minute shenanigans. Here's the real taker.

Over 9 Million People Have Already Voted In The 2020 Election, The Majority Being Democrats
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommyb...on-the-majority-being-democrats/#2cd96efa659a

That's a hugely underreported story by our lazy-ass media. Jemele Hill, the former ESPN personality, noted on her podcast when the figure was 6 million early voters that was way ahead of 2016 when only 75K had voted by the same time.

I voted by mail last week and dropped my ballot off at a suburban post office. A further drive, but less chance of it mysteriously being rerouted to a culvert somewhere in the woods.

Trust no one. Make sure your vote counts.

Roxxsmom · Oct 21, 2020

My ballot has been received and will be counted (our state has a confirmation system and allows people with issues, like mismatched signatures, to rectify them before election day). Mind you, Trump is down by 31 points in our state, but I believe it is important to have incredibly high turn outs, hopefully some of the highest in history, and for him to go down in flames big time.

This won't stop his supporters, let alone him, from screaming that the election was corrupted, of course, but the peoples' choices needs to be as clear as possible to any state legislatures, governors, or judges that might be tempted to tip the scales in Trump's favor.

A good overview on Trump's election-stealing strategies

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

MaeZe

Kaiser-Kun

!

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

MaeZe

MaeZe

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

cbenoi1

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido