Dozens of interviews with people deeply familiar or involved with the election process point to a clear consensus: Not only could Trump make a second attempt at overturning an election he loses, he and his allies are already laying the groundwork.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/8e3Ri

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[–] 201 points 2 years ago (12 children)

WE KNOOOOWWWW. It’s the worst-kept secret in politics. People in other countries are aware. The birds are aware. It’s part and parcel of the experience of fascism. Never underestimate what pure evil is capable of doing.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Realistically is there anything we can do?

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Be ready, especially if you're on the east coast.

    The rednecks are assuming they're the only ones with balls and nobody else will stand up to them, like all bullies think.

    Prove them wrong.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    at a personal level, contact the governor and ask them how you can be certain as a voter that trump won't steal the election like he tried in 2020.

    let them know you're paying attention.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    My fucking Governor is in on it

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    I bet a few of them are.

    despite the fuckery, many policy decisions are changed by people calling in and emailing in and telling the elected officials that people are watching them and disagree with what they are doing.

    public opinion does make a difference, so on a personal level that's what we can do.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago

    Save up so you can buy a bus/train/plane ticket to DC if they try shit. If they do what they're signaling and the legislature fails us it'll be down to mass civil disobedience to keep the country from fascism.

    I wish I had a better answer, but they've eroded so many of our institutions.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Grassroots political activism and civic engagement. A sufficiently large victory would help discredit their methods going into the future. In the shorter term, our own legions of poll watchers will provide additional witnesses to offer witness testimony when things inevitably land in court.

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  • [–] 62 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Overturning a Kamala Harris victory would require an enormous amount of help from Republican power brokers in statehouses and Congress, some of whom spurned him four years ago.

    That won't be a problem for them. Republicans spurn only until it's to their personal advantage to un-spurn.

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  • [–] 57 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    He will try to ensure Harris is denied 270 votes in the Electoral College, sending the election to the House, where Republicans are likely to have the numbers to choose Trump as the next president

    This seems like the most likely outcome. System needs reform.

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  • [+] 49 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    The plan is pretty simple.

    1. Win PA, hold the red states. Trump Wins.

    2. If a red state falls, get it's leadership to declare a Republican win anyway or refuse to send delegates to the Electoral College. This denies Harris EC votes.

    3. Number 2 may mean neither candidate gets 270 EC votes, in this case a joint session of Congress will decide the election. Unless a miracle happens this will be Trump because they vote by State delegation.

    4. If Harris wins PA and the Rust Belt, go to SCOTUS.

    5. If all else fails, go back to January 6th but with rhetoric meant to make the mob want to occupy the Capitol permanently.

    They're already trying to get county clerks and election officials to do the job from the inside. Trump even honors them in person at his rallies. So buckle up for a year where election fraud goes big.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Number 5 may be part of the plan but it won't work this time. It only worked last time because Trump himself refused to increase security around the Capitol.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Also because security mostly refused to use deadly force. Those security forces are mostly used to dealing with tourist issues, not criminals with guns. That may change if more hardened, militarized police forces are used.

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    [–] 32 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I'm sorry, dear US-American friends because you have a great democracy but also at the same time one of the most flawed electoral systems of any democratic state in the world...

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    [+] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Yeah I'd wager that if trump again organizes a "peace for honest elections" protest, national guard will indeed be used against American citizens, just now how he imagined it

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    We already let Dubya get away with it.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Don't you guys have secret services who have decades of experiencre in overthrowing governments and absuing Institutions abroad? I would think that while the democrats are in charge they would be able to ask those guys what needs to be done to stop this power grab.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    In the event of a electoral system collapse, the BIOS of government is "who would the military support?"

    Harris wins enough states to get to 270 and then (Some electoral votes get sent wrong/don't get sent and congress/SCOTUS rules Trump the winner), Harris asked the military "who do you support?" and it might be Trump is put in jail by the military before he can be sworn in. Sets a bad "president", but if you throw out the rules to win, expect the other side to do the same.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Except that the Dems are consistently unwilling to play hardball. The generals would have to make the decision to intervene without being asked for that scenario to play out. I don't know much about sentiment in the upper (or even lower) ranks of the US military, but that seems unlikely.

    Even then, there's a significant chance Harris refuses to be put in power by military intervention, or the generals believe she would remove them and instruct her attorney general to prosecute them. So military intervention, if successful, would at best mean new (military supervised) elections.

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Very real? So americans don't fight for anything and they will fight to put this grandpa in the whitehouse? Nah

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    I dunno if we've gotta worry about that, because every day, it's looking more and more like Trump is going to win outright, again. No idea how, with all the experience and years to plan for this, we're going to let this fucking cunt finally kill our Democracy. My faith in the United States is completely shattered.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    The electoral college almost guarantees him a win, it was specifically designed to ensure the slave states always kept power, which is why when they finally lost in 1861, the first thing they did was flip the table.

    We really needed to let those states leave, would have been the best thing to ever happen to this country, the trash take themselves out.

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