The view from now
Here’s Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:
…Wisconsin was the clearest case of one judicial problem Trump faced. The remedy was too much for any court to grant. As I cautioned many times, no court was going to disallow thousands (and in some cases millions, such as PA) of votes which technically may have been unlawful, but were cast by people who thought they were voting lawfully and who were following the procedures of election authorities…
Technical arguments, while possibly legally correct, were not going to, and did not, persuade a majority of any appellate court to grant the relief sought.
Separate from the technical challenges, the presentation of actual fraud claims has been haphazard and disjointed. Unlike the Democrats, who were highly organized legally, Republicans had different lawyers filing different claims without any apparent coordination, sometimes in the same state. Legislative hearings are not court.
A big part of the problem was the truncated electoral college timetable. As I mentioned with regard to Nevada, trial court judges expected Trump or his proxies to come into court with conclusive evidence of fraud at the get-go, while eschewing the normal documentary and testimonial discovery process that would take months or years. I think it’s fair to say Trump never got his evidentiary day in court because of this truncated process, but it’s also fair to say that the law requires that election disputes — particularly presidential disputes — be resolved quickly and that only definitive proof of fraud affecting the result gets you past go…
I don’t blame people for fighting these legal fights. I said all along, and stand by it, that we should let the legal cases play themselves out. There is a strong sense that something went very wrong here; tens of millions of people have that sense. I certainly do.
The court proceedings and legislative hearings have exposed a lot of problems with the election. Shining a light on the threat of mail-in voting and election practices was a public service, and should serve as a warning for 2022 and 2024.
Much more at the link. Professor Jacobson says the left was far more organized than the right in its approach to this, and that’s true, but it’s also because the left is composed of ruthless zealots who are all about taking power, and the right is not. What’s more, the left was playing offense and the right defense.
For those of you who think I’m too easy on the right – I don’t think I am. I’m as frustrated and angry at anyone, and I wish the right was much better at fighting these things. But I put the blame where I believe it belongs: the left. And I also wrote this post on November 30 (entitled “How hard did the GOP try to stop the voting rule changes?”) in an attempt to discover whether the right did fight what happening in terms of the rule changes that facilitated fraud – or at least try to fight them – prior to the election. The answer to my question was “yes, they most certainly did, although apparently not enough.” Please read the post itself to get a better picture.
Unlike most people who go to bed early, I was up for much of the night on November 3-4, and so I knew even before I went to bed that there was big trouble. Big big trouble. It did not surprise me, because in the months building up to Election Day, as I read about the rules changes in state after state, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that even if the polls were wrong and Trump might be winning in the vote tally, that fraud would rob him of victory.
I wrote a few posts about some of this – for example, see this one on the GOP’s fight in Pennsylvania against the relaxation of signature matching laws, a fight they lost in the courts. The title was, “I have a feeling that Pennsylvania will feature highly in the coming election,” and it concluded this way:
And SCOTUS has already ruled that Pennsylvania can allow ballots to to arrive up to three days after Election Day and with no postmark. That already seemed like a perfect setup for fraud. And now this. And in one of the most important swing states of all.
That is no accident, I believe.
There were other fights and losses in other states and they caused a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that came every time I thought about the election for several months prior to it. And the events of the night of the vote-counting revealed that this had indeed been part of the plan. It seemed to me – and this was almost the worst thing about it – that once fraud of that type had occurred, there was no remedy. In fact, one of the most important of all the facts that have been revealed by this election is the fact that there is probably no ex-post-facto remedy that courts are willing to apply for election fraud, period.
On November 6 I wrote this about voting fraud:
…[O]nce the deed is done it’s very difficult to call it back. The Court would be loathe to overturn what is perceived as the result of the 2020 election, a Biden win, and declare Trump winner when Biden has been labeled the winner by the entire media and at least half of the American public. That’s my prediction, anyway.
In addition, it’s hardly just Pennsylvania. One of the things the Democrats have going for them is their control of deep-blue large cities in swing states, and that’s the key to perpetuating fraud. If they’re willing to do it in most or all of the swing states, then it is exceptionally hard to counter because it will produce an overwhelming effect – and because once the votes are counted, how does one prove anything to the degree that the Court would require?
Correct me if I’m wrong – I’m no expert on election law, and I haven’t been able to locate a definitive source that can answer my questions – but once Republican poll watchers are sent away and the vote-counting is done in secret, and once a bunch of bogus votes are counted and/or bona fide ones tossed, how can it be proven? The envelopes with the postmarks and names are gone, aren’t they? And even if saved, they’re no longer matched with the votes they contained, right? And in particular in states where mass unsolicited mailings had occurred, I doubt for the most part that votes cast exceeded ballots mailed, so the total vote counts would be unlikely to prove fraud on a scale that exceeds Biden’s margin of victory in that state, right? Even whistleblowers – and what Democrat partisan is a whistleblower – are unlikely to be able to report fraud on the scale that would justify overturning an election. If the votes are counted in secret, it seems to me that it’s game over even if some sort of suspicious activity is proven in court, because it’s a case of “What’s the remedy?”.
I could go on in that vein, but you get the idea. As I said before, I don’t like being a downer…
And then on December 1 I wrote this:
Barr and all the rest do not want to overturn an election without something on the order of, not just a smoking gun, but a radioactive smoking nuclear blast. That kind of evidence can never exist in a situation like this where the alleged perps were careful to cover up or dispose of the evidence, and the proof positive must somehow be discovered and proven in record time.
If there really was no evidence, it wouldn’t be such a problem. Only a fringe group would believe the election had been stolen by fraud. But that’s not the case. The evidence is actually quite strong, just not strong enough to meet what amounts to an impossible standard of proof when combined with the speed that’s necessary because of election deadlines. If the election was indeed stolen, the thieves were counting on exactly this state of affairs.
They will count on it in the future, too.
I’ve been thinking about where the right should go from here – not that the right is waiting for my direction. But the hour is very late and getting later. One thing that must be done is that any legislature controlled by the GOP should immediately pass laws that tighten voting rules in order to make fraud much harder. But – as a very eloquent witness in the Michigan hearings said – the problem is often not the laws, but their enforcement. How can a legislature controlled by the GOP make sure the laws it passes are followed in cities in their own state that are utterly controlled by the Democrats? How can a legislature controlled by the GOP get such laws past what might be a Democrat-controlled state supreme court (as in PA) determined to shoot down their efforts?
