Trump Will Try To Steal The Election: Here’s How We Stop Him
If Donald Trump is beaten, does anyone doubt that he and his accomplices will try and overturn the results and steal the election? Trump floated trial balloons months ago that hardly went noticed because, well, Trump. Thus encouraged and helped by a team of election lawyers they crafted the blueprint. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Trump has repeatedly told us that he won’t accept the results of the election if he loses.
In Trump’s fever dream the election will be rigged, or the outcome will “never be determined”. “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election, I don’t want to see a crooked election. This election will be the most rigged election in history.”
Impossible? Not in America, right? Actually, possible and because of the way America elects presidents. Our electoral system is antiquated, poorly designed and vulnerable to an attack by a proto-dictator like Trump. This time around Trump might not even need Putin’s help, but still, “Russia, if you’re listening…”
Here’s how Trump’s scheme would play out. Of course, Trump has no clue how it works so he has to depend on enablers to help him. And boy, does this guy get a lot of help.
There are two vote counts that determine who wins the presidency. The first counts voter ballots and it happens between now and December 8th. While there’s no hard deadline for the states to finish counting voter ballots, federal law gives a strong incentive for states to wrap up by December 8th.
The second count is the electoral college votes themselves. When you vote for a presidential candidate, you’re actually voting for a slate of electors, actual people who vote to elect the president.
Those 538 electors who make up the electoral college then vote to choose the president. Each state’s electors meet in their state on December 14, they vote for the president and send a record of their votes to Congress.
For example, if Biden wins Ohio by 3,000 popular votes then all 18 electoral votes for Ohio would go to Biden.Then on January 6th, the newly elected Congress, not the current one, will count all the electoral college votes.
This is the count that counts.
Congress is the body that actually determines who the president is. When Trump tries to steal the presidency, he’ll do it by attacking both of these counts between election day and December 14th.
We should fully expect Trump and his enablers to disrupt the ballot count and try to delay any count until past when the electoral college meets on December 14th.
Trump’s lawyers will file legal challenges against ballots if the election is anywhere near close, and probably even if it isn’t. In the new calculus Democrats have to win by a landslide to take the White House. Republicans, not so much.
They can lose the popular vote and the electoral college and still win because a stacked Supreme Court will give them the presidency. Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices ACB and Brett “Beers” Kavanaugh all represented the Bush team in arguments before the Supreme Court in 2000.
That’s not all.
Be prepared for armed white supremacist militias, the people Trump suggested “stand back and stand by” to attempt to directly prevent boards of elections from counting ballots. To augment his street thugs, Trump could order federal agents to seize ballots, halting the count in some places. Chaos would ensue, delaying the process and making it impossible to complete the ballot count before the electoral college meets on December 14th.
This would all be intended to, at the least, sow public doubt about the legitimacy of the election, and increasingly, terrorize people into not voting lest they cross paths with unhinged armed lunatics that support Trump.
Our democracy is already hanging by a thread, and this may be the last weekend of the America we knew before Trump.
Seeing the end of their party with Trump losing, is when the Republicans would make their move to seize power and keep it. In normal times the governor of a state is responsible for certifying which candidate’s electors should be appointed to the electoral college based on which candidate won the state’s popular vote.
These are not normal times.
This constitutional crisis begins here. Republican state legislatures in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, each of which has a Democratic governor and a Republican led state legislature could declare that the election has been corrupted by fraud, that an accurate ballot count is impossible, and that Trump is the legitimate victor.
The legislature could then vote to illegally appoint a second rival slate of Trump electors to vote alongside the legitimately appointed slate of Biden electors on December 14, resulting in the state sending two contradictory votes to Congress.
Outlandish? It’s happened before. In 1876, four states sent competing slates of electors to Congress in the election between Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York and Ohio Republican Rutherford Hayes. A constitutional crisis followed drawn out negotiations, which ended just days before the inauguration.
The resulting compromise meant Hayes was sworn in as the president in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and igniting the Jim Crow century.
Is it that much of a stretch to imagine Trump sending federal troops to secure cities and ensure a forced continuation of power.
If a state sends two slates of electors to Congress, Congress must determine which electors to count and which to discard. This is where the Republicans, in survival mode, will do whatever it takes to ensure that Trump remains in power by declaring him the winner on January 6th.
There is the very real possibility that two men show up on the podium on January 20th. Biden, legitimately elected and awaiting the handoff that won’t come, and Trump, who will retain all the powers of the presidency until he transfers it to Biden. Which he won’t.
Does anyone seriously expect Trump to willingly hand over power?
But there’s hope. When Trump tries to steal the election, we can stop him. But we (and the Democrats) need to make a stand. We need tens of millions of people to take to the streets and shut everything down; Wall Street, airports, shopping malls, freeways. Everything. We need to keep protesting until Trump quits and leaves the White House or is dragged out.
This is more than a struggle of political will. This is our democracy on the deathbed. We need to show that the American people will not tolerate a coup and that we will fight to defend the constitution and our freedom.
Protests alone won’t be enough.
We need elected Democratic officials to do their jobs in swing states, like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. These states have Democratic governors who must do all they can to stop Trump’s enablers.
Nationally, Democrats have control of the House and have a good chance to control the Senate. Democrats have the power to stop Trump, but will they?
Joe Biden must not under any circumstance concede unless, and until every single vote has been counted and it becomes clear that Trump won a legitimate victory. Barring that, Biden has to to take the fight all the way to Congress.
Al Gore gave in for the good of the country in 2000. Instead of fighting, he stepped aside when the Supreme Court ruled that no more votes could be counted. Never again must be the mantra.
Second, if Trump prevents all of the ballots from being counted, or if Republican legislators appoint fraudulent Trump stooges as electors, Democratic governors must appoint Biden electors.
Third, Democrats in Congress need to do whatever it takes to stop Republicans from counting illegitimate Trump electors, including shutting down Congress and preventing electoral college votes from being counted.
Trump can and will steal this election but only if we let him. This means flooding the streets and taking the streets over if Trump and his enablers do what we expect they will.
There can be no peace and no semblance of normality (even Covid normality) until Trump is driven from the White House. If armed militias supporting Trump take to the streets, and the military refuses to get involved, our side needs to arm too.
We still have time to save our democracy but we have to want it more than those who want to take it from us.