And as I wrote yesterday, even if the states with GOP legislatures manage to pass these laws, if the Democrats get control of the Senate it’s game over. I predict that one of the first things the Democrats will do if they win the Senate is to pass a voting “reform” bill that will override any GOP efforts on the state level, and loosen all the voting rules on a national level in a way that will favor Democrats and/or voting fraud indefinitely.
I apologize for the gloominess of this post. I’d love to be talked out of it. But what I think we are seeing here is that no constitution and no law can protect us if vast segments of the population are eager and willing to say that the ends justify the means and to employ any ends to seize power.
Yes. State legislatures need to tighten voting laws NOW. They also need to decertify Dominion or any other electronic voting equipment. If it costs a lot of money to buy paper ballot systems, so be it. Do it.
AND, in light of all the investigations, people who violated laws this time around need to be prosecuted. No lenience.
Many on the right have observed (correctly) over the years that in a fight in which one side seeks to play by the rules and the other plays to win by any means necessary, the outcome will seldom be in doubt. Even as many members of the GOP implore their base to turn out in January for two unimpressive candidates, they are doing very little to fight against what Stacey Abrams and the massive amount of leftist money pouring into the Peach State are seeking to accomplish in producing as many votes as will be needed for a “progressive” victory next month.
What’s needed is for some hard-nosed Repub Gov/SoS who simply ups and disqualifies a county or a bunch of precincts where there are shenanigans. Dems will cry bloody murder. But it’ll take them months to get anywhere, too, so it’ll cost them an election.
Do it once and they’ll stop.
I can’t talk you out of it.
It’s absolutely over for this country. This election was it. They have won everything and for all time. There will never be an election held that they cannot win if they want. If they wanted to have Democrats hold every seat in both houses of Congress, they can do this now with mail in voting and late counting. This will probably be the case by the 2030s, with the makeup of Congress looking like the California state house.
As already alluded, in my opinion if there is fault on the Right it is at the Governor/Secretary of State level. The Federal bench has shown that it will not meddle in state elections in advance; and that once the election is over they won’t because of “time constraints” or something.
So, at the State level is where procedures that are conducive to fraud must be snuffed from the outset.
I suspect the national GOP may have been complacent because they controlled so many legislatures and governorships. They underestimated the level of fecklessness, or outright cowardice in key states. Georgia, where Stacey Abrams simply rolled over Kemp and the SOS is a good example.
Georgia, where Stacey Abrams simply rolled over Kemp and the SOS is a good example.
In re Raffersperger, I’m going to wager he was bribed at some point.
}}}…[O]nce the deed is done it’s very difficult to call it back. The Court would be loathe to overturn what is perceived as the result of the 2020 election, a Biden win, and declare Trump winner when Biden has been labeled the winner by the entire media and at least half of the American public. That’s my prediction, anyway.
The PROBLEM **I** have is that this isn’t the only option.
Taking votes away and giving them to Trump is not the only option.
REDOING THE ELECTION, PROPERLY, is the proper way to handle it.
Yes, that’s unprecedented. But it’s the only solution that can work, when fraud has blatantly occurred, and just statistically, it’s self-evident that it is too near to a certainty to NOT presume it. This is “preponderance of the evidence” territory we are clearly in, when 47% of the entire population believes winner-changing fraud to be “somewhat likely”, when even 20% of Democrats (who knows how many, but at least one in five ADMIT it) believe their candidate “VERY likely won by winner-changing fraud”
ANY OTHER option is to reduce our elections to banana-republic level quality. Because no, there will be no valid, working “reform”. Oh, sure, there will be BILLS that pass that are called “Voter Reform Act” etc., which will do nothing whatsoever to reduce or prevent future fraud on this scale.
It’s more likely that a high government official will go to jail for being involved in Hillary’s e-mail server. Not holding my breath for either. No, not even a single breath.
If the court needed to call for a “caretaker” government, chosen by Congress — or delay the installation of the PotUS back to the old style March 4th date… I have no problem with this.
This is absolute CRAP. The SCotUS, by punting this, has destroyed any chance of reconciliation between the two camps.
FUCK them. FUCK THEM WITH A NAILED BASEBALL BAT.
This is NOT about winning or losing, this is about #@^%$&%@*#%* CHEATING on a scale which is flat out INSANE, and which I will not put up with.
I’m in no sense sure what I will do, but I am sure it’s going to happen before long, because Biden and Harris are sure as fuck going to over-reach in their first 100 days. And that is going to start an avalanche of a shitstorm. And I will join in whatever and wherever that leads.
>;-/
I do blame the GOP. They illustrate Edmund Burke’s saying: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” They did nothing.
It’s my understanding from GOP emails that the Georgia GOP is deploying thousands of election workers and observers (and, I hope, lawyers) to prevent this happening for the Senate runoffs. Fingers crossed. If they win even one of the seats, the Dem juggernaut can be slowed.
}}} So, at the State level is where procedures that are conducive to fraud must be snuffed from the outset.
The problem here is the idiotic notion of “standing”, and the fact that courts in the relevant states ignored their duty to uphold the law and found for whatever BS benefitted their party. And often used the various crap excuses surrounding/akin to standing to obstruct reasonable and effective challenges.
Oh, we passed this law, but until it gets applied to an election, you can’t challenge it (WTF?)
…Oh, yes, now there’s been an election, but NOW it’s too late for you to challenge that law. (again, WTF?!?!? >:-( )
And of course, the SCOTUS tells you you have no standing to challenge the law, even though fraudulent elections at the FEDERAL LEVEL blatantly and CLEARLY effect every single #!%^$#&&&@ American as a matter of material essence. >:-(
Sorry — when you make it clear that the only way to get the attention of the government is violence… you’re gonna get violence.
As the movie went, “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”.
Well, guess what? It’s no longer time to be nice…
the catch 22 of this whole dilemma is in order to tighten election laws in america the democrats have to agree to it but that is their edge so they will never agree to it unless the republicans have gotten so good at cheating that democrats can no longer beat republicans until tougher election security laws are imposed. there is no other way around, republicans must learn to cheat and master the art of cheating to force democrats to the table to beg for more strict election security measures. you can’t reason with villains like you can’t reason with the nazis or the imperial japan, only thing you can do is become a bigger bully then they are, beat them to a pulp then impose your reasons on them.
RE: Jackobson: “Shining a light on the threat of mail-in voting and election practices was a public service, and should serve as a warning for 2022 and 2024.”
Sooner than that. If action isn’t taken immediately, the DNC will repeat the process in the GA Senate runoffs and steal the Senate. After that, they can add states, change federal election standards, and change the Constitution by packing the SCOTUS. As Neo said, “Even if the states with GOP legislatures manage to pass these laws, if the Democrats get control of the Senate it’s game over.” [more below]
RE: “How can a legislature controlled by the GOP make sure the laws it passes are followed in cities in their own state that are utterly controlled by the Democrats?”
By force. In particular, protect the ballot boxes; require transparency, and ENFORCE THE LAW! Concerning the later: notice that even when observers are kept away — in violation of state law and even when video evidence suggests that ballot boxes were stuffed, police don’t investigate. Election laws get ignored in big cities because the people doing it know that there are no consequences.
RE: “How can a legislature controlled by the GOP get such laws past what might be a Democrat-controlled state supreme court (as in PA) determined to shoot down their efforts?”
You can’t. It may be that nothing can be done. The Ruling Class, DNCe and GOPe, have gone all-in. There are no limits to what they will do to maintain power. They are determined that another Trump will never happen again. The power is now coalescing around DNCe, as they have the DOJ/FBI/IC, Deep State, MSM, Big Tech and Wall Street behind them. Many in GOPe will join them. GOP will fracture and become a permanent minority.
– – – – – – – –
Lawyers need to descend on GA to sue to make it harder for the DNC to steal the GA runoff election. This needs to be pushed as a way to protect the rights of GA citizens.
For every vote stolen or every vote made illegally, a citizen has been disenfranchised.
What can be done immediately:
(1) Ensure the rights of independent observers. Get court orders NOW to guarantee full access. No more fraud in the dark of night.
(2) Protect ballot boxes at all times. Employ state police or national guard. Employ chain-of-custody rules. The only people who get access are citizens adding legal votes or people counting — one box at a time with observers on scene. Then re-box ballots so a recount will show the correct results.
(3) If machines must be used to count, count them twice by different groups.
(4) Use only paper ballots. If we can’t trust the machines, don’t use them.
(5) Count all ballots at the same time or count paper ballots first. Having hard numbers of votes up front tells the DNC how close they are to winning, and so they know how much fraud is required.
Elections aren’t rocket science. The UN has election standards that the US fails to meet. These standards have successfully run fair elections in third-world countries. They might work in Philadelphia and Detroit.
President Trump might be able to turn the tide against the illegal usurpation of election processes by forces acting unlawfully against the country by invoking the Insurrection Act, “ordering the military to address “unlawful obstructions” to an attempt to verify ballots, and an “insurrection” surrounding the 2020 election generally and troops could be deployed to take control over ballots and voting machines in swing states, rather than suppressing and dispersing rioting civilians,” according to lawyer Stephen B Meister. “The president’s invocation of the Insurrection Act isn’t a declaration of martial law. The Constitution isn’t suspended. The writ of habeas corpus isn’t suspended. The president would be using troops to enforce the law, not override it.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/case-for-president-trumps-invoking-insurrection-act-to-restore-election-integrity_3610513.html
This might be behind a paywall, but he explains that “In law, fraud is often proved by what are known as “badges of fraud”—telltale signs that a fraud has taken place—short of positive proof of the actual fraud, because fraudsters have a tendency to cover their tracks.”
There are sufficient “badges of fraud” to justify the President acting.
This is not without risk. Remember, the Democrats war gamed the election last summer, and one of their outcomes included the Western state seceding from the Union if President Trump won the electoral vote and Biden won the popular vote by more than 5%.
So, basically, the Democrats stole the election fair and square.
Which means they are now in power and will consolidate further their power to repeat this travesty again and again and again. Which means that America is over.
Lawrence Jarvik:
They certainly did NOT do nothing. I not only said this in the post but I offered a link to a previous post of mine (I’ll offer it again here) that described what they did, including links to other articles listing some of what the GOP did to try to prevent the debacle. Did you read that link? It makes it very clear that the GOP made many efforts.
The actual issue is whether or not they tried enough, and how they might have been more effective despite courts and rulings that ran against them. Was the legal deck stacked against them? Were there efforts they failed to make that could have worked?
1. After the Antrim County, Michigan report, why hasn’t the US Attorneys in GA, PA, WI, MI, AZ and NV seized the Dominion voting machines and tested them? There’s probable cause that federal crimes have been committed.
The job of the DOJ is to investigate crimes! This is the biggest political crime in US history.
And what about that printing plant on Long Island? And those election workers in ATL? Interviews? Wire taps? Subpoenas?
2. The Dems and Fake News used covid to create lax mail-in voting standards. There was fraud on an industrial scale and it is difficult to stop once the ballot has been returned. That’s where the GOP screwed up.
The Left knows to never let a crisis go to waste.
3. I listened to China Joe give his speech last night and then stayed on for CNN and Erin Burnett. She called me an “election denier.” I was also told “to do the right thing” and accept Trump’s defeat.
The Left has spun this as “overturning the results of the election.” In the final brief by Texas, it noted that the Constitution provides that when the results of the popular election are unreliable then the state legislatures have the plenary power to appoint the Electoral College electors. Another screw-up or lack of will.
I’ve been disenfranchised in NE by corrupt Dems in about 6 cities.
4. Lacking of standing and laches is the cowardly way to avoid the merits. The dissent in the Saturday WI case makes that point.
5. Suppose the Governor of MS made slavery legal. Suppose further that the federal government did nothing. Wouldn’t the other states have standing in the Supreme Court to enforce the 13th Amendment.
6. Trump’s lawyers and campaign people screwed up. Heck, I could have done a better job.
Bottom line: The Dems know they can get away with a Big Crime because the GOP and judiciary don’t have the will to stop them. They’re immune because the crime is so big. It’s like Too Big to Fail. This election is Too Political for a Remedy.
And, of course, the Dems have proven to be violent and many people are scared of them. BLM and Antifa are the enforcement arms or Brown Shirts of the Democrat party. We’ve come to that point.
Trump might use War Powers not Insurrection Act you know. Declare this a CCP attack on the United States since it is.
Cornhead:
Maybe you could have done a better job. But how, if laches etc. allow courts to avoid ruling? I believe that no lawyer and no legal approach would have made a difference. Plus, how to organize and gather evidence in such a short amount of time seems to have been a big built-in part of the problem. They should have anticipated fraud, and I believe they did and that they made preparations to fight it even prior to the election. But I don’t think they anticipated the vast extent of the fraud and the boldness with which the Democrats did things like throwing out the observers in so many places.
I expected there would be fraud, and I expected it would be bad, but even so I was stunned at how it actually went down. I think they were, too. I wish they hadn’t been, but I’m not sure I think there was a way they might have anticipated the details and been ready ahead of time. As it was, they were scrambling to get the facts in record time on what happened, and to fight it in so many states at once. It was a hugely uphill battle.
I do not blame the right to the extent that some do either, Neo.
What makes someone into what we call a leftist in the first place is a constellation of personal attributes (or deficits), interests, dispositions and character traits, that translate into life strategies and allegiances we call values.
Conservatives in general simply lack the hypersocial other-directed generated neediness and corresponding social resentments that drive the left in their tireless quest to acheive “fairness” through the installation of systems of centrally directed life choice control and personal asset redistribution.
The quality of their lives, perhaps their very lives, depend on their ability to nest within your life at the very least, and to completely reorganize it to their advantage if at all possible.
The is why every true leftist is an institution niche seeker either realized or frustrated.
Nature is not fair as we all know. They both realize that and admit it. That is a kind of strength. They will make their existence fair (or satisfying) on your back, or else.
That is it. Existence reduced to one simple aim. To obtain from others what nature has stinted them, and to do it by any meams necessary. No heaven above us, no hell below us, no notions of honor or virtue or intrinsic meaning. Just the urge: the socially conditioned and unquestioned need to be included-in and approved.
All of the metaphysical and anthropological assumptions of the past are dumped by the leftist things in what is in some ways a very honest move. No more talk of how we arrive at values, just the list of demands prompted by their wants and urges which cannot, as assumed brute facts, be allowed ( they imply) to be questioned.
The farmer busy in his field, the dentist in his office, cannot match the single-minded relentless of the – comparatively weak – creature that is ceaselessly stalking him.
Now, if we had even a few politicians in position of executive authority who had the spine to do exactly what Jim Nor Cal suggested and simply hew to the rules and stand on their legal authority, it might be a different matter. But it seems that most conservative politicians crave sometimg more than doing their bounden duties, too. A couple of threatening tweets, and they fold like a cheap tent.
What a race of worthless cowards … men elected to office who will not act on their duties in defense of the republic and their own freedoms, even with power, right, and the law on their side.
When you’re fighting barbarians the only way to survive is fight like a barbarian too. Sorry, but it’s the ugly truth. The Republicans should be signing up thousands of election observers who will insist on being right over the shoulder of the election counters so that they can contest every vote. Make the tabulators explain every single vote counted and make them understand the personal consequences of fraud. If the police or whoever try to throw them out, riot and not in a mostly peaceful manner. Destroy the ballots and the voting machines if it comes to that. There should be a ton of lawyers there to instantly sue the bleep out of the state of GA and whatever city is trying to cheat as well as protecting the observers. Bleh, I hate having to think like this but it’s the only way.
Now that is one I had not heard about.
I’ll look it up.
One small thing with a big delegitimizing effect the Republican party could easily do, is set up a fraud resource center on line to catalog all proven and indisputable examples of vote fraud and ballot harvesting, along with observer testimony, videos and affadavits in a readily accessible and cataloged data base.
One would think that private investigations might be able to do some good in certain instances, as well as rewards for coming forward.
In the meantime Cornhead, here are “props” to you and to “I Am Spartacus” for actually taking to the field. Those others who wish to pull a blanket over their heads, turn face to the wall, and die, are welcome to go the fuck ahead and do so.
The sooner these miserable excuses for Americans do it, the sooner we will not have to listen to their masturbatory cuck whining that “all is lost” any more.
Professor Jacobson says the left was far more organized than the right in its approach to this, and that’s true, but it’s also because the left is composed of ruthless zealots who are all about taking power, and the right is not.
__________
Yes. I was surprised how many conservative writers do not see this. E.g., at Powerline, only Hinderaker seems vaguely aware of it.
“It seemed to me – and this was almost the worst thing about it – that once fraud of that type had occurred, there was no remedy. In fact, one of the most important of all the facts that have been revealed by this election is the fact that there is probably no ex-post-facto remedy that courts are willing to apply for election fraud, period.”
_______
Yes. And very little pre-election prevention is possible, too. This has been going on a long time in the big cities. Mark Steyn’s latest show includes reading passages recounting past abuses. Amazing how little the underlying strategy changes, despite the technological advances. Reminds me of military history that way.
I saw this coming after 2018. And I was hoping we had a counter-strategy. But in vain.
And to be even more of a downer, just holding the Senate may not be enough. There are several Republicans just eager to sell out.
… there is probably no ex-post-facto remedy that courts are willing to apply for election fraud, period. — Neo
My point below does not counter Neo’s point above because courts were not involved, but it is interesting for a couple reasons.
The results of the 2018 North Carolina 9th district congressional election were overturned (by the election board) and the election re-voted in a special election. So yes, elections can be ordered re-voted.
And the reasoning used as justification was that there maybe, possibly, could have enough votes changed through fraud that it might have changed the results of the election. (But only if a Democrat lost in the original election, as was the case here. I wish that was a joke, but the sad reality of it is clear.)
See this and this on the election.
Note that a key operative in the decision for the re-vote was the state elections director Kim Strach who seems to be Republican leaning but voted against the Republicans because of the fraud involved. Ms. Strach was later removed by a Democrat dominated panel and replaced with a Democrat.(??)
To reiterate my second point; the more serious remedies are possible but seemingly only if they benefit Democrats.
DNW:
“One small thing with a big delegitimizing effect the Republican party could easily do, is set up a fraud resource center on line to catalog all proven and indisputable examples of vote fraud and ballot harvesting, along with observer testimony, videos and affadavits in a readily accessible and cataloged data base.
One would think that private investigations might be able to do some good in certain instances, as well as rewards for coming forward.”
_________
Good idea. Why do we have to rely 100% on the Federal Government and courts? Also, could not solidly Republican (not RINO) states do some investigating on their own?
Of course there is the problem that the Biden-Harris Regime will try to treat that as criminal sedition.
Yes. And very little pre-election prevention is possible, too. This has been going on a long time in the big cities. — Eeyore
I’ve read accounts of GOP election observers being thrown out of polling places in Philly for as long as I can remember.
DNW:
Truck driver who contracts with USPS delivered ballots from Bethpage, Long Island, New York printing plant to somewhere in PA. His testimony is that he saw “ballots already marked for Biden” in the cargo. Per orders, he just left the trailer in some lot. Unusual. Something is there. Hard to tell exactly from a one minute clip. Guy has been on Fox and maybe News Max. Google him.
Funny that courts have ordered cities to have Federal monitored and approved changes to police policies when it is a question of disparate impact (?) or racial bias, see Seattle WA for example, but widespread vote irregularities in Philly or Detroit have never resulted in the local control of election practices being taken away or put under the oversight of Federal authorities? Something about the rights of minorities in such cities being more special than the rights of minorities outside those metro areas? All them folks votes the same?
Careful what you wish for, better to have massive cancerous voter fraud in such metro areas than to contemplate such a harsh remedy? But then again the Feds are part of the “problem” as we see in 2020.
Tommy-Jay is correct:
The best form of pre-election prevention is transparency. Having independent observers is key. The fraud happens after observers are thrown out. Furthermore, full access and ability to video the proceedings is key to having good evidence right away. We desperately need this for the GA Senate election.
The other pre-election prevention is to enforce election laws. Officials do this because they know they won’t get prosecuted.
For those that have never seen it, the elections in the UK aren’t perfect, but they do several things we don’t:
(1) Paper ballots are put in ballot boxes. Observers ensure that the ballots are valid and that the ballot boxes are protected at all times.
(2) The ballot boxes are opened and counted at once in each district. The count is done in a large public place in full view of the candidates, public, and press.
BTW: I put together a full list of things that could be argued in count, right now, to prevent fraud in the GA runoff election. It was submitted at 1636 today on this thread. If anyone sees anything wrong with that list — especially anything missing — please comment. I intend to forward this to people like Judicial Watch and the RNC. We have to try.
Please consider raising these issues yourself. Thanks.
There are many good comments among the depression we are all feeling. But through these times we must keep up the fight and fight smarter. Fraud really only works in the dark. Now that there is more light being shown despite what the tech lords might desire. They and the mass media have overplayed their hands and the blowback will come. Because unless I read it totally wrong Trump will not go gently into the good night…neither will I. I have formed a tight band of likeminded travelers and we are preparing for 2022 and beyond. When people really see the contrast between feeble Joe and dynamic Don they will realize they have been duped.
Let’s face it this was the deep state getting rid of Trump. All parts of it united against him to defeat him. The Intelligence Agencies, Democrats, feckless Republicans, the Judiciary and NGO’s. As Plouffle said “Trump must be destroyed and his like never rise again”. Trouble is that 75M+ disagree with that assessment and will stay engaged. Do not be discouraged too long. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go off to battle.
Jim Nor Cal @ 3:53 – about having legislatures fixing fraud. Ron DeSantis did this right after he was elected. He sacked the election boards and officials in Miami Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties and put in those that could competently run an election. Florida was done the night of the election. That should be the model we point to and say why can Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Arizona do it. That is what I use when I talk about elections. Does the person I talk to want that also? If Trump doesn’t run in 2024 he is my choice.
Art Deco @ 4:16 – Raffersperger and Kemp in my opinion was not bribed but was complicit in that they wanted Loeffler to beat Collins. If there was too deep an examination this would have come out. There is a struggle for the control of the Georgia Republican party and it is being played out in this election. Kind of sad that Kemp was the Secretary of State before becoming governor.
Cornhead @ 4:57 – why hasn’t the machines and ballots been seized? See my answer above with the deep state. (ps. I enjoyed your Powerline posts on the primary season.)
I highly recommend the latest Viva Frei and Barnes podcast on these latest developments. (Thanks Neo for finding them for us.) One theme that Barnes keeps coming back to is that Trump had no loyalists at the locus of power and they stabbed him in the back. He believes that Trump needs to build an organization like Andrew Jackson between his defeat of 1824 and victory in 1828. He knows who are like minded people and if given a second chance would have much stronger team in place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5IPEvYchMo&ab_channel=VivaFrei
In the meantime, stay involved, vet all candidates, primary every RINO, keep telling about Soros backed candidates and work, work and work to build and organization for victory.
Enjoy this holiday with your family and prepare for the battles ahead. You are not alone.
The sad thing is, we are being sold on the idea that the size and scope of the problem was simply too big for any court in the land to handle. That’s nonsense, patently. All any judge had to do was order an audit on a manageable scale, and if the audit revealed problems, then start expanding the scale until the size of the problem was a ‘known’ quantity instead of a ‘feared’ one. A canvass of ‘how many votes vs. how many voters’ and a signature verification for absentee ballots would have put it to bed – if it was honest in the first place.
That’s it. If there were no problems on a sampling of audits in different battleground states, then confidence in the electoral system would have been preserved. Or on the other hand, the findings would be on the road to becoming obvious that the vote was fatally flawed and re-vote support would be overwhelming, as we already know, for both Democrats and Republican voters.
To say that no judge thought of this would be more nonsense, pure & simple. They were just cowards about it, using the nice excuse that they couldn’t bear to potentially disenfranchise a voter by mistakenly excluding real votes with fraudulent ones accidentally.
And all of this pretense ran out the clock while there was still plenty of time for re-votes in questionable districts – as is plainly evident in Georgia, right now, as we head to the disastrous runoff election, now that Democrats have perfected the steal.
Just another fact about DeSantis being strong despite all the pressure from the “narrative” team. Being here in Michigan with restaurants shut down I am sooo jealous.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/12/15/florida-governor-ron-desantis-recommits-to-all-florida-restaurant-and-bar-owners-will-always-stay-open-these-folks-have-the-right-to-work/#more-206120
If only judges felt the same way about technicalities and murderers: “No court should reverse the conviction of a jury which might be unlawful but whose members thought they were acting lawfully.”
I hope this helps lift the feeling of gloom.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/babylon_bee_swallwell_chinese_spy_12-15-2020.jpg
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/fang_fang_meets_chin_chin_12-14-2020-571×800.jpg
The margin of steal is pretty large, but it could have been overcome with two categories of votes: Those who voted for Biden because–they say–they hadn’t heard about Hunter’s escapades. The MSM pulled that one off.
For some reason, I get more angry with the “mush heads” than the cynical liars. The cynical liars–see them on Quora or FB–simply lie and they know they lie. They may be incorrect about how many people know they’re lying–more than they think–but it bothers them not a whit to be caught out.
For grins, since Biden is a cert, the AMA says hydroxychloroquine is good stuff. Nobody who was going nuts in faux fear of the stuff is embarrassed.
But the mush heads. Mean tweets. He’s so horrible. Ask about policies and results and they are completely bewildered. Either the concept never occurred to them or they don’t think anything is as important as mean tweets. If they profess to believe in “on both sides”, or some such, they do so by resisting actual facts.
If the number of mush heads I know is representative–and that’s KNOW as opposed to seeing them on the inner tubes, there are a whole hell of a lot of them. Enough that a healthy proportion of them would have turned the results. And the dems know how to appeal to them.
While I fantasize about saying “you voted for it” when a Biden catastrophe comes to their atrophied attention, I wonder about the practical effects.
It’s not hard to contact your representative and let him or her know what you think. A straw in the wind, but…sufficient de minimus becomes substantial. Perhaps your representative can be convinced to reflect on the next election.
So, to put a gloomy gloss on Neo’s gloom, mush heads aren’t going away and that’s a big number.
The truth is that, what we think of as left-v-right, is really a psychological construct, engineered for our benefit to make us believe, wrongly, that we have a “choice” when it comes to our elections. The reality is that all candidates, from both wings of the uniparty, are “chosen” and “allowed” to run by ultra-wealthy oligarchs, and all of these candidates must pass muster before being allowed to run, let alone to win. Passing muster means toeing the line; i.e., support of the military-pharma-media-congressional industrial complex. In the end, we are not “governed” by politicians; rather, we are “owned” by ultra-wealthy oligarchs who harvest our wealth for their own benefit and treat us as debt slaves. Sadly, many still believe that, if we elect that right person, or people, we will be able to restore the Republic to its former state, as the Founding Fathers envisioned, with limited government and respect for the rule of law. Those days are long gone, and were destined to be so in 1913, with the advent of the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Those 2 laws have enabled the slow, continuous syphoning off or our wealth and our liberties. Yes, this is an even more gloomy vision of our past and our future, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of research to realize that this is reality. We now are at the tail end of the financial system that enabled the ultra-wealthy to strip mine the wealth of the middle class. The covid came at an opportune time for TPTB, just at the moment when they had collapsed the world’s financial system, again, and had run out of options to keep the illusion of financial stability alive. Now TPTB are using the covid to strip mine what remains of middle class wealth by destroying small businesses (their only true competition) and routing our shopping options right into their pockets. Depressing? You bet. I wish things were different, but they’re not. Now is the time for right thinking people to take care of themselves, their families, and those closest to them. The Great Reset is coming for all of us, unfortunately.
“And as I wrote yesterday, even if the states with GOP legislatures manage to pass these laws, if the Democrats get control of the Senate it’s game over. …
what I think we are seeing here is that no constitution and no law can protect us if vast segments of the population are eager and willing to say that the ends justify the means and to employ any ends to seize power.” neo
Agreed and for the reasons stated. When “vast segments of the population are eager and willing to say that the ends justify the means and to employ any ends to seize power” then only one recourse remains and that is force.
It’s not quite time for force but if Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20th it will be time to start preparing to use whatever amount of force is necessary to restore liberty.
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” – Thomas Sowell
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.” Robert A. Heinlein
“What can be done against force, without force?” Roman statesman Cicero
Joe Van Steenbergen:
Call me a naïve optimist (not) but your assertion that there is only one party ignores those on the not so far left who are all in on Uncle Joe’s (Mao’s, Che’s, Fidel’s, Hugo’s) methods and goals. For some reason I don’t lump Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton or even Mitch McConnel in with those of the Democrat party. You may differ of course, and then if you go much further you will “be one” with our prophetic Sweet Potato.
Aggie:
RE: “The sad thing is, we are being sold on the idea that the size and scope of the problem was simply too big for any court in the land to handle.”
The issues are: (1) lack of time and (2) lack of remedy. Jackobson’s article explains this in detail. We have little time to act as the results must be declared in time for the electoral college vote. The DNC knew this: that’s why they dragged their heels getting to a final answer. Suppose an audit shows fraud? What, then, is the remedy? You can’t guess the level of fraud and adjust the results. You could try to order all votes counted in a given precinct or city invalid. Good luck getting a judge to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands or millions of votes. And there isn’t time to revote.
Even worse, if you don’t protect the ballot boxes, election supervisors can bring in ballots and swap them with legal ones. Without observers on hand, that can be easily done. Also, there are reports of ballots being shipped into counting locations in this election. The audit will show that Biden won. You can recount every vote: the result is the same.
@rcat,
You forgot (3) lack of will and resolve. Let us not forget the battle ground states have solid, supposedly Republican governance in many key positions.
And now that the electors have safely arrived in Washington, D.C., we now have all the psuedo-Republican State Officials jumping energetically into the fray to issue subpeonas for election equipment – a month post-ipso-facto after all the post-election machine resets, erasures, or mysterious data losses – or demanding absentee ballot signature verifications, or making other absurdly irrelevant demands in the hopes their last-minute theater will be accepted by the voters they’ve betrayed – now that the tide is going out. And hoping that they’ll be remembered as true-blue, supporting that last-ditch, long-shot effort. ‘True-blue’ is ironically more correct than they imagine.
There should not be a single Republican voter that supported Trump, who forgets these nuances, lest the political class allows time to work in its passive way, eroding history and context as it often does. There are four years available to us to focus on exposing the culprits, these avatars of cowardice, relentlessly and at every opportunity, to get them removed from the feed trough and replaced by dependable leaders. Grass Roots organizing is what Jacobsen is calling for, and I agree.
By the way, I don’t agree with all of the crowd that is moaning ‘All is lost’, or ‘we’ll never have another honest election’, and so forth. It’s only lost if you let it be taken. So far, there hasn’t been any kind of fight.
That latter possibility is not really a problem but an opportunity.
It, should it happen, provides that clear and unmistakable casus belli for conservatives in this society – “with its already dead and buried social contract” – which the traditional and religious population still psychologically needs before radically, really radically, coming to grips with the moral otherness and alienness of the Democrat kind.
The greatest thing that could happen is for the governing left to be publicly driven to that sort of ultra vires extreme, such that all social bets are clearly off and all people must as a result take sides either for or against the rule of law and constitutional government.
For some reason, some Republicans seem afraid of having this clarifying, and liberating, crossing of the trip wire victory handed to them on a plate.
It may even come their way whether they take up a Biden delegitimization project or not.
The recent request of the Speaker by a representative from New Jersey to deprive some hundred Republican members of the House of their seats, using Jacobin rhetoric about the glory days of radical reconstruction, shows that these effing Democrat loons may not have to be pushed very far before they initiate a complete social, and thus moral break: revealing themselves once and for all for who and what they are.
The reason the Republican Party has to run the project to delegitimize Joe Biden then, is because the Demos taking action against the national Republican party organization as it does traditional and constitutionally protected politics and political speech will be precisely the nationwide trigger needed to destroy whatever shred of legal or moral legitimacy to which a Biden presidency might otherwise pretend.
Aggie:
RE: “Let us not forget the battle ground states have solid, supposedly Republican governance in many key positions.”
The following states that President Trump may have won have DNC governors: MI, NV, PA, and WI.
RE: “And now that the electors have safely arrived in Washington, D.C. …”
No, the electoral college has met (past tense) remotely. It’s done.
RE: “There are four years available to us to focus on exposing the culprits.”
So what!? We’ve had years — literally years — of solid evidence of serious crimes by Clinton, Obama, and now Biden. We’ve exposed serious crimes by DOJ/FBI/IC and the rest of the swamp. The new rules are simple: if the GOP doesn’t have the power to prosecute and can’t get it in front of the right judge, justice will not happen. President Trump has had almost four years to get DOJ/FBI officials prosecuted. Comey, McCabe, and Strzok are still free. We have one FBI official pleading guilty to a minor charge. That’s it.
And, by the way, forget four years: fight like hell to retake the House in 2022! Most Americans will be disturbed by what Joe and Ho do, and Americans will move to pull their fangs. That’s an opportunity.
RE: “You forgot (3) lack of will and resolve.”
All I can do is present the facts and what can be done. Your opponent is trying to reshape the judiciary, rewrite the Constitution, and change election laws. I’m trying to prevent that. Stopping them requires planning and skill — something your opponent has done with ruthless efficiency. That’s why they are the “evil party”. The GOP cannot stop them with determination. That’s why they are called the “stupid party”.
My prediction: the Trump supporters are going to split the GOP because no one but Trump measures up to their standards. And the result will be a permanent DNC majority. You can see it now. Trump supporters are claiming that Trump only lost because others in the GOP abandoned him. I hate GOPe (RINOs) as much as anyone, but Trump lost because the DNC stole it. Period. They are the criminals; they are the enemy. They are the ones who are undermining our Constitution and the values and norms of our society.
I laid out specific information about the risks and opportunities. You didn’t respond with substance. In particular, I explained why your proposal doesn’t work. If you can counter what I said, I’d like to hear it.
This requires resolve, but it requires more than just resolve.
Neo – I wish I could give you cause for optimism, but your gloom is fully justified. Indeed, I don’t understand conservatives who find various silver linings in the election results, e.g., Republican gains in the House. I suspect that these new Republicans will be the subject of constant protests by Antifa, BLM, or Handmaidens and cut off by Facebook and Twitter. They will essentially be run from office.
Your pessimistic analysis does not factor in the malign power of Google, Facebook and Twitter and their alliance with Democrats. I do not see how a conservative movement can arise in an environment in which communication is monitored and limited and every gathering is met by a “mostly peaceful” counter-protest.
The unfortunate truth is that we have already seen what happens when an ideological left gains complete control in, e.g., Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. The logic of the left demands that the same thing happen here. Between Covid and the bogus Russia collusion investigation, leftists have had 4 years to refine mechanisms for identification and control of enemies of the State. They will not be stopped by courts. I would not be surprised to see ownership of guns limited to victims of oppression (who need them for protection) and students required to recite an Anti-Racist Pledge each day in lieu of the traditional pledge of allegiance. States that do not go along will lose federal funding (another Democrat flip-flop).
Totalitarian regimes can be stopped only when the police and army turn against the government or are defeated in battle. Here, the police will be defunded and defanged and Antifa and the MSM will enforce the ideology of the new regime. (There are anarchist members of Antifa, but tley will be weeded out.) Leadership of the armed forces seem willing to go along in order to keep their sinecures.
Although civil war seems inconceivable, it is not. Red state armies could outnumber blue, and red states contain significant military assets and natural resources. Blue states import a significant portion of their energy and food from red states. On the other hand, blue states would likely have a technological advantage and be assisted by China. This is, admittedly, the stuff of science fiction.
You are a student of totalitarian regimes and I doubt that I have said anything that you have not already thought, if not written, about.
Having already gone on too long, I would say that there is one “fault line” in American society that could challenge the progressive regime, and that is social security. If predominately young progressives cut social security for millions of seniors that depend on it, the push-back will be enormous. (I’d venture to say that, apart from labor unions, no group is better organized than the AARP, although it has been known to sell out its members.) Progressive hubris could lead to it’s collapse.
Anyway, I hope none of this comes to pass and that we continue to live in a country in which you are free to publish your thoughts. Keep up the good work.
I am Spartacus,
I just returned from Florida. It’s odd how quickly lockdowns and facemasks have become normalized. It was very nice to be somewhere that is “open.” Many folks wore masks in public spaces and some businesses had signs posted requiring them on the premises; but the great thing is it was left up to the individual. Having had the virus several months ago I tend to be rather cavalier these days, so I’m very comfortable being in crowded spaces unmasked, but I have no issue with those who do not feel as comfortable.
The businesses I saw in Florida seemed to be doing well and the general mood was happy and festive; as it used to be most everywhere in this nation during the month of December.
An incident from years back just occurred to me which illustrates just how far back the deep state practice of a conspiritorial use of international players to calculatedly sabotage an administration based on a false narrative, had progressed even so far back as during the younger Bush administration.
You might recall that that one involved an ex-diplomat with CIA connections conspiring with an ideologically motivated journalist on how to get out a (narrowly false) “debunking” story in order to undermine the administration. It generally utilized the deliberate crafting around the term ” behest” of a semantically misleading storyline concerning the origin of a supposedly executive office directed journey of “discovery”. It involved the claimed outing of a nonspy “spy” by ostensibly malevolent forces within the administration; persons who actually had nothing instrumental to do with dispatching the ex-diplomat on his trip in the first place. Nor did the specifically accused top official, the VP of the US reveal the identity of the so-called ambassador’s “clandestine operative” wife, as the snowballing narrative eventually suggested. One of his staff however was targeted and punished for acknowledging he had heard what what someone else had previously revealed.
I refer of course to the Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson affair.
And I refer to the trip Joe Wilson took: Not at the direction of V.P. Dick Cheney, as was deliberately suggested by the narrative’s crafted use of the term “behest”, but rather at the recommendation/suggestion of his CIA employee wife Valerie Plame to her working group. (As has been documented by the timeline stamps on the CIA’s own records). And far from the nefarious Cheney first ordering an operation into motion, and then naming secret names in retaliation for a disappointing finding when the assigned patriot was just doing his duty; it turned out that Cheney did not only Not send Joe Wilson off on his junket, but that the said-to-be notorious gossip in Colin Powell’s employ, Richard Armitage, was the person dropping office locations or names to the press after the cryptic (and politically designed) first release of an “ambassador’s mission” story and “findings” was planted with, and by, a collaborating press.
How many Federal executive institutions have we now seen weaponized by insiders against Republican administrations and conservative citizens? The IRS, the CIA, the FBI …
The results of the 2018 North Carolina 9th district congressional election were overturned (by the election board) and the election re-voted in a special election. So yes, elections can be ordered re-voted.
EXACTLY
The courts have been acting as though their only option is to either take votes away or hand votes out, rather than declaring an election null-and-void because it’s got too many fraud indicators.
Rufus:
I’m from FL — some areas had alarmist County Commissioners overreacting, but, thanks to deSantis, they cannot enforce it legally. Which leaves it up to the business to demand it, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Where businesses ask, I am not generally averse to it.
Similarly with South Carolina, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months. For a while there, most of them were wearing them ONLY where the businesses mandated it. That has reversed a bit with the increase in case count, but it’s still very much a hit-or-miss thing.
I’d be joining a militia if I had to live in Michigan. :-/
OlBloodyHell,
It’s a similar situation in my state; our Governor has had a good approach; “Things are different in different municipalities so I won’t mandate anything statewide. My county has the highest incidence of COVID and is fairly locked down, but one of the border counties has a wide open policy. Many days I drive the two miles, or so, across the border to shop, go to the library, etc.
I don’t know a lot about DeSantis, but I admire how he has handled the pandemic this year. And thank heaven for those Governors who have taken a similar approach. Without them we’d have no data regarding strict policies vs. non-strict policies. When states like Florida, South Carolina and Georgia first announced they would re-open in early summer the media shrieked that they would soon be stacking corpses like cordwood within their borders. That hasn’t happened, no real difference between locked down and non-locked down, which makes it much harder for hardline governors like Whitmer and Phillips to gaslight their residents.
“And to be even more of a downer, just holding the Senate may not be enough. There are several Republicans just eager to sell out.”
Eye, there’s the rub. Romney, Collins, Murkowski, to begin with.
There is only one game-changer possibility that I can see, and something not mentioned here: foreign intervention in our elections and Democrats found culpable for Treason.
Everything else has been thought it tried.
On NTD via YT, a Swiss Banker who has been an election observer for 39 years has seen electronic vote counting change Swiss voting outcomes. And pushed back, they squeeze back in. And the company in question, Scytl, has software with multiple places for back door entry to alter vote counts.
In another, story on the same NTD news programme posted only a few hours ago, details how Dominion machines, before and after adopted, systematically altered vote outlines by boosting Ds and reducing Rs by (roughly) 1.88 percent, and Biden by 3.
But back to foreign corruption. If the electoral count by is delayed on January 6th, if heinous compromise of Biden or D buds is exposed, if public outcry GROWS!
If there then is a contingent election, Trump is voted by the House. But Harris Ho is Veep by the Senate?
Can Trump survive the coming assassination and assault?
Will the nation survive?
The Gramscian March has won over the Deep State, the Media, and Academia – which all did so much semi-un-coordinated dirty work between themselves. Against Trump.
Against Republicans.
For years.
For decades.
Democrat Derangement Syndrome – hating those who disagree on policy.
rcat – I support:
1) Paper ballots, 2) counting in precincts; 3) In-person voting. Once. With Voter ID.
You should support these, too – and repeat them, in brief, rather than refer to prior posts. We should all support Free and Fair elections.
In fact, all Americans should be united in wanting Free and Fair elections – with full transparency.
And laws which are followed.
And disqualified ballots, and ballot counting places, if the laws & rules are not followed.
** What some election court should have decided is that, AFTER Rep election observers were booted out, the votes from that area don’t count. **
The only way to ever stop cheating is to not allow the questionable votes to be counted – even if that means some legal votes are not counted.
There’s another suggestion that Reps start “cheating” also. I don’t like that BUT, in accordance with experiments that show Tit for Tat as the best strategy to get cooperation, it’s clear that Dems who lose to Reps “very actively promoting voting among Rep voters” will be more amenable to less cheating.